The Schoenblog

I’ve seen a lot of discussion lately about the concept of delaying grades based on Kristy Louden’s awesome article, Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback, over at the equally awesome Cult of Pedagogy.

She argues that if you have students focus on reading feedback and self assessing their work before addressing the grade, the feedback becomes more meaningful. I wholeheartedly agree, and have seen many educators jumping into the conversation with their own practices and strategies. I’ve thought a lot about my own grading and feedback beliefs and policies this year, and done a lot of work to be better.

Louden writes, “Wow, glad I put so much time into that assignment, said no teacher ever.” We spend so long grading and providing feedback, but too often it ends up crumpled in backpacks or garbage cans. Online feedback is great because it’s harder to lose or misplace, but it still can be a struggle to get students to read it. We need to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results. We need to stop the insanity.

Louden explains her methods, continuing, “The simple act of delaying the grade meant that students had to think about their writing. They had to read their own writing—after a few weeks away from it—and digest my comments, which allowed them to better recognize what they did well or not so well. The response from students was extremely positive; they understood the benefit of rereading their essays and paying attention to feedback. One boy said, ‘Mrs. Louden, you’re a genius. I’ve never read what a teacher writes on my essay before, and now I have to.’”

For more on grades and feedback I recommend checking out ”Changing the Conversation: Grades vs. Learning” by Starr Sackstein and ASCD’s Seven Keys to Effective Feedback from Grant Wiggins.

Feedback Conferences

I wish I was better at face-to-face, individual conferences about student work. Louden conferences with her students--and this is fantastic--but it’s never been my strong suit. What I’m really good at is using technology to provide specific, focused, and timely feedback to students. This shouldn’t entirely replace the conference--I wish I did this more often and better--but it can be a nice tool to help make the feedback process easier in delaying grades.

Google Tools to Delay Grades

In addition to delaying the grade, I like to delay the feedback. To do so, I generally return digital or hard copies of student work without any comments. Then, I ask students to read, comment on, and assess their work using a rubric. Usually, I do this a few days or even a week after the writing is turned it--this time creates a separation from the student as the writer versus editor. With distance, my students are often about to be more objective, thoughtful, and constructive about their own work.

Sometimes, the student’s self-assessment makes it easier for me to provide feedback. I can reference their own comments and thoughts, and learn more about their understanding of their progress. Other times, I want to return my feedback immediately and use it to help them assess their own self-assessment and reflection. To do so, I turn to Google.

Google Classroom: Return with Purpose

Let’s start with the simple option: use Google Classroom to promote self-assessment and feedback and delay the grades. When a student turns work in on Classroom, they lose rights to edit. Use this transfer of sharing rights to have them provide feedback on paper or to add suggested comments about their own writing. Then, return the work to a class or any number of students to share your comments and/or grades.

Looking for more control and specificity in your feedback? Explore Google Forms below and its power to help delay the grade.

Google Forms and formMule

With my students’ most recent work, I created a feedback form to organize and maintain my feedback digitally. I read students’ writing and used this simple form (see below) to provide the feedback. Notice the drop down list of student names and the checkboxes for common feedback items. This makes it quick and easy to make the process effective--the same options repeat with a heading for improvement.

One of my big teaching initiatives for 2017 has been to help students understand more about their learning and progress. Through reflection, self-assessment, rubric deconstruction, and meaningful conversations about grading and feedback, we’ve made major growth. Recently, I was reading a final essay draft and was blown away by one student’s work.

It's cool when you read writing from a student you're concerned about and it turns out to be the best thing they've ever written.

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) April 16, 2017

The student in question has weak writing skills and had been completing work inconsistently all year long. But his essay was great--it really impressed me. I couldn’t help but reflect on his growth and question why this assignment had been so effective for him as a writer. I went back through his outlines and process work, and reached a quick conclusion: our peer editing lesson did wonders for this student.

My students usually complete rough drafts, self and peer assess, and then revise. Their feedback and use of rubrics makes my job easier because so much of the feedback is already there from their peers. And because we spend so much time working with rubric language, my students have gotten pretty good at these activities.

This time, however, we focused on the single point rubric technique. This rubrics simply describes proficiency for each quality with one column on descriptors rather than the typical three to six of a writing rubric. For more on single-point rubrics, check out Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics from Cult of Pedagogy.

The simplicity of this rubric led to a great peer editing activity that helped students provide specific, meaningful feedback and build a community of writers. And even better, I immediately saw room for growth for next time.

Infographic from Visible Learning

The Activity

In groups of four, each student was assigned a rubric category: content and analysis; command of evidence; coherence, organization, and style; or control of conventions. Their job was simple: read the essay essay for your specific category and provide feedback for that point of the rubric. That was all.

The students assigned content and analysis read with an eye towards critical thinking and the claim development. For command of evidence, the students looked for the use of evidence, literary elements, and citations. Each student read the work through a specific lens. After a few minutes, the groups rotated papers. Every essay was read four times by four different students with four sets of narrowly focused feedback. And it was all done on paper with highlighters and pens in hand.

This activity allowed for very specific and intensive feedback. Since every student in a group read everyone else’s papers, they were able to discuss and debrief in their groups as a community of writers and editors. The students helped one another as individuals and as a collective group. Students were asked to read at least half the essay in their editing; if time ran out, they simply passed it on to the next group member. More than likely, the mistakes of the first half continued, so like a good teacher providing feedback, students didn’t need to comment on every single issue.

And the work was the better for it. These essays were the easiest long pieces of writing for me to assess this year. The students did the hard work. With their comments and the single point rubrics, I was able to give additional feedback quickly and efficiently, and more often than not, that work had been done by and for the students instead.

Next Time

This time, the feedback was collaborative and a little more exciting than the average peer editing lesson. Next time, though, there’s an easy opportunity for movement, too. Instead of identifying groups by tables, I want to introduce a station rotation aspect, too.

For example, a logical final station involves using Chromebooks for revision. Maybe one station is all green highlighters with the task of only identifying strong evidence. Another station has stickers to provide feedback on grammar and writing. The ideas are still growing and developing, but have a lot of potential to engage students more and more in this growth and learning. I’ve been eager to introduce more movement and explore stations at the high school level and can’t wait to give it a try.

What are your favorite strategies for peer editing, revision, or stations in your classroom? How would you improve these ideas? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

When students are more involved in monitoring their own learning, learn how to provide constructive feedback, and are given opportunities to grow, the learning is better and more meaningful. That’s the message I’ve been trying to convey to my students this year.

Last week, I wrote about my efforts to move towards more Student Reflection & Self Assessment, sharing the form I used for students to evaluate their progress so far. I explained that while I hoped to learn more about ways to provide effective feedback and change my grading practices, for now I was committed to renegotiating the power of the grade by engaging students in the process.

Now, it’s a week later and my students have completed two reflection forms. And their responses were thoughtful, interesting, and generally accurate. I’m thankful for that. It means that I have a strong foundation to build from in helping students develop their skills, meta-cognition, and self/peer evaluations and feedback.

Let’s take a look at what they said.

Instead of spending my time on grading, I want to use it to give stronger feedback, help students grow, and build better relationships. These are ideas I’ve mentioned over and over in the past few months of writing, and I’m ready to bring them to practice.

I’ve explored research and articles on the value of students’ self-assessing and reflecting on their progress, and decided to start the second week of classes with students making arguments for their own grades.

In the long run, I want to move away from traditional grading but am still trying to find balance as I learn more about effective systems and practices. My school uses numeric grades, and for now, I’m going to make that work for me. But instead of using grades as power, I want them to represent learning and growth as best as possible. I always used rubrics, but I’ve decided that to make them mean more to students and to learning, the students need to be the driving force in that process.

In the past, I’ve found great success in student reflection, metacognition, and self-evaluation throughout my Genius Hour projects. I share that work in What Students Think About #Genius Hour Part 1 am ready to expand this idea throughout my classes.

The Reflection Form

Click here to copy the form if you’re interested. Here are the directions I provided:

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The most meaningful and long-term learning occurs with specific feedback and opportunities for growth.

Research shows great improvements in student achievement when students monitor their own progress and self-assess their learning.

Grades communicate what you know, what you can do, and what you have learned. How can you demonstrate your new learning and ideas? Consider the fundamentals of English (reading, writing, speaking, etc.) along with the 4 Cs of 21st Century Learning (critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity.

Use this reflection form to reflect on your progress so far and make an argument for your grade for the first two weeks of English 10.

A copy of the form results will be send to your OHS e-mail address. You can finish this form by clicking the link to edit from that e-mail.

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Using Google Form’s settings, I restricted the form to my domain, collected usernames, and send an automatic confirmation receipt. I love this last feature because it also provided students with a link to edit their responses, too.



In part one (above), I was looking for some data about students’ overall understanding and progress. I was especially interested in how their perceived their contributions to class so far. In the future, I want to generalize these ideas to create a form that students can use throughout the year with minimal editing. Or even better, I’ll have students describe the learning activities for the rows.




In part two, I ask students to grade themselves and justify their choice. I still don’t love the numeric grade aspect, but I do love the metacognition and reflection they showed in their writing here. I like these questions but will likely tweak my description of student expectations. I’d love some ideas for this part.

Moving Forward

The student responses for this form were incredibly thoughtful and thorough. They showed real reflection, and seemed honest and accurate, overall. Next week, I’ll share some of the big ideas from their reflections along with their feedback on the reflection process as a whole. This week, students are working with their summer assignments through literary analysis, discussion, and group work. They will reflect and evaluate this work, too.

Once it comes to larger and summative learning, I plan to work hard on effective peer and self-assessments, so that students can help each other grow. Then, I can continue to give feedback that matters, while demystifying the power of the grade.

How do you use reflection and self-assessment in your teaching? What suggestions do you have to improve my work-in-progress? Please share in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

My lessons this week rely on Google Classroom, Forms, Docs, GMail, Remind, and so much more. In my mind each has a distinctive purpose and my choices support learning objectives and outcomes. But my mind is a weird place--it’s a chaotic mashup of tech and pedagogy, where my long, sometimes convoluted workflows work for me--but do they work for my students?

Are we giving our students too many options and norms? Is my tech-infused style of communication and feedback too much of a good thing?

Last week, I wrote about the power of Google Forms in addition to, or even instead of, collecting and providing feedback to students in Google Classroom. Click here to read #GoogleClassroom vs. #GoogleForms for Interacting with Student Work. With more reflection, I’ve started to think about the self-efficacy in technological communication. With technology, my communication and feedback can be more meaningful, specific, and efficient than ever before, and it also has permanence. Transparency and accountability increases when the reliability and consistency of communication improves and we have timestamped records of submissions and online interactions.

Still, when I return student work on Classroom, students find their feedback on Classroom or in their e-mail. When I automate a Google Form, it’s usually through e-mail, too. But then our gradebooks are in the school’s learning management system, so no matter where the grades started, they end up in the LMS gradebook. This is where the averages are calculated and the students information is communicated to parents and administration.

Are we giving students too many choices or destinations?

I see a clear and distinctive difference in the apps and how and why I use each to return student work. Still, if the destination for that returned work changes every time, than the execution is flawed no matter my intent. I need to students to be able to easily and consistently read, use, and grow from my feedback and communication.

Building an E-Mail Culture

So far, I’ve asked more questions than I have answers for. Do we teach students to value the app-smashing mindset that I live by--or do I need to adapt to streamline my work to meet their needs? I think the answer lies in a balance, and in the end I need to do what works for my students, just like you do for yours.

For my students, I think that means that building a culture where e-mail matters. With texts and social media, most of my students don’t use e-mail the ways I do--as a personal and professional form of communication. Many don’t even know how to write a formal or professional e-mail or letter. But this type of communication is essential in 21st century learning

This year, I’ve used e-mail to provide feedback on student work, automate responses on Forms, express concerns about student work, and make contact with parents. Sometimes this works great. Sometimes my students don’t check their e-mail and my message is lost. E-mail and technology can never replace face to face conversation--and that’s something I think I need to consider more often--but has much more value than my students give it credit for. I want to teach my students to write e-mails and to make checking e-mail regularly a norm in my classroom and school.

Since Classroom notifies students of new assignments and work through e-mail and my automated Forms does the same, that might just solve my problems for now. If students check their school e-mails regularly, we can use technology to communicate more effectively and make feedback matter.

Still, my concerns remain. How much is too much?

How do you find the balance in communication and feedback? What tools do you find most effective? Does education have too much of a good thing, and if so, what are the consequences? Share your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter.

One of my goals as a teacher is to help my students grow as independent learners. Inherent in that goal are essential skills like accountability and communication and qualities like motivation and reflection. Often, these are lessons learned through experience and are hard to teach to students, no matter the age.

Grading is hard.

It’s a truth for many educators--or has been at some point in our careers. Whether we’re looking at grading, assessment, or feedback, it’s challenging to respond effectively to student work. It’s even harder to do so consistently, in a timely manner, and without letting the work take over.

It started with BitMoji. I learned about these fun, customizable emojis at NYC #GafeSummit a few months ago, and instantly thought about how I could use them with my students. I threw a few into presentations, Tweets, blog posts, and my web site, but wanted to do more.


Then last week, I was giving feedback to an essay and a student kept using the word connotation incorrectly. Over and over again, she used it but it was slightly off. I wanted to comment with “wrong word” or “clarify diction,” when The Princess Bride came to mind. As Inigo Montoya says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” I found the meme below, and in addition to my written comment, I added a link to this meme, then tweeted it out.

I wish I could insert memes into Google Docs comments for students. pic.twitter.com/G8fEmBuDWd

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) January 4, 2016

Memes For Feedback

As my Tweet drew some comments and I began to brainstorm, I decided that I wanted to do more of this. In addition to written and verbal feedback, I wanted to provide more visual feedback, too. I’ve seen a few teachers Tweet about using memes lately, both in instruction and as student creations and want to continue to develop these ideas. Below, I’ll describe the plan in more detail. For now, I need your help.

Share your favorite memes to use with students or for feedback at tinyurl.com/memes4feedback.

The Crowdsourcing Plan

Over the next few weeks, I plan to Tweet out the form and collect memes to use with students. The form asks for a link to the meme, a description of its purpose, keywords, and for attribution. With this, I want to create a database of memes to use with students and for feedback.

Google Classroom is a powerful tool to help teachers assign and provide feedback to student. For me, using Google Apps to help communicate about student progress and organize work and workflow is a huge time saver and stress reducer. Instead of leaving school with 75 essays, papers or project--plus rubrics--I now have a nearly paperless classroom where all of my students’ learning is online. Now it’s organized and documented, ready to be shared, with a higher expectation of accountability and communication. And I love it.

The Survey

What My Students Think

• "i thought it was a cool experiment but if we were able to mover around more i think it would be a more fun and engaging experience"
• "I liked the google expeditions because I liked seeing places in depth that I've never been before. I didn't really like it because I almost threw up the period after."
• "I enjoyed using google expeditions because of the fact that the teacher is able to teach about a location and the students are able to be looking at what the teacher is teaching like if one was there in real life. Also if the teacher wants to show you something specific in the expedition he/she can pick a spot and on everyone's expedition it will show an arrow to where the teacher wanted to show you. What i didn't like was the fact that it made you nauseous after using it. It makes you want to not look at the expedition as much."
• "I liked it because we went to different places without having to pay or leave, i didn't like how it hurt my nose and eyes, it also gave me a headache."
• "I disliked google expeditions due to the fact that you're pretty much just looking at a fancy photo, you aren't getting the actual experience of a field trip. It would just be easier for a teacher to give a power point with images from the location and give the class questions."

• "We talk about so many different places within classes that you would think we would never be able to see or visit, but expeditions gives students a chance to actually see places a little more realistically than in pictures."
• "It really encompassed a new learning experience that I would like to use as it gave real life experiences in a classroom setting, allowing it to stay put in our memory."
• "It allows me to see visually what my teacher is lecturing on which is really helpful in remembering certain details. It's easier to remember what my teacher says if I can link it to images in my mind. It's much better than looking at a single square picture, instead I feel like I'm having an experience in the expedition."
• "Google Expeditions was a good companion to a lesson because it engaged the class (though part of this was likely just the novelty of it, and a class would not be so excited about a Google Expedition lesson if such lessons were commonplace), but it could not function as a lesson in itself. Google Expeditions would be a good enhancement to learning if it were integrated into lessons in which a concept that is difficult to picture in one's mind is being explained, or in which the teacher wants to greater the students' understanding of a specific location or scene."

• "Google Expeditions enhances learning because it allows students to travel to the place they are learning about without ever leaving the classroom. Being able to see a place in a 3-D sense replaces the need for 2-D pictures that a student would normally see on a power point slide."
• "My experience with Google Expeditions was great. I liked that you are able to look at different places and learn about the places. It is a good learning experience. Something that i disliked is that after a while it starts to hurt your eyes and after a long time it starts to give you a headache."
• "It was a nice idea, but could be improved. The device itself was uncomfortable, especially the lens; it would make me a little disorientated after use for a few minutes. The lens also make the image blurrier than the phone image, which just ruins the experience. A third and final complaint which is not as big of an issue as the others is having to hold it. It would nice if there was a strap or something that would make it hands-free."

• "I think it just took time away from actual learning I don't think it accomplished much, besides making a group of 20 kids nauseous. Also you don't learn much because kids are too busy fooling around looking at the image instead of listening to the teacher."
• "I just wish it was more in place so I would not feel nauseous and dizzy."
• "It would be great if the dizzy/nausea factor could be removed."
• "Google Expeditions would be improved if it had more options for student class participation, such as allowing students to input responses or add the arrows that the teacher used during the sample lesson from their own goggles/devices."
• "What prevented the complete immersion was looking at the tops and bottoms of the photosphere." "They're either empty, distorted or had a sort of watermark."
• "Google Cardboard could be using in conjunction with YouTube to view the 360 videos."

• "If I could create my own Expedition, I would make one of Hogwarts (from Harry Potter), and I think it could also have a great application in other fantasy scenes. However, I also think it would be great to make Expeditions of cell and atomic models (for science classes) or scenes/societies in certain times in history (for history classes) for a more integrated understanding."
• "If i could create my own, I would travel everywhere. From the past to the present day. Everywhere in the world. Though number one would be Tokyo, Japan."
• "If i could i would go to the capitol of Brazil because of the nice beaches that are there the hotels and many more good looking places. I feel like it would be cool to go there and learn something more interactive. It espallcy is cool to be able to do a 360 degree turn it makes it even more real like if you were there."
• "If I can create my own Expedition, i would create one of new york city during Christmas and new years"

The Full Data