This week's assignment to create a Spotlight on Strategies was designed to improve student-to-student feedback in the classroom. This strategy was chosen based on my encountering "plussing" in an Edutopia.org article by Larry Ferlazzo (2015).
Carol Dweck, famous for her growth vs fixed mindset research, understands that positivity and praise are not the only things necessary in good feedback. In fact, praise can have negative consequences by motivating students to not look bad instead of learning (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). As teachers we must always improve our capacity to give useful and beneficial feedback. My personal experience in class has been that when students are asked to provide feedback to their peers, they also require the same lessons. I wished to there were some easy-to-learn templates for how to incorporate plussing into their system of feedback. That was my challenge this week; I needed to apply this creative tool in a packaged way that would be easy to teach to students. Robert Kelly (2016) alludes to the rules of plussing in this passage of his book: "The only thing group member are permitted to do during the idea exchange is to add to another member's idea[…]" Each time I saw plussing referenced, the “yes, and…” method followed. By saying “yes, and…” or “what if…” instead of “yes, but…” we accept the idea and then seek to improve on its faults without drawing useless unneeded attention to the faults. Plussing principles such as the "yes, and…" method of feedback are also staples of improvisational performances. In a New York Times article, Peter Sims explains that brain scans differ between musicians asked to be judged and when playing a jazz improvisation (Tugend, 2013). Jazz is the quintessential form of creation. I think we can all take something from improvisation by adding plussing to our repertoire of classroom strategies. References Ferlazzo, L. (2015, March 25). Strategies for helping students motivate themselves. Retrieved April 09, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/strategies-helping-students-motivate-themselves-larry-ferlazzo Kelly, R. (2016). Creative Development: Transforming Education through Design Thinking, Innovation, and Invention. Canada: Brush Education Inc. Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33 Tugend, A. (2013). You’ve been doing a fantastic job. Just one thing ... Retrieved April 09, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/your-money/how-to-give-effective-feedback-both-positive-and-negative.html
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AuthorScience teacher for 6 years. Life-long learner and problem-solver. Copyright
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