Thrive Reflection 1 - Feedback on students' design (Teacher to Students)

In Sadlers (1989) seminar work, effective feedback requires are three conditions: (1) a standard or exemplar for learners to aim towards, (2) a comparison of their own work with the standard or exemplar first by producing their own initial work, and (3) the engagement of work to close the gap (in term of skills or knowledge). 

I had given them exemplars of what good design looks like to make the comparison and aim towards but did not record my (1) "exemplars" progress and (2) leveraged their prior knowledge. 

The examplar progress is as important as the exemplar outcome. While the purpose of the random lines technique is to let students imagine an interesting shape out of random lines, there is a particular way expert and novice will draw these random lines and imagine a shape out of these random line. That is, the so-called random line is not exactly random. Thus, the importance of showing the expert progress. 

However, having demonstrated expert progress is not enough, we need to trigger the prior knowledge of the students. Instead of asking "what does the shape look like?" asking "what monsters can you imagine." make a difference. I have reservations that they will go into dark art. I did not show the video that CPDD has created but give the option for the teachers to do so. So Mr Sam did. It is a personal choice.

At the standardisation and review exercise, we discovered Sec 1 are too novice to go into dark art. And a further search of monsters in SLS, there are "monsters" that they are exposed to in primary school are actually quite cute. And attached are examples of typical outcomes.

Student's work without the trigger of prior knowledge of "monster"

Student's work with video to provide initial experience and trigger of prior knowledge of "monster"

There are studies of when the exemplars should be given. At the start of when they have finished their initial attempt. I have given them at the start based on the discussion with kuenping that they will come out with a very poor outcome if we did not provide an example at the start. However, a research study showed a context where the teachers show the example only after the initial attempts. 

Isn't teaching a continuous experiment of learning in the classroom? I hope my teachers will have the researcher lens when they enter the classroom and are curious about what will be the outcome of a new way of teaching.