My Favorite Mistake: Delayed Feedback Loop

My Favorite Mistake

Who:  Dr. Paula Coates

Role:  Executive Director of Federal Programs, former principal, former math teacher

In a galaxy far, far away before any of you were born, statistics topics were included in the Algebra IA & IB course that I taught to reluctant high school learners in my second year of teaching.  It was my first year at Clayton High School, population 800 students.  Determined to make it fun and engaging, I purchased a bag of M&Ms for each student and created (on the typewriter because I didn’t have a computer) a marvelous project in which each student counted their candies by colors, recorded the data, determined statistical information and created colored hand-made graphs to demonstrate mastery.  

Students loved it, were engaged, and worked diligently on the project.  However, in my exuberance to be the “wonderfulest teacher in the universe,”  I did not consider that each student’s project would be different - resulting in a grading/feedback nightmare.  It was a nightmare for me because I had to calculate the correct answers and graphs for each student - two classes of this subject.  

It took a ridiculous amount of time because I was extremely thorough in ensuring that mastery could be demonstrated by students’ completing this project. ( One question was, “Suppose you wanted to have only green and red candies for a Christmas party.  Based on your data, how many small bags would you need to buy to ensure you had 200 pieces that were either green or red?”)   

The great tragedy of this project was not the burden on me, but rather the lack of timely feedback to the students.  How can students learn and demonstrate mastery without timely feedback?  They cannot.  The epiphany for me:  quality and timely feedback is essential  for learning even the simplest objective.  

The next year, I began our study of statistics with the end in mind.  This fresh group of students had heard about the project and were eager to get their turn at it.  I bought the candy, and the students recorded  individual data and created graphs for a bulletin board display.  Students recorded individual data on a chart that was shared with the entire class.  Mastery was determined by completing all the same tasks using the classroom data set.   Students learned the content, demonstrated mastery, and received feedback within two days. Although year 2 was a great success, I changed the project again the following year.  Why?  In year 3, the hottest technology on the market was making its way into the hands of students.  That’s right - cell phones replaced pagers and bag phones.  M&Ms couldn’t hold their interest any more; cell phone data was the way to go.   So,the project was adjusted once more to reflect engaging, interesting, and relevant  information for the students while ensuring timely feedback on the learning objectives.  

I wonder what the project  could look like today??!!