The importance of feedback, guidance and evaluation

Dear reader,

In the most recent episode of the skillful teacher course, I learn to distinguish between feedback, guidance and evaluation.

1) Feedback
Feedback is a non-judgmental assessment of the students' tasks. It simply covers what the student did and what the student failed to do.

An example would be "the student included references to temperature in exothermic changes".

2) Guidance
Guidance is a instructional package for the student.

An example of a guiding statement would be "you should pay more attention to the units used in the next test".

3) Evaluation
Evaluation is a judgement call of the student's ability and potential on the task. It is also known as grading.

An example would be "you have shown that your are good with calculations".

Conclusion
Such distinction is vital as students need to know explicitly what they should include in their answers and how to improve. Many a time, they would simply look at a grade deemed it as a permanent label on their abilities.

That's all I want to write for now.

The same boat

Dear reader,

Today I offered to stay back with my Secondary 4 students as long as they were willing to learn to grasp the topic of salts. I was pretty impressed when the majority of the students were in favour.

Although they did not understand the whole topic in the end, I was still quite impressed by their dedication. Was it because I portrayed all of us as a team in the same boat? Was it because I appealed to their examination grades?

I think in a way I was blessed. These students are very well-behaved and I have good rapport with them. And they are willing to work hard together with me.

Thanks for listening.