Castillo How-tos

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Instructional Materials & How-Tos

How to give feedback!

So you wan to introduce feedback into your classroom and make it more part of your classroom culture and expected?
Like a lot of things in life, there are rules! Most of the time rules are in place to protect us, and keep us from walking straight into a busy street. If there were no rules in your classroom, you can only imagine the chaos that would ensue. Good thing in my own search to find great materials to use, I have found some great resources for you to use and some I have created myself.

LESSONS

REFERENCES

ASSESSMENT

Peer Feedback

At Common Sense Education ( linked for your convenience, and on my references page!) a wonderful resource by the way, I came across a lesson on how to give peer feedback in Google Classroom. It also included a really great document that highlights some great tips on how to give constructive criticism! The document is in the context of the workforce, but is totally appropriate for the classroom.

Here is a sample on when feedback is appropriate

you can find the full document here.

Giving Constructive Feedback

The author gives some thoughts on when feedback is appropriate, but keep in mind - feedback can be implemented into any assignment, report, and project. The key is to build it into several parts of the project.

Some situations which require giving constructive feedback include:

• Ongoing performance discussions
• Providing specific performance pointers
• Following up on coaching discussions
• Giving corrective guidance
• Letting someone know the consequences of their behavior

Six Ways to Make Feedback Constructive

Included are some great tips on how to keep the feedback constructive. The full set of six can be found on the document, but I wanted to highlight a few of the standouts.

Part of being an effective manager or supervisor is knowing what feedback to give. The trick is
learning how to give it constructively so that it has some value. constructive feedback is a tool that
is used to build things up, not break things down. It lets the other person know that you are on
their side.

1. If you can't think of a constructive purpose for giving feedback, don't give it at all.

4. Focus on behavior rather than the person

Refer to what an individual does rather than on what you imagine she or he is. To focus on
behavior, use adverbs, which describe action, rather than adjectives, which describe qualities.
For example: "You talked considerably during the staff meeting, which prevented me from getting
to some of the main points," rather than "You talk too much."

5. Provide a balance of positive and negative feedback.

If you consistently give only positive or negative feedback, people will distrust the feedback and it
will become useless.

Using Adobe Spark!

So, I really enjoyed using Adobe Spark. From entrepreneurs, to local food trucks, to teachers and students, Spark is a great tool to make simple straight to the point presentations. Traditionally, you would normally use Spark to create simple flyers to promote events, simple websites and simple video presentations.

Here is a cool little overview:

As I was learning several other tools it occurred to me,
"why not have students use it to make mini presentations to give peer feedback on their projects?!"

Here are some things you will need!

1. Get familiar with Adobe Spark.

Adobe Spark is completely free if you just want to use their free templates. You will however need to create an Adobe CC account or use your Google credentials to log in.

2. Get super familiar and comfortable with either PCs or Macs ways of doing screen captures. You and your students are going to need screen captures of the work they will be providing feedback on.

PC - press the "prt sc" on your keyboard and open up your painting program of your choice - be it MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop and then you'll want to press
"ctrl-V" to paste the image. Lastly you'll want to hit "save as" to save it out as a .jpeg or .png ( these are image file formats that Adobe Spark likes to use). Make you name your file something appropriate and easy to find like "movie_feedback_scene01" or something like that.

Mac - Press Shift-Command-4. Drag to select the area of the screen to capture. To move the entire selection, press and hold Space bar while dragging. After you release your mouse or trackpad button, find the screenshot on your desktop. Super easy.

3. Here are a couple of great video tutorials on how to use Adobe Spark. The 1st one focuses mainly on video presentations and the 2nd is part 1 one of a complete overview of all the great things Adobe Spark has to offer.

Here is an info-graphic I created with some tips on how to set up feedback in your classroom

Here is a bonus Adobe Spark presentation I created around common composition mistakes during the video unit in my class!

If you have made it this far that is great! I hope you will find the above information super helpful!