Post 488: Thanks For The Feedback

 Thanks For The Feedback Book Review

 

I just took a 7 week Fortis College Book Club Professional Development class where we went over the book, Thanks For The Feedback.by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. This exciting book goes over different kinds of feedback you can get from a teacher, an employer or a family member, and this book teaches you how to receive feedback graciously, and how to give effective feedback that gets results.

I learned a lot from this book from how to not be blown away from a bad evaluation and how to give feedback that students can use to improve their papers. In the class, our instructor gave us scenarios from the book, and asked us how we would respond to it.

He asked us, "What was your worst feedback? How did you respond to that?" When someone gives us bad feedback, three triggers are triggered: Identity Trigger, Relationship Trigger, and Truth Trigger. In the Truth Trigger, your inner voice says, "That's not true! I am not a lazy worker! I am a good hard working worker! From the relationship trigger, you say " What does he know? He is just my boss, and he does not know me very well." and then your identity trigger where you evaluate yourself as a person. You are a good person if you get good reviews, and you are a bad person if you get bad reviews.

In life, we all get lemons, a divorce, we get fired from a job, a flat tire, a missed airplane, a bad job review, and a low grade. How do we react to this? Heen says we all have a baseline personality. Those people who see hardship as a challenge to overcome and to grow fare better than people who crash and burn and become devastated when they receive a low grade. 

To overcome obstacles, you need to have what Heen calls a 'growth mindset' where you see obstacles as challenges for growth, you see a low grade as a chance to learn and improve, and that if we seek out ways to improve our job, improve our personal relationships, improve our grade by asking the teacher, we learn and grow as individuals when we receive bad feedback rather than crash and burn when we get bad feedback or encounter hardships.

Rather than be devastated by negative feedback, you should give yourself a second score of how much effort you put into improving and growing from that experience. You say to yourself, "I may have gotten an F on the paper, but I give myself an A for bouncing back and will work on getting a better grade next time by asking the teacher what I did wrong so I can learn and grow from this experience."

To give feedback, I have learned and I have told my students when they give peer review responses to other students to give actionable suggestions if other students have mistakes on their papers. Do not simply say, 'Your paper sucks.' but instead specify exactly ways in which that other person/student can improve their paper. Example: Your thesis statement needs to be the last sentence of the first paragraph. Google Funnel Introduction Paragraph.

If you are giving job feedback, do not simply say, "Your English is too informal." That is too vague. Give actionable suggestions such as, "Stop saying 'You know' at the end of each sentence because that annoys other workers and makes your English too informal and too conversational for work."

There are three kinds of feedback I tell my students that they will encounter in the Peer Review Forums: Appreciation Feedback--where they compliment the other student on their work. Mentoring Feedback--where they answer any questions students may ask others to help them with. Coaching Feedback--is when the students see mistakes in other students' papers and fix them for the other students. Then, Evaluation Feedback is when I grade their papers.

People would do better if they saw feedback more as mentoring and coaching rather than evaluation. Being able to distinguish between the two is essential to how you react negatively or positively to the event. If you can see your worst feedback as coaching, you will then realize that the person who gave you that worst feedback may have been just helping you, and seeing devastating feedback as just coaching or mentoring takes the sting out of it and brings it into perspective, says Heen.  It is important to be able to tell the difference between coaching, mentoring and evaluation.

Then, I learned about three kinds of Evaluations: Assessment--where you are graded and given a rank on a topic or paper or event. Consequences--the real world implications of that low grade such as being expelled from class, having to redo the assignment, or moving out of the house if you are divorced or not being able to pay your bills if you lose your job. Judgement--How others judge you, and how you judge yourself. You don't have control over the first two, but you do have control over the third, go easy on yourself and don't judge yourself too harshly, says Heen.

For me, the two most important lessons I learned from this book is to keep a positive growth mindset if I fail so I can improve next time, and to give actionable suggestions if I give feedback to others. Now, I seek feedback about my work from both students and from my boss so that if I make any mistakes, I can quickly fix them rather than wait for my annual evaluation. When you seek out feedback rather than dread feedback, you become a much better team player,and a more positive worker.

Post 487: Make It Stick Book Review

 Post 487: Make It Stick

 

 

I loved reading the book, Make It Stick because it teaches teachers how to make more effective lessons that students will remember hence the title, Make It Stick.

I remember when I was in third grade, we were learning cursive handwriting. I complained to my teacher, "Why do we have to write the same letter over and over again?" My third grade teacher said, "The more you practice writing, the better you get. Practice makes perfect."

If I were to summarize this book, Make It Stick, in three words, it would be 'Practice Makes Perfect." This does not mean rote memorization of the same fact over and over again, but it means that the teacher finds different ways of interweaving the same facts into his lesson under different contexts and different modalities.

Instead of just massively memorizing a whole bunch of facts for a test, and then forgetting the facts after the test, Make It Stick teaches teachers and learners alike to go over these same facts over a long period of time in different ways. Teachers can interweave these same facts in different lessons covering other topics, students can use index cards to write down facts to remember and go over these index cards over and over again in the bus, in the car, at work and whenever you have time.

In the past, I used to just teach one topic one time for that one test. I used to just have students study for the test, and I would teach for the test. Make It Stick says that massively studying for a test produces a false sense of familiarity with the material where students think they have mastered the concept simply by regurgitating facts on a test.

The true way to master a concept is like when a pilot knows how to land a plane even in an emergency. In the pilot's head is the checklist he needs to do to properly land the plane despite the emergency and his nerves. He knows the flying checklist automatically in his head without having to think about it to remember, well this is how familiar students get with material if they study the material over a long period of time by going over the material through doing projects, discussions, debates, writing papers in class--not just one massive test.

Teachers would interweave the same set of facts throughout their class so that students hear the same facts under different contexts. For instance, when teaching grammar, I review grammar rules for the test. After the quiz is over, I still go over these same grammar rules when I correct their papers, or ask them to apply these grammar rules to avoid sentence fragments or revise their essays.

For me, the greatest benefit of reading this book was learning how to interweave the same facts into other lessons and units so that my students at the end of my writing class know essay structure automatically in their heads just like the pilot knows automatically how to land a plane in an emergency. I highly recommend this book for learners to learn how to learn, and for teachers to learn how to teach more effective lessons.

Post 486: Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson

 Post 492: Mechanically Inclined Book Review

 

Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson is a wonderful book that gives teachers fun ways to teach grammar. In a recent lesson on complex sentences, I used Anderson's ideas of using visual scaffolds to help students remember their subordinate conjunctions. AAAWWUBBIS (After, although, as, When, While, Before, Because,  Unless,  If and Since. If students can remember AAWWUBBIS, then they can avoid sentence fragments since sentences that begin with these words cannot stand alone.

He also uses his sense of humor to teach grammar, which is usually a very boring topic. For instance, when teaching prepositions, he starts his chapter on prepositions with 'Have I got a preposition for you!" which obviously is a running joke on 'Have I got a proposition for you!". He makes grammar just funny enough for students to pay attention.

Anderson makes the visual scaffolds available for photocopying in the Appendix of his book, so teachers can hand out these visual scaffolds to help them remember the grammar rules. I love using his FANBOYS visual scaffolding for compound sentences when I teach students that commas always go before FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).

John studies hard, FOR he wants a good grade.

Jack eats a lot AND he refuses to go on a diet.

I do not want to go to the park NOR do I want to go outside today.

Jack worked hard BUT he still makes very little money.

Wash your feet, Or not have dinner.

Jan is famous, YET she is humble. 

Before teaching a grammar lesson, this is a great reference book to help me give dynamic lectures. Anderson also gives mentor sentences and student error sentences for me to use for each lesson. Then, students can imitate the mentor sentences to write correct sentences of their own in their writing notebooks. The mentor sentences can be used as writing prompts for writing journals. 

The teacher can list the mentor sentences on the board, then ask students what grammar rule is being demonstrated, or the teacher can write Anderson's student error sentence and the teacher can then ask the students what error is in that sentence.  I highly recommend Mechanically Inclined for any writing and grammar teacher to make their grammar lessons come alive.