Critiquing SO THAT Students Understand Why
Written by Bryan Hackett
I attended the critique session and wanted to share how I have started to use some of the techniques that were discussed. We were initially asked by Jon to talk about critiquing and the ways it can be done.
The group that I was sat with were talking about the WWW / EBI marking policy and it was suggested by Mrs Nicholson that we could go one step further when giving the EBI feedback and incorporate the learning objectives ‘so that’ connective. The idea being that it would give students even more direction on why they were making the improvements suggested. Fab idea! I incorporated this in to peer assessment with immediate effect since students do WWW / EBI and MRI (My response is… as used by the FTT dept.). I also started using it in my own marking and have begun to include a blue MRI box so that after students have read my feedback they have to tell me what they are going to do in future lessons.
I also really liked the task that we had to do as staff whereby we were asked by Jon to describe ‘the perfect ofsted lesson’ and then as a group we went round critiquing the other groups efforts and giving the positive and negative aspects.
I thought that I would try this with my Core Communication group and decided to plan a group task using the First News resources. As this was my first time I played it safe and gave limited options for presentation (mainly due to resources). Students had 2 lessons to complete the task but part of the 2nd lesson was to be spent critiquing the other groups work.
Now I am always up for trying out new things and will step out of my comfort zone and part way through the 1st lesson I was thinking “why the hell did I do this?” especially since it seemed very chaotic. Things did settle down and students for the most part were on task, communicating with each other, discussing ideas and the atmosphere was improving. I felt some relief!
The 2nd lesson didn’t start as well as I would have liked since I had 4 students who had been absent the week before (in the 1st lesson) but these things happen! Students were quickly underway and on task.
With the critiquing, I tried to do too much! I asked them to critique using the WWW/EBI but I tried to include the ‘so that’! It was too much and as the photos show, it would have been better just sticking with the WWW/EBI, but to be fair, the students mostly stuck to that anyway, although 1 person did give a ‘so that’!
After students read their responses, I gave them a yellow post-it note and asked them to write 3 things that they would improve on next time!
I intend trying this again and have learnt a lot and have a good starting point. I also think my students do as well!
Written by Bryan Hackett
