Phase Two Implementation
Thursday 5/29: What to look for in a TPOL
Thursday 6/5: Model good feedback with mock panel
Monday 6/9: Run through script of TPOL and revise what is to be said
Tuesday 6/10 to Wednesday 6/11: Practice TPOL with critical friends group
Thursday 6/12 to Wednesday 6/18: TPOLs/give student feedback forms
Thursday 5/29: Teaching what to look for in a TPOL
On May 29th, we taught students what they should look for in a TPOL by showing a video of a student presenting his TPOL. Then, we asked the students to write down a 32Q: three positive aspects of the presentation, two suggestions for changes, and one question that the presentation raised for them. Afterward, we had the groups discuss, and had each group share out from there. After all groups had shared, we added what we wanted students to get from the video. The purpose of this session was to raise expectations and give them a basic understanding of the presentation we were asking them to create.
I really liked this method of teaching the students because they came up with what a good TPOL should include by themselves. We didn't have to tell them. They had a lot of good questions for us on what their presentation should look like. They asked if they should model it the same way as the student's, or whether they could deviate. They asked what happened if they went over the time. They asked whether nervousness counted against them. The students were genuinely interested in what made a good presentation and they seemed to absorb the information. From this class session, I felt confident that students could not only create their own presentations, but also give constructive feedback to their peers, which is the focus of my phase 2.
Afterward, my teaching partner and I had a discussion of how the class went, and we both thought it was helpful for the students. We discussed how showing the video and asking for their feedback seemed to raise the expectation for what was being asked of them, which was an area I wanted to improve from phase 1. During the class, my teaching partner and I both said that this process was hard, and that the student from the video ran through his presentation four times and got feedback four times to refine it to that point. I could tell on the students' faces that they were afraid. They had to pass the TPOL in order to graduate, in order to walk across the stage, which almost all of them were planning to do. The expectations for the TPOL and for giving feedback already seemed higher than the expectations I'd set for phase 1.
Thursday 6/5: Model good feedback with a mock panel
On June 5th, we modeled what good feedback looked like by having one student from the class present her TPOL to a mock panel (four students, my teaching partner and me) while the rest of the class watched. The purpose of this session was to model how to give constructive feedback so that when students met with their critical friends groups, they would know how to give feedback that included both appreciations as well as areas for improvement. Another purpose of this session was to keep the expectations high. We wanted students to know that we would only pass presentations that met or exceeded our criteria so that the students would try their best and be motivated to offer meaningful feedback to each other.
Before the student presented, my teaching partner and I told her that we were going to be tough judges in order to set the bar high for the other students. We knew she was tough, intelligent, and good at presenting, and so we knew she could handle our feedback and the class's stares. She smiled and said she'd do her best, which set us at ease.
While the student presented, we asked the mock panel to fill out the TPOL rubric. She did a good job presenting, but did not have a lot of concrete evidence that supported her claim. For the discussion, the first thing we did was ask the students on the mock panel what they appreciated from the student's presentation. They went right to her presentation skills, which was fine. Another student said that she did well explaining and defending her claim. That's when we moved into our suggestions. I said that I wanted to see more concrete evidence, that I wanted her to point to something in her paper that supported her thesis, not just describe it. The panel nodded, and then my teaching partner added on to that statement. Then, the students were silent, so I gave one final suggestion. My teaching partner told the mock panel that they needed to speak up, that we were counting on them to give feedback, that we couldn't do it alone. I was really glad he said that because we really did want the advice to come from the students. My phase 1 indicated that student-led feedback was more helpful that teacher-led, and I wanted students to realize that too.
Monday 6/9: Assign students to their critical friends group, run through script of TPOL, and group members give feedback
On June 9th, we assigned students to their critical friends groups. I tried to place students where they would be comfortable, but with whom they didn't normally interact. I also tried to make sure that every group had (from my observations) at least one student who would give a lot of appreciative and suggestive feedback.
Once the critical friends groups were assigned, we asked students to meet with their groups and practice their scripts according the following protocol:
Other groups didn't work so well together. One group remained silent for a painful thirty seconds after one student shared her script. Granted, this student's script was almost flawless, and anyone would have had a tough time following if the goal was to impress each other. When I saw the awkward silence, I sat down and asked what they had discussed for their feedback. One student spoke up, saying there wasn't much to critique, just some small clarifying questions. The others nodded in consent. I said that even clarifying questions are helpful, so I was happy they shared those with the presenter. Then I said they'll go clockwise, and picked the student to the left of the first presenter to go next. The group carried on a little better from then on, but that nervous tension was a little less than pleasant to be near. It was what I wanted to avoid from phase 1, and I thought having a more rigid protocol for small groups would promote a more comfortable environment. However, it didn't seem to work for this particular group.
Tuesday 6/10 to Wednesday 6/11: Practice TPOL with critical friends group to get more feedback
On 6/10 and 6/11, we had a few hours of work time, so we set up a conference room for critical friends groups to practice. Throughout the work time, we had groups rotating in and out of the conference room. My teaching partner and I tried to stay out of the practice presentations so that students would rely more on each other than on us. The purpose of this was to have students give feedback to each other. Since they had seen our model and gone through the protocol with their scripts, my teaching partner and I felt they were prepared to give constructive feedback to each other.
The process was fairly successful. About half of the students stuck with their critical friends groups like we had asked. Others had migrated back towards their friends, but I didn't really see this as a problem. I didn't see any student who seemed like they were left out. The students gravitated towards other groups to practice. I tried to go around and make sure that students had practiced at least one time in front of a few students. If a student said they hadn't presented and didn't have many group members present to, I asked the students they were sitting with to act as an audience. It would have been nice if the groups had stayed together, but as long as they were getting feedback from their peers and working to improve their presentation, I was okay with the students who chose to find a new group. Also, because certain groups didn't work well with each other, it made sense that they migrated to groups that were effective in giving feedback.
When I went around asking the students how the practice sessions went, many students shared positive experiences. One student said that he gave a lot of feedback to his group. One student who was really nervous for the TPOL seemed a little less nervous after he had practiced with others. He came after school for advice on Wednesday. I helped him a little bit on his script, and then asked him to present to me on the fly. He did a really good job. I could tell it wasn't his first time presenting this information, and I told him that.
With all of the good things that came with giving students time to present, there were some not-so-good things happening as well. I could tell some students weren't taking the TPOL as seriously as they should have, and seemed to be banking on the fact that they were really good presenters. These students scared me a little bit. Even though we were trying our best to instill high expectations, some students weren't understanding the difficulty of the task. Also, for all of my efforts to get students into the conference room to present, I know some students just acted as audience members, particularly, two out of my three focus students from Phase 1.
In addition, some students didn't seem to have any interest in presenting to their critical friends groups. This was true for one particular student, and when I asked her why, she said that just wasn't how she practiced for presentations. She preferred to work on her visuals and prepare the best evidence that she could rather than spend the time practicing the presentation part. She said she saved that for the very end, when she knew everything was how she wanted it. I couldn't argue with this student's decision. Although I would have liked her to give and receive feedback, she seemed to truly understand what she needed in order to succeed, and so I let her work independently.
Thursday 6/12 to Wednesday 6/18: TPOLs
From Thursday to the following Wednesday, we watched TPOLs. Each TPOL took half an hour. With 43 students, we scheduled students all day to come in and present to my teaching partner and me. In addition to coming in to present, students were asked to come on a different day to be a panel member, which meant asking questions, sharing their thoughts on whether a student should pass or need to redo a section, and offer feedback to that student to help them improve. The reason we didn't want them coming in on the same day as their presentation was because we thought they'd be too nervous or too exhausted from their presentation to really listen to the student presenting.
The audience members overall gave very insightful feedback to their peers. We gave the student audience members a list of seven questions they could ask if they were struggling to create their own. Students tended to use these questions if my teaching partner or I had just prompted them to ask more questions. We tended to prompt them the most during the first presentation to set high expectations for the rest of the presentations. We also made sure to praise the questions and feedback the students gave, especially during the first few presentations to let the students know we approved of their contributions.
Requiring students to act as audience members on a day other than their presentation seemed to help students improve their own TPOLs. By having students watch others and think critically about what that student had done well and what could improve, I think the students finally seemed to grasp the high expectations and the difficulty of the task. I saw this particularly in one student. This student typically offered excellent feedback to her peers, but was a student who tended to save things to the last minute or take the redo opportunity. She didn't do that for this presentation. She came in nervous but well prepared. When I asked her the day before, when she came in as an audience member, if she was ready for her presentation, she said she was nervous. When I asked her why, she said it was because we were hard judges. My teaching partner asked if we were being too mean and she said we weren't. She said we were being "fair and honest." She's a student who would speak honestly, so I trusted her words. I asked her if she needed any help and she said, "No, I think it's pretty straight forward. This [watching other presentations] helped."
This particular student wasn't the only person who said we held up high expectations. Rumors spread that the TPOL was difficult. Another student who came in to present and who hadn't been an audience member said he was nervous because he heard the questions we asked were hard. I was really happy that students said this. It seemed that we had accomplished upholding high expectations.
The biggest indicator of students benefitting from being audience members was that almost all students came prepared for their presentation, even though some seemed confident during class time. I talked with my teaching partner and the teacher for whom I was substituting, and they both said that these final TPOLs were the best they had ever seen. They said the presentations were a lot better than the fall TPOLs that these students had done. However, I know that this success was due to a number of things, which I'll address in my results section.
Thursday 6/5: Model good feedback with mock panel
Monday 6/9: Run through script of TPOL and revise what is to be said
Tuesday 6/10 to Wednesday 6/11: Practice TPOL with critical friends group
Thursday 6/12 to Wednesday 6/18: TPOLs/give student feedback forms
Thursday 5/29: Teaching what to look for in a TPOL
On May 29th, we taught students what they should look for in a TPOL by showing a video of a student presenting his TPOL. Then, we asked the students to write down a 32Q: three positive aspects of the presentation, two suggestions for changes, and one question that the presentation raised for them. Afterward, we had the groups discuss, and had each group share out from there. After all groups had shared, we added what we wanted students to get from the video. The purpose of this session was to raise expectations and give them a basic understanding of the presentation we were asking them to create.
I really liked this method of teaching the students because they came up with what a good TPOL should include by themselves. We didn't have to tell them. They had a lot of good questions for us on what their presentation should look like. They asked if they should model it the same way as the student's, or whether they could deviate. They asked what happened if they went over the time. They asked whether nervousness counted against them. The students were genuinely interested in what made a good presentation and they seemed to absorb the information. From this class session, I felt confident that students could not only create their own presentations, but also give constructive feedback to their peers, which is the focus of my phase 2.
Afterward, my teaching partner and I had a discussion of how the class went, and we both thought it was helpful for the students. We discussed how showing the video and asking for their feedback seemed to raise the expectation for what was being asked of them, which was an area I wanted to improve from phase 1. During the class, my teaching partner and I both said that this process was hard, and that the student from the video ran through his presentation four times and got feedback four times to refine it to that point. I could tell on the students' faces that they were afraid. They had to pass the TPOL in order to graduate, in order to walk across the stage, which almost all of them were planning to do. The expectations for the TPOL and for giving feedback already seemed higher than the expectations I'd set for phase 1.
Thursday 6/5: Model good feedback with a mock panel
On June 5th, we modeled what good feedback looked like by having one student from the class present her TPOL to a mock panel (four students, my teaching partner and me) while the rest of the class watched. The purpose of this session was to model how to give constructive feedback so that when students met with their critical friends groups, they would know how to give feedback that included both appreciations as well as areas for improvement. Another purpose of this session was to keep the expectations high. We wanted students to know that we would only pass presentations that met or exceeded our criteria so that the students would try their best and be motivated to offer meaningful feedback to each other.
Before the student presented, my teaching partner and I told her that we were going to be tough judges in order to set the bar high for the other students. We knew she was tough, intelligent, and good at presenting, and so we knew she could handle our feedback and the class's stares. She smiled and said she'd do her best, which set us at ease.
While the student presented, we asked the mock panel to fill out the TPOL rubric. She did a good job presenting, but did not have a lot of concrete evidence that supported her claim. For the discussion, the first thing we did was ask the students on the mock panel what they appreciated from the student's presentation. They went right to her presentation skills, which was fine. Another student said that she did well explaining and defending her claim. That's when we moved into our suggestions. I said that I wanted to see more concrete evidence, that I wanted her to point to something in her paper that supported her thesis, not just describe it. The panel nodded, and then my teaching partner added on to that statement. Then, the students were silent, so I gave one final suggestion. My teaching partner told the mock panel that they needed to speak up, that we were counting on them to give feedback, that we couldn't do it alone. I was really glad he said that because we really did want the advice to come from the students. My phase 1 indicated that student-led feedback was more helpful that teacher-led, and I wanted students to realize that too.
Monday 6/9: Assign students to their critical friends group, run through script of TPOL, and group members give feedback
On June 9th, we assigned students to their critical friends groups. I tried to place students where they would be comfortable, but with whom they didn't normally interact. I also tried to make sure that every group had (from my observations) at least one student who would give a lot of appreciative and suggestive feedback.
Once the critical friends groups were assigned, we asked students to meet with their groups and practice their scripts according the following protocol:
- 3 minutes: Student presents their TPOL script and digital portfolio (DP) while critical friends enthusiastically and politely listen
- 2 minutes: Audience members ask any clarifying questions to the presenter
- 6 minutes: Audience members discuss each section of the rubric, sharing and writing the following:
- Where the presenter met the rubric’s criteria
- Areas for improvement
- Suggestions for improvement
- 1 minute: Presenter shares her final words--the suggestions she found helpful, and her next steps
Other groups didn't work so well together. One group remained silent for a painful thirty seconds after one student shared her script. Granted, this student's script was almost flawless, and anyone would have had a tough time following if the goal was to impress each other. When I saw the awkward silence, I sat down and asked what they had discussed for their feedback. One student spoke up, saying there wasn't much to critique, just some small clarifying questions. The others nodded in consent. I said that even clarifying questions are helpful, so I was happy they shared those with the presenter. Then I said they'll go clockwise, and picked the student to the left of the first presenter to go next. The group carried on a little better from then on, but that nervous tension was a little less than pleasant to be near. It was what I wanted to avoid from phase 1, and I thought having a more rigid protocol for small groups would promote a more comfortable environment. However, it didn't seem to work for this particular group.
Tuesday 6/10 to Wednesday 6/11: Practice TPOL with critical friends group to get more feedback
On 6/10 and 6/11, we had a few hours of work time, so we set up a conference room for critical friends groups to practice. Throughout the work time, we had groups rotating in and out of the conference room. My teaching partner and I tried to stay out of the practice presentations so that students would rely more on each other than on us. The purpose of this was to have students give feedback to each other. Since they had seen our model and gone through the protocol with their scripts, my teaching partner and I felt they were prepared to give constructive feedback to each other.
The process was fairly successful. About half of the students stuck with their critical friends groups like we had asked. Others had migrated back towards their friends, but I didn't really see this as a problem. I didn't see any student who seemed like they were left out. The students gravitated towards other groups to practice. I tried to go around and make sure that students had practiced at least one time in front of a few students. If a student said they hadn't presented and didn't have many group members present to, I asked the students they were sitting with to act as an audience. It would have been nice if the groups had stayed together, but as long as they were getting feedback from their peers and working to improve their presentation, I was okay with the students who chose to find a new group. Also, because certain groups didn't work well with each other, it made sense that they migrated to groups that were effective in giving feedback.
When I went around asking the students how the practice sessions went, many students shared positive experiences. One student said that he gave a lot of feedback to his group. One student who was really nervous for the TPOL seemed a little less nervous after he had practiced with others. He came after school for advice on Wednesday. I helped him a little bit on his script, and then asked him to present to me on the fly. He did a really good job. I could tell it wasn't his first time presenting this information, and I told him that.
With all of the good things that came with giving students time to present, there were some not-so-good things happening as well. I could tell some students weren't taking the TPOL as seriously as they should have, and seemed to be banking on the fact that they were really good presenters. These students scared me a little bit. Even though we were trying our best to instill high expectations, some students weren't understanding the difficulty of the task. Also, for all of my efforts to get students into the conference room to present, I know some students just acted as audience members, particularly, two out of my three focus students from Phase 1.
In addition, some students didn't seem to have any interest in presenting to their critical friends groups. This was true for one particular student, and when I asked her why, she said that just wasn't how she practiced for presentations. She preferred to work on her visuals and prepare the best evidence that she could rather than spend the time practicing the presentation part. She said she saved that for the very end, when she knew everything was how she wanted it. I couldn't argue with this student's decision. Although I would have liked her to give and receive feedback, she seemed to truly understand what she needed in order to succeed, and so I let her work independently.
Thursday 6/12 to Wednesday 6/18: TPOLs
From Thursday to the following Wednesday, we watched TPOLs. Each TPOL took half an hour. With 43 students, we scheduled students all day to come in and present to my teaching partner and me. In addition to coming in to present, students were asked to come on a different day to be a panel member, which meant asking questions, sharing their thoughts on whether a student should pass or need to redo a section, and offer feedback to that student to help them improve. The reason we didn't want them coming in on the same day as their presentation was because we thought they'd be too nervous or too exhausted from their presentation to really listen to the student presenting.
The audience members overall gave very insightful feedback to their peers. We gave the student audience members a list of seven questions they could ask if they were struggling to create their own. Students tended to use these questions if my teaching partner or I had just prompted them to ask more questions. We tended to prompt them the most during the first presentation to set high expectations for the rest of the presentations. We also made sure to praise the questions and feedback the students gave, especially during the first few presentations to let the students know we approved of their contributions.
Requiring students to act as audience members on a day other than their presentation seemed to help students improve their own TPOLs. By having students watch others and think critically about what that student had done well and what could improve, I think the students finally seemed to grasp the high expectations and the difficulty of the task. I saw this particularly in one student. This student typically offered excellent feedback to her peers, but was a student who tended to save things to the last minute or take the redo opportunity. She didn't do that for this presentation. She came in nervous but well prepared. When I asked her the day before, when she came in as an audience member, if she was ready for her presentation, she said she was nervous. When I asked her why, she said it was because we were hard judges. My teaching partner asked if we were being too mean and she said we weren't. She said we were being "fair and honest." She's a student who would speak honestly, so I trusted her words. I asked her if she needed any help and she said, "No, I think it's pretty straight forward. This [watching other presentations] helped."
This particular student wasn't the only person who said we held up high expectations. Rumors spread that the TPOL was difficult. Another student who came in to present and who hadn't been an audience member said he was nervous because he heard the questions we asked were hard. I was really happy that students said this. It seemed that we had accomplished upholding high expectations.
The biggest indicator of students benefitting from being audience members was that almost all students came prepared for their presentation, even though some seemed confident during class time. I talked with my teaching partner and the teacher for whom I was substituting, and they both said that these final TPOLs were the best they had ever seen. They said the presentations were a lot better than the fall TPOLs that these students had done. However, I know that this success was due to a number of things, which I'll address in my results section.