Meggie Gonzalez
Secondary life science teacher Digital Portfolio
Lesson Study Cycle 2
During this second lesson study cycle, I was grouped with teachers whose students ranged from first grade to twelfth grade. Despite the breadth of ages among our students, we united under the problem of practice: How do we cultivate students' agency through helping them feel dignified and developing a growth mindset?
We discussed hopes for our students such as collaboration, feeling of belonging, respect for self and others, and intrinsic motivation. With these aspirations in the front of our minds, we landed on the following equity-based research question:
How can we support student dignity in co-constructed knowledge (student-led learning) and self-assessment?
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Our lesson study team decided to implement Kind, Specific, Helpful Feedback (KSH) during our first PDSA. Our thought was that by giving students an opportunity to provide feedback to their peers and receive feedback from their peers, they would feel validated and heard. We also were drawn to the idea as it promotes collaboration and a supportive community within the classroom. Again, since we varied in student ages, we decided to each choose an age- and content-appropriate writing task, which was followed by a peer review session. In my seventh grade science class, we had begun discussing ecosystem dynamics and had just finished a worksheet where students were asked to make two arguments, one "for" and one "against" competition being classified as a symbiotic relationship. We had done a few practices with the claim-evidence-reasoning model, but this is still an area of growth for student writing, so it seemed worthy to incorporate the peer review aspect. This lesson was the first time my students had utilized KSH feedback, so we took some time to define what this type of feedback should sound like. At the end of the lesson, I provided an exit ticket where I asked students to rate the process for themselves as a reviewer, the feedback they received from their peer, and whether or not this was a type of activity they would be interested in doing again. Students worked through the protocol well, yet I did observe much of the feedback was not very specific, and at times more focused on handwriting/spelling than content. As far as the exit ticket, the students generally provided low ratings, although a handful indicated they would like to have a peer review opportunity again.
Meeting as a lesson study team, it seemed we all had a similar experience, and wanted to give the KSH feedback another go in our classrooms. We felt it a bit rushed to come to any conclusions after just the one lesson since this was a new type of feedback session for most of our students, and so we wanted to continue collecting data. As an adaptation, we discussed ways to make the feedback process more anonymous since many of our students seemed distracted by knowing whose paper they were reviewing. In my class, for our second PDSA session, I assigned each paper a random number (no names) and then had a key for myself to ensure the feedback got back to the original author. This added a bit of time to the process, and I might continue to come up with another technique, but the anonymity definitely seemed to make the process smoother with my seventh graders. I also took some time to reiterate that we wanted to focus on content, and not critique things like spelling or handwriting. For this round, we used some data we had recently analyzed concerning a several-year-long study of tree populations. My students were asked to write a paragraph making a claim about the provided data of soil and air temperatures decreasing over a 10-year period, and then support their claim with scientific evidence. Again, students worked well through the protocol. The feedback received seemed to get a slightly higher rating from peers, as they seemed to hone in on the specificity component a bit more this time. When it came to rating the process, I changed one rating category to ask about if having a peer review makes your work feel more meaningful. This category seemed to get mid-range reviews, which makes me think this is an activity worth repeating and refining for our identified problem of practice.
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Our Lesson
Our lesson for this cycle was implemented in a seventh grade humanities class. Since the standards include "claim, evidence, reasoning", we felt this naturally aligned with our KSH feedback model. In this lesson, titled "Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning in Student Self-Assessment", students peer reviewed their Backpack SLCs. Our theory was, if we employ kind, specific, and helpful feedback (change idea) while students are making sense of claim, evidence, reasoning (content understanding goal), then students will feel dignity in co-constructing knowledge, productive struggle, and self- assessment (equity-based research theme). We would see if it is working by looking at exit tickets rating student experience giving and receiving kind, specific, and helpful feedback (data collection).
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The learning standards addressed for this lesson were:
W.7.1.B Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
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In the previous lesson, students were introduced to claim, evidence, and reasoning, and then given the task to use this structure when writing their SLC progress reports. The students were provided a template for their SLC progress reports. Utilizing this template, students were tasked with creating arguments to support their claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence. This was all designed with the goal in mind for students to understand Kind, Specific, and Helpful feedback and Claim, Evidence, Reasoning writing structure, and can use both in a variety of settings.
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For the implementation of the lesson, our team observed two sessions of the same lesson at High Tech Middle School. The content understanding goal was that students will understand the Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning structure and will be able to use it when giving Kind, Specific, and Helpful (KSH) feedback on a peer’s SLC progress report. Our host teacher, Annelise, began the lesson with a "Do Now". She had created a self-describing critique of herself, and tasked students with giving her some KSH feedback. Sentence starters were provided to help guide feedback. This activity was intended to initiate the day's protocol, while maintaining a low-stakes environment. After this first step, students were able to choose a partner they felt comfortable with. Each student was provided with a Chromebook to share their SLC with their partner. Partners were instructed to use the "comment" feature in Google Docs to add some KSH feeback to the SLC. Once finished, students were encouraged to incorporate the received feedback into their SLC progress report. To close the lesson, Annelise provided students with an exit ticket asking about their peer review practice. In particular, in an attempt to collect some data on our lesson, students were asked: 1) How do you show that you care about your work and the work of your peers in a peer review session? & 2) Rate the statement "I can use the Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning structure when giving Kind, Specific, and Helpful (KSH) feedback on a peer’s SLC progress report."
Observations and Debrief
The following week, our team reconvened to debrief our lesson. It was agreed that students were well-scaffolded to the protocol, and that overall the lesson was successful. Many students picked up on the informal language used in the "Do Now", which was the expectation. During the peer review in the first session, we all observed an interaction between Annelise and a student that we felt had a big impact. When circling and asking the student how feedback was going, he responded, "he (my partner) is going to ruin my SLC." Our teacher took this as a teaching opportunity. She knelt down next to the student and explained no one is feeling finished or perfect at this stage, and that is okay. She continued that the point of the day's review was to share "where you are at" with your SLC and get some feedback. She further explained the use of the comment feature to the pair so that it was understood none of the author's work would be changed/removed in the review process. This certainly seemed to put the student at ease and he proceeded to give feedback to his partner. Following this encounter, we noticed how Annelise began the second session review process with a quick statement of, " I know some are thinking, 'I'm not done.' That is okay. Still, share and get some feedback". We all noted that the focus and productivity of session two seemed stronger, and attributed much of this to this relaxed and understanding introduction to the process. During the second session, I heard one student say to another, "I'm not even done," to which the partner replied, " that's ok, just share it," and proceeded to help with the share function. When we reviewed the exit ticket responses, all students rated their ability to use CER structure to provide KSH feedback as a 3 or higher, mostly 4's and 5's (scale of 1 to 5). In response to the question about how to show you care about your own and your peers' work, several responses pointed to being honest and kind, take your time, be thoughtful with your feedback. We were glad to see these thoughts from the students, and feel the lesson goal was met.
As far as improvements we discussed for this type of lesson, it was noted that students who would typically be considered “peer models” gravitated towards each other, while students who would be considered “struggling” also gravitated towards each other. This left us wondering if intentional partnering could be more beneficial to the feedback process. We also discussed the idea of putting students who finish early, and correctly, in a position of power. This could both confirm their own learning while simultaneously lifting up other students. Lastly, we considered the idea of bringing printed progress reports to the review session. We believe this would help students who tend to be distracted online maintain focus and also give students some accountability to have something their drafts started and ready for review.
Reflection
I enjoyed the diversity and camaraderie among my fellow teachers during this trimester. With this being our second lesson study, I felt we were able to really plan and come up with a cohesive idea of what we wanted to get from this research. With our focus being student dignity and belonging, it felt like very meaningful work. Most of our students seemed to apprecieate it, as well. The Kind, Specific, Helpful model was an effective way to bring purpose and respect to our students. I have used Claim, Evidence, Reasoning with my science students, and guiding them through a peer review with KSH flows very nicely. I see a lot of potential to increase student agency through peer feedback. This is definitely a tool I want to continue to use in the classroom. I feel if introduced early in the year and practiced regularly, students could learn to take pride in their own work, as well as build one another up, through thoughtful peer review sessions.