Entry 8: 'Address' That Feedback

Over the past couple of days, I have spent some time looking at my peers' blog posts. It has been a wonderful experience to see how my classmates react and respond to different educational research and readings. I have found a number of similarities and differences within the professional opinions shared my peers. This is what is so great about the field of teaching, I am always being exposed to opportunities where I am able to collaborate, receive feedback and acquire new skills/strategies that can be applied to my own classroom. On the other hand, it is also important to know how to appropriately provide feedback to others. Hicks (2009) provides his audience with the National Writing Project's model for giving peer feedback. Within this feedback, it important: to bless, to address, and to press a given text you would like to respond to. 

www.ssgt.nsw.edu.au/documents/2practices_feedback.pdf

To Bless: While these keeping these feedback points in mind, I would like to dedicate this post to respond and expand upon one of my classmates specific posts. Anna Jackson's 'Blog 4: Instructional Strategies' entry really stuck out to me (https://jacksonsp18writing.blogspot.com/ ). Anna offers a number of great ideas and insight on the importance of instructional strategies to help improve own learning experiences. Within this post, she discusses how she uses the headings, subtitles and explanations to inform and organize her thinking for a given text. She also turns the headings into questions to reflect on later in the reading. This is a reading strategy that I had never considered before but I am definitely going to try this to see if it helps me get more out of the texts I am reading. I agree that this strategy would help me to become a more active reader. I love how Anna discussed the importance of making connections while engaging in reading or writing activity. In my own personal experiences, I am also making different types of connections to clarify my understanding of a particular text. Lastly, I really enjoyed Anna's discussion on the importance of reflecting on her work (NCT, 2011). I am still learning how to appropriately critique my own work through the process of writing lesson reflections and evaluations. Especially in the world of teaching, it is critical to reflect in order to improve my daily lessons and instructional experiences for my students.    

To Address: As I was reading this blog entry, I also had some questions I would like to ask Anna. When you were discussing your habits of mind, you said you wanted to become more sensitive to the texts you are reading. Can you define what you mean by that? In what ways, do you plan on becoming more sensitive while engaging in reading and writing tasks? You also stated that you wanted to 'take risks by exploring questions that are unfamiliar to you'. What would be an example of a risk taking question? 

To Press: Overall, I really enjoyed reading Anna's post blog! She offered a lot of wonderful ways that has learned to improve her reading and writing skills. There is just one critical question I would offer Anna as a way to 'move toward a stronger version or a clearer explanation of her opinion' (Hicks, 2013, p. 83). This question would be: How do all of these instructional strategies you offered in your blog post #4 inform your classroom instruction? In what ways can you make these strategies accessible for all of your students? 

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/peer-feedback-tips

References

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project. (2011). Framework for success in postsecondary writing.  Retrieved from http://wpacouncil.org/framework/