Feedback is important to student growth and the mastery of content. My students can receive feedback informally in class through whole-class or small-group instruction or formally in writing. I give both types of feedback to my students on their performance to give ongoing and constructive feedback on their progress because I want to take the guesswork out of how each student is doing in class and on what each student needs to do to improve. Using Kahoot!, I can get a quick formative assessment in a way that engages my students.
The core ideas of my classroom are big ideas and themes that run through almost every lesson I teach. They are good math values, work values, life values. Whenever they come up during a lesson, I always explicitly make the connection. Next year, I plan on using a graphic for each value (some kind of eye graphic for core idea #1) to show, in my lessons, where the ideas come up.
Initially, the writing product was the major focus in my classroom. I noticed the products overall were not meeting grade level standards. Therefore the focus shifted to the writing process and doing each part of the process well. Giving students the opportunity to choose not only the place but also the pace at which they complete a prompt significantly changed the learning outcomes and products. A self-paced writing prompts give students the option to choose the order in which they will complete the writing prompts assigned for a unit of study. Making the writing prompts self-paced also gives students the freedom and latitude to simultaneously grapple with content and the writing process to produce a quality product.