Four Foundations Top Ten Habits #6

We've considered five of the Four Foundations Top Ten habits so far:

-plan unit and daily lesson learning targets before planning activities

-write clear, student-learning-focused learning targets

-share the learning targets with students

-plan frequent formative assessments to check for understanding during lessons

-be sure that formative assessments are involuntary and all-inclusive

Next on the FF Top Ten is #6:

"I make it a habit to give frequent feedback to students that is specific and descriptive." 

Students need frequent feedback from teachers in order for them to know how they are doing in achieving the learning targets we have set for them. This feedback should be consciously connected to specific aspects of the learning, and it should be descriptive. Feedback that merely praises (e.g. "good job!") doesn't communicate to students what they are doing that is working well (and what is not), and how they can improve. Worse, it may ingrain a fixed mindset, even in stronger students, leading them to focus on maintaining their 'excellent' standing rather than on learning.  Giving specific, descriptive feedback helps to shift the responsibility for learning increasingly onto the student--which is where we want it to be. 

See The Four Foundations of Great Teaching, page 12, for more on this topic. 

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Developing great classroom habits is critical to our success as teachers, that is, our students' learning. According to research, it takes an average of 66 days to develop an automatic behavior--a habit. As teachers, we want the excellent practices described in the 'top ten' to become second nature, to be so natural and integrated into our classrooms that they are virtually habitual. We shouldn't just do them unthinkingly, of course, but certainly we want them to be so much a part of our classroom routine that something would seem out of place if we didn't do them. 

So, I encourage you to make it a goal to establish these practices as habits in your classroom. Put them deliberately into your daily plans for the next quarter and see if they don't become an important, nearly automatic, part of your daily teaching. Your students will benefit tremendously!