Procrastinating students are often misunderstood as being lazy or unmotivated. There’s more to it than that. Reflect on your own procrastination. Why do you do it? How does it make you feel? Does it lead to stress and guilt? Can you refocus and get the work done? Upon self-reflection you probably find that procrastination usually means you are stuck. Procrastination can lead to a myriad of emotions; regret, self-doubt, guilt, excitement, anxiety. Research suggest that students often are stuck for one of two reasons; fear of failure or confusion about the task.

It’s a common perception that students who procrastinate do so because they don’t care about the assignment – and that’s usually wrong.

Devon Price – Social Psychology Professor

Watch the video below about the types of procrastinators. Do you recognize yourself? Do you recognize some of your students? Think about the motivation behind each procrastinator and how that impacts their self-esteem and work production.

Watch this video on types of procrastination (5:54 minutes)

Just a little more…

• Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination
• Another Theory about Procrastination.
• 7 Strategies to Motivate Your Teenager

Worth the Watch! Inside the Mind of a Procrastinator (14 minutes)

By Dean Richards

Last week’s blog focused on feedback and moving students forward in their learning. This week we look at John Hattie’s levels of Feedback.

Types of Feedback

The content of the effective feedback that we provide students falls into 3 helpful categories.  

• Feedback about the task
• Feedback about the process
• Feedback about the thinking during the task

“For the teacher, the art is knowing when to add in/move to the next level of feedback.”

Visible Learning

Task Level

Feedback about the task may be the most common and easiest feedback to provide to students.  This includes information about the errors that a student produces in the task. A teacher may also give feedback about the quality of the work. A rubric is a great way to provide that explicit feedback. The drawback of providing feedback only on the task is that the misconception(s) that are evident may be transferred to the student’s next task, thus the misconception continues.

Examples of prompts at the task level:
• Did you meet the success criteria?
• Is your correct/incorrect?
• How can you elaborate on the answer?
• What did you do well?
• Where did you go wrong?
• What other information is needed to meet the criteria?

Process Level

Some students, particularly those who are often the most successful in schools, will be able to transfer the feedback from the task to the process.  Providing feedback on the process, the steps taken to reach the final product, is a powerful way to move students to generalization.  Providing feedback on the quality of the process and giving alternative actions can be more powerful for students’ next task than feedback on the task alone.

Examples of prompts at the process level:
• What is wrong and why?
• What strategies did you use?
• What is the explanation for the correct answer?
• What other questions can you ask about the task?
• What are the relationships with other parts of the task?

Thinking/Self-regulation Level

The next powerful feedback, and possibly the most difficult, is to provide feedback on the thinking that occurred while the student engaged in the task. This helps students monitor their thinking and learning process. This is most commonly done in conversations with students. One of my favorite moves I used while tutoring students for the SAT was to say, “You got that right.  What were you thinking about when you did that?” Students often looked at me strangely, as they were not used to explaining their thinking.  Often they talked about their process, then I would ask about how they thought.  I would ask about their level of confidence. Forcing a student to metacognate about the task and process increases their self-efficacy.

Examples of prompts at the self-regulation level:
• How did you monitor your own work?
• What did you do to …?
• How can you account for …?
• What justification can be given for …?
• What further doubts do you have about?
• How does this compare with …?
• How have your ideas changed?
• Can you now teach another student how to …?

Diving in…

• What does Feedback look like at like? – From Visible Thinking
• 5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can ask Students
• Using Positive Feedback in a Math Classrooms

When thinking about feedback, I am reminded of the hours spent writing detailed comments on science labs. In my mind, I pictured students looking at the comments and thoughtfully using the suggestion for improvement.  Often I watched students skim the comments, skip to the final grade,and then bury the assignment in their binder. I realized that I was spending more time making comments than the students spent reading them.  If students aren’t using the feedback, then what’s the point of it?  

“As soon as students get a grade, the learning stops. We may not like it, but the research reviewed shows that this is a relatively stable feature of how the human mind works.”

Dylan Wiliam

The purpose of feedback is to move students from where they are to where they need to be.  The research clearly establishes the importance of feedback (John Hattie 0.79 effect size) . When feedback is given and how it is given is critical.  As I learned in my own teaching, feedback given after an assignment is turned in rarely produces a change in student learning. For feedback to be effective, think about it as Feed Forward. It should be action oriented, require critical thinking to deepen understanding, and given throughout the learning process. (Video Dylan Wiliam Providing Feedback that Moves Learning Forward 14:57 minutes).

“The only important thing about feedback is what students do with it…”

Dylan wiliam

Importance for Feedback (video 3:00 minutes)

Tips for Effective Feedback (video 1:23 minutes)

• Assess Less: Limit the learning goals to one skill or standard at a time and focus on it. Giving fewer, yet higher quality assessments reduces grading time and is easier for students to internalize.
• Grade as they go: Have students submit small sections of a larger assignment. It’s more manageable for both the student and teacher. You can catch misconceptions sooner.
• Record it: Record your feedback verbally in Canvas or with voice-to-text feature for google docs. Remember to edit before you submit.
• Automate comments: Often similar mistakes are made for an assignment. Make a go-to-list of deeper thinking questions and comments that focus students on the task.
• Feedback Partners: Assign partners for peer assessments. Establish a culture where peer feedback is the norm. Model how to provide feedback emphasizing the task, not the person. Provide sentence stems and practice how to do it.
• Self-Assessment: Include student reflection on learning as part of the assignment. They need to actively reflect on what they learned and how they can apply it to future learning.
• Give Students Choice: If the same skill/standard is assessed multiple times then have the student choose their best work to submit for grading. Include a self-reflection about why they chose it.

If you’re still hungry for more…

• 3 Ways to Encourage ‘Coasting’ Students to Reach Their Full Potential
• 5 Research-Based Tips for Providing Students with Meaningful Feedback
• Teaching Kids to Give and Receive Quality Peer Feedback
• Fast and Efficient Ways to Provide Feedback