Error analysis and additional instruction
Error Analysis
Teacher Error Cluster
Analysing errors that students make is very informative. Errors are interesting because they represent the current understanding and misconceptions of students. I use errors to plan instruction, especially instruction that is tailored to current student needs. Simply pointing out the error is not effective in changing student achievement. In contrast to simply identifying errors, analysing errors allows me to devote half my grading time to additional instruction planing and half my time to feedback.
Psychology - in a revision test the majority of students made a mistake in questions 13 and 15. These questions were explained and revised in the follow-up lesson. On the contrary, no mistake was made in question 17.
Analysing errors that students make is very informative. Errors are interesting because they represent the current understanding and misconceptions of students. I use errors to plan instruction, especially instruction that is tailored to current student needs. Simply pointing out the error is not effective in changing student achievement. In contrast to simply identifying errors, analysing errors allows me to devote half my grading time to additional instruction planing and half my time to feedback.
Psychology - in a revision test the majority of students made a mistake in questions 13 and 15. These questions were explained and revised in the follow-up lesson. On the contrary, no mistake was made in question 17.
Italian - all students made a mistake in this section (coded in yellow) of a grammar test. Students did not correctly conjugate verbs in a given sentence as they failed to recognise the pronoun / noun agreement or they confused singular form with plural form. As a result, students had to be retaught this topic. In contrast, the majority of students did not make a mistake in the first section of the test (coded in green) where most students received full marks.
Student Error Cluster
Asking students to explore the types of mistakes they make helps students understand that rather than having made an unrelated series of individual mistakes, they often make a small range of types of errors. In a classroom where students see making mistakes as an important part of learning, error and correction are routine elements of achieving success. I also want my students to know that "ability is incremental rather than fixed" (Wiliams & Black 2009).
Additional Instruction
Focused and Guided Instruction
The following snippet of me modelling in the form of think-alounds and the use of questions, promps and cues allowed me to scaffold a sentence that students found most challenging in their tests:
Ok, just because there is 'io' at the end doesn't mean that we can ignore everything else and assume that it will just be 'ho dormito'. The first part reads 'la mia famiglia ed io'. Michelle, can you tell us what this means in English? Yes, it reads 'my family and I'. So when I think in English 'my family and I', I have to figure out which person that corresponds to. Is 'my family and I' equal to 'I, you, he, she, it' or 'we, you or they'? If this is too hard to figure out, I can start by deciding on whether it will be singular form or plural form. Jacob, does 'my family and I' sound like one person - singular, or more than one person - plural? Yes, correct, it's plural. Now that I know that it's plural, I have to figure out whether 'my family and I' corresponds to 'we, you or they'. If you are still in doubt, I am going to give you examples of nouns corresponding to 'we', nouns corresponding to 'you (plural)' and nouns corresponding to 'they'. Then we will have a go at practicing these so it will sink into our brains and then we will be 100% sure what pronoun equals to 'my family and I' ...
Ok, just because there is 'io' at the end doesn't mean that we can ignore everything else and assume that it will just be 'ho dormito'. The first part reads 'la mia famiglia ed io'. Michelle, can you tell us what this means in English? Yes, it reads 'my family and I'. So when I think in English 'my family and I', I have to figure out which person that corresponds to. Is 'my family and I' equal to 'I, you, he, she, it' or 'we, you or they'? If this is too hard to figure out, I can start by deciding on whether it will be singular form or plural form. Jacob, does 'my family and I' sound like one person - singular, or more than one person - plural? Yes, correct, it's plural. Now that I know that it's plural, I have to figure out whether 'my family and I' corresponds to 'we, you or they'. If you are still in doubt, I am going to give you examples of nouns corresponding to 'we', nouns corresponding to 'you (plural)' and nouns corresponding to 'they'. Then we will have a go at practicing these so it will sink into our brains and then we will be 100% sure what pronoun equals to 'my family and I' ...
Reinforcement of metacognitive thinking
Similarities, patterns, cues and memory enhancing strategies all helped students memorise participio passato of alike verbs.
Organising verbs into categories
Organising verbs into categories