Giving Feedback-PRAISE

As teachers we see how a child lights up with acknowledgement. When we allow time to provide thoughtful and caring feedback, children are able to receive ideas for future actions, prompts for their own understanding and appreciation of their work and progress. Just as a flower needs time and nourishment to blossom, so too do children. As educators we need to be patient and consistent with giving praise. 

When I say praise, I mean more than the act of expressing approval. While that is important, especially for our little learners, praise can also come in the form of effective feedback. The following acronym is a device I created to remind myself to consistently provide thoughtful comments that both challenge my learners in a growth mindset AND acknowledge their progress!

Positive. 
Keep words of feedback in a positive tone to indicate an affirmed belief that they can achieve a goal. When providing feedback, it is distinct from times of discipline. I would never want a student to come away with a quick connection or longer conferencing feeling like they were scolded. Remember they will be left with how you made them feel--how do you like to receive feedback?

Reflective
Whether a quick or longer connection to provide feedback, I like to leave students with a question to spark their thinking. After a lesson and assessment, I want to see what my students are taking away. Have them get beyond yes or no responses to explain their thinking AND their process! Anyone learns better when they verbalize what they just did!

Action
Feedback should be future oriented, looking at what they did but also thinking ahead to what they will be learning next--connecting the dots. Giving praise can also come with a request to better understand their actions. In this way you can learn along with them, providing bridges of understanding that may have been missed. Again, it's a way of connecting the dots to their next steps.

Intentional
Have in the back of your mind that the child wants to do their best. There may be something keeping them from demonstrating or even trying their best, and feedback can provide a time and structure to intentionally inquire into that blockage. Whatever the missing or obstacle may be for the child, intentional speaking and inquiry provides a space for them to see through the fog clouding their shine.

Specific
In order for children to understand and want to do something differently, they must know what else to attempt. Therefore you can provide specific questioning or even asking: "What would happen if you tried..." Asking or questioning specific actions allows them to begin to create causation and realize the impact of their learning.

Expectation of success
As a community of learners, our classroom and our values reiterate that when we all do well, we all do well. There is a expectation both voiced and felt, that we do our best because we can! Also knowing that in the process of learning it may not be the product rather the lesson or self-discovery made that makes all the difference.

To demonstrate this reminder, I wanted to share specific feedback from a science lesson we did last week. In Kindergarten most of the feedback is verbal, yet a post-it note (I don't want to write on student's assessment work such as this) helps me remember what to prompt in a feedback discussion.
The lesson was conducted both whole group and later in a small group experiment. Essentially what you see below is the experiment to test whether wands or straws blew bigger bubbles. Previously we had made predictions and tested what would happen if we blew bubbles outside in winter (I won't give it away--so fun!!!).  They were excited to have an indoor bubble blowing experiment to connect. We used our outdoor scene from a previous math lesson drawing shapes. Below the image there are a couple of notes regarding the PRAISE I provided:

Feedback text reads: * It looks like you had fun! ? Can you remember your prediction?
She did have such a fun time during the experiment, and I complimented her on her enthusiasm for learning! I wanted to remind/revisit the essential learning of the lesson because I felt she might have been too absorbed in the activity fun to gather the objective--however she did retain the prediction and explanation for her thinking!

Feedback text reads: *I like your shapes! ? Did you like this experiment- why?
I was impressed with Akira's work because she's one of our youngest and rarely verbal. She too enjoyed this lesson and to differentiate I wanted to use this opportunity for her to voice her opinion in a sentence. The why of the question was the most critical piece here because I want her to explain her thinking--and she did! She also went on to talk about the apartment building in her drawing!

The feedback text reads: * Wonderful! You are creative!!
? Did you mix colors on purpose? Why?
This student is very thoughtful and yes, creative! I wanted him to really get an acknowledgement of that and then to go beyond the objective to connect the dots with his use of colors. Our next science experiments will involve color mixing, so I was pleased to see his intentional asking for certain colors based on placement in his picture. To get the color on the paper the children blew from the wand then the straw to test their prediction. Joseph was quick to have a prediction with explanation and to test it several times. I wanted to facilitate higher thinking in terms of his process.

In conclusion, PRAISE is something to utilize as a tool for teaching to differentiate and develop a growth mindset in your classroom!