I am taking it easy during our Easter holidays. I have mainly been practicing some "active rest", hiking and enjoying life outdoors. Four years ago I spent all Easter holidays studying for the university entrance exams, and after four years I deserve some rest, I need it, and I also owe it to my family. And I still can't believe I need to justify that to myself; self-imposed duties are too deeply rooted in me, and when it comes to rights, I am always last, and those closest to me come the ones before last... Just the opposite of what it should be.
Anyway, back to the diary. Out last week before the holidays was short, and the last lesson was a bit bumpy, due to changes in the schedule brought by another teacher. Nevertheless, we managed to close the feedback on the lesson we have been guiding, and to close off the unit before the Easter break. We changed the dynamics of the feedback slightly, so this time each group mentioned one thing they liked about each presentation, and one thing they would consider for improvement; then, the next group did the same, and so on. And our teachers also reduced the amount of aspects they mentioned as feedback. Before starting with the feedback on the last two groups, they did a general round up of all the lessons we have had, and they stressed that the outcomes were very good, that there has been a great improvement since the previous lessons in the first term, and that we all had to be very happy with our work. They also reflected on how feedback needed to be in order to be the most effective, and mentioned that they are still working on it, since they had noticed that some of us had felt a bit down after the feedback sessions.
I intend to close the topic on feedback myself, for now at least. Feedback and assessment have really interested me during this last term, and I have been thinking on why this was. I have come to the conclusion that my interest is mainly due to wanting to improve as a feedback giver. Being on the receiving end of the feedback process has helped me a lot to realise how much I have to improve when I am on the other side, and I have learned a lot.
To finish with my reflections on feedback, I would like to mention a very interesting point, which was made by one of our teachers during their reflection on feedback in general. When our teachers commented on the fact that they have tried to give us the maximum amount of feedback on our lessons, so we could learn more on the things we need to improve, and how difficult it was to do that while maintaining our motivation at the same time, one of the teachers mentioned that novice teachers make the same common mistakes. At that moment, I didn't think about it, as we continued with the feedback on the last two lessons, but that comment came back to my mind in the following days. It seemed to me that it implied that one of the objectives of feedback, maybe the most important, was for them, as experienced teachers, to point out mistakes in our lessons, so we could avoid them when we become teachers ourselves. That seems to make a lot of sense.
Then I thought of a different situation which resembles this in a way; let's imagine somebody very experienced in life giving advice to somebody much younger, maybe a grandparent and their grandchild. What would the grandparent's objective be, to point out all possible mistakes one can make in life, so the grandchild would know about them and thus avoid them? Is that actually feasible? Is it desirable?
I would say the grandparent might want to make the grandchild aware of some fatal mistakes, the sort of mistakes which will not allow them to
grow in life, because those are the only ones which one really needs to try to avoid, and which might be feasible to actually pass on. To me, that is the real objective of feedback: to promote growth, to create conditions for that. Not to avoid mistakes. And, as a feedback giver, you always need to ask yourself if you are "watering" the plant just right, so it will grow at its natural rhythm, or you are trying to "speed up" its development using too much fertiliser.
Coming back to the feedback session we had that day, the things we mentioned are very similar to what
I had written right after the two lessons, but there was a very interesting idea which I hadn't picked on, and I think is very important: the second lesson, the one on children's worries, dealt with highly emotional topics, which must be handled with care. The teacher needs to take enough time to give adequate emotional support in an activity where children are sharing personal concerns, so children will feel that their concerns are being given the importance they have for themselves, and not treated lightly.
It was also interesting to see that some of my classmates found the story that was told on the first lesson - a story about Easter eggs, close to the fable of the golden eggs - a bit too childish for fifth graders. It's funny, because I didn't, and some other classmates taking the degree on pre-primary teaching didn't either. I think that the last cycle of primary is a great moment to bring fairy tales, fables and other classics to the classroom, because children at that age enjoy discussing ethical and moral issues, and those stories are full of them. If we don't want students to feel treated as if they were toddlers, we can use versions containing "different" illustrations. Here are a couple which came to my mind, from Rébecca Dautremer and Marcia Brown:
Finally, we also took some time to give our teachers feedback on the experience of preparing and putting into practice lessons with "real children". We all agreed that it was a very good experience and a great chance to receive feedback on our practice, and that even if it involved a great effort to organise it, it was worth it with no doubt.
Our last lesson before the holidays started with a warmer called "hidden sentence", which was a lot of fun. It could be used in the English class once students begin to be fluent enough to produce a short dialogue on a given topic. We also went into some practical aspects about the last lessons after the Easter break, our teacher gave us very useful information on summer courses and options to continue training after we finish the degree, and we also discussed the items we should include in our self-assessment for the unit. She brought the items that students had used for self-assessment in previous years, and I found it very helpful and reassuring, because we realised we had listed almost the same items as others had.
Lastly, we received some very interesting feedback on the subject from our teacher. She brought back the "contracts" we had designed in groups at the beginning of the academic year, with a column for what we expected from the unit, and another column with what we were willing to offer. I have to say that I had completely forgotten about that. I only remembered it when our teacher called out the members of our group; then I remembered where and when we wrote it, but not the contents. Having the long school placement in the middle of the academic year has made me forget a lot of what we did on the first term, and I think that has caused a distortion in my perception of what we have actually learned. It was fantastic to go back to this lists, because it made me realise that what we have learned exceeds the expectations, but also that we had quite clear ideas on what we wanted to learn in the Minor. To me, this has been one of the best activities we have done in the whole year, because it has given me an accurate measure of what I have learned. I remember I was aware of the accomplishment at the end of the first year in the degree, but after that it was much harder to realise what we were learning each year, because it was built on top of what we had previously learned. I think giving students tools to measure their learning is a great thing, and this activity could also be adapted to the English class.