Teacher's Note: Write down your feedback for each and every student Pro Preview

In the next lesson we usually do a graduation. Write down your impressions about the students and the reasons why they have the grades you gave them.

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  • #619
  • 20 Aug 2017

Organizational issues

Writing down your impressions will help you when you have to announce them in front of an audience and you will not have to improvise.

You should write down your impressions in an electronic format and you should share this information with the academy’s administrator. Usually, this is an electronic table consisting of three columns: the name of the student, parent’s email address and a feedback section.
Contact your academy’s administrator for further detail.

Feedback to parents about their children

Positive feedback

The purpose of this letter is to provide parents with feedback about the progress of their children during classes. You should send such letters regularly in accordance with the schedule set by your academy. Every parent should receive at least three letters during the regular courses – one after the second lesson, one in the middle of the course and one at the end of the course. All letters are personal and are sent to the parents of each individual student. You are not allowed to send group letters!

The topic of the letter should always be informative about its contents. For the purposes of this example, we could use something like that (names of the student, parent and teacher are imaginary): Information about Peter’s progress in the robotics course organized by "Robopartans".

Example:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Smith,

My name is John Lewis, Peter’s teacher in robotics. I am sending this letter to inform you about the opinion I have formed about Peter during the course.
Peter is a highly intelligent student who always manages to solve the respective course tasks without my help. He often succeeds in realizing the mistakes he has made while building the constructions and manages to find the correct solution. Peter does not have any problems programming and is very good at it.
(This is an exemplary paragraph. Every teacher should share their personal impressions.) 

We hope that Peter is willing to continue in our next level. It will start on September 5th and we will be very happy to have him again.

Best regards,
John Lewis

This is an exemplary letter!

It is compulsory to introduce yourself and say why exactly you are sending it.

How to give positive "feedback"

  • You should be as specific as possible and you should always give examples. If you do not know what to write about a student, this means that either he/she has not impressed you enough or that you have not paid enough attention to him/her.You can fix that if you write down a couple of key words about this student during every class.
  • Do not include only superlatives in the letter. You should include at least one problem at the end of the letter pointing out that you will continue working on the issue in the future.
  • Do not use any epithets and do not try to characterize students – for example, if you want to say that a student is rude, try to describe the student’s behavior, rather than characterize him/her - When he turns his back on me while I am talking to him, I feel like he does not respect what I am saying.
  • Give balanced feedback – always give a possible solution or improvement to each problem you are pointing out.

You can use the SECR model in order to structure your feedback:

  • Situation - describe the specific situation
  • Expectations - describe your expectations in this specific situation
  • Consequence - describe the consequence of this situation
  • Result - describe the end result of the situation

Example:

  • Situation - Peter’s teammate does not allow him to program.
  • Expectations - I expected he would put up with it and be bored all the time.
  • Consequence - Nevertheless, Peter took things in hand and did not allow anyone do his job.
  • Result - I was impressed by his behavior which proved he has a strong character and huge will to learn.

Negative feedback

There may be various reasons for giving negative feedback. Most often, these can be the lack of interest in students, bad behavior or student’s early age.

Here you can apply the same directions as with the positive feedback, the only difference being that you need to be even more precise when making comments. You will have to provide parents with as detailed description of the situations as possible so that they can really understand why you have a negative opinion about their child.

The examples below are too common and lack precision. Your negative comments should be full of details and specific situations. Avoid using epithets and behavioral characteristics. It’s not your job to characterize students’ state, nor give them diagnoses so consider this completely forbidden. Express your opinion and do not forget to highlight this is your opinion only.

Example 1:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Smith,

My name is John Lewis, Peter’s teacher in robotics. I am sending this letter to inform you about the opinion I have formed about Peter during the course.
Peter is highly interested in building robots but more often he wants to build his own robots without following my instructions. As for programming, Peter is very rarely even willing to try. Nevertheless, the objects he is building are very interesting and show his vivid imagination and abstract thinking.
I think it would be better to wait a little bit before you enroll him in the next level, otherwise Peter might completely lose his interest in robotics and programming.
(This is an exemplary paragraph. Every teacher should share their personal impressions.)

Best regards,
John Lewis

Example 2:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Smith,

My name is John Lewis, Peter’s teacher in robotics. I am sending this letter to inform you about the opinion I have formed about Peter during the course.
Peter is a very quiet and shy child. Unfortunately, I think Peter is too young and he finds the material I am teaching very complex. Peter has a lot of fun while building robots but finds programming difficult. His classmate tries to help him and include him in solving the tasks but Peter often refuses to do so. I would kindly ask you to speak to him and if Peter has some worries he has not shared with us, I would appreciate it if you inform us so that we can take the respective measures and Peter benefits from the course the most.
I would advise you to wait for one year before you enroll him to the course again. Otherwise, Peter might completely lose his interest in robotics and programming.
(This is an exemplary paragraph. Every teacher should share their personal impressions.)

Best regards,
John Lewis
 
  • You should use the following phrases more often:
    • "When he/she..."
    • "I am concerned that ..."
    • "I would like to..."
    • "I am impressed that..."
    • "I would pay more attention to..."
    • "Could we be able to find a solution to..."
    • "I would personally make sure that..."
    • "In order to avoid similar situations in the future, I would recommend that..."
    • "I have noticed the following problem... "

Courses and lessons with this Tutorial

This Tutorial is used in the following courses and lessons

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