I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ritalik. I'm Becky Hiddad. And this is Alpellets, a podcast featuring tips for ad teachers.
We are your agricultural education resource across the web, sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day. Welcome back to Alpellets Tips for Ad Teachers Podcast. In our last episode of our video series, we were talking about how to guide students toward mastery. And today we're really zeroing in on principle six, which is this dynamic duo that makes mastery possible.
We're talking about practice and feedback, and not just practice in feedback, effective practice and effective feedback. So we're talking about why simply doing a task over and over isn't enough. And we'll talk about how we can design opportunities for practice that are both meaningful and effective. We'll also explore what makes feedback truly useful to our students from its timing to its content.
So let's dig in on how we can turn our classrooms into spaces of deliberate practice. And I think part of that means we have to think a little bit about what deliberate and effective practice even means. Yeah, we've had an idea that how do you figure out really do do activities that are true practice, not just running following directions. There's a difference between there.
And I think I mean, and a big piece of that, not just doing activities is really having a goal. And I think it feels like a pretty minor difference between staying busy and deliberate practice, but having that specific goal or criteria, what are we actually trying to accomplish in doing this thing. I think helps, I mean, I know helps narrow our students focus helps narrow our focus to really think about what should I be practicing. If I think about we're going to keep with the trailer example from the last from the last episode, but if I think about the number of times, the number of times a student will have to practice a world to be ready to work on a trailer that, you know, we're, we're going to practice and we're going to practice.
And we're going to practice. But if they are just in the booth, just continuing to brew on just they go and they go and they go and they go, they're probably not actually going to get that good at doing anything because they aren't necessarily practicing a specific feed or a specific joint or practicing anything specific. They're just running around. Well, with that point, it's not just having a specific goal, but it's letting the student know what the specific goal is to a lot of times we as a teacher will have a goal, but we don't tell the student.
And so they don't know what to focus on to begin getting better at it. Yeah, I think keeping keeping the end in mind is an important part of that. And and welding is a good example where I think it's intuitive and we expect practice to happen. And so we'll see, you know, beat after beat and practice until the people improve their skills in that area.
But I don't know that we do that in all of the topics that we teach and we don't think about the role and the importance of practice and repetition and helping students learn certain topics, certain knowledge skills. And so I think we've got to take a step back at times and really think about the other courses that we teach and the value and the need for practice in those areas as well. That's a great point because I think about the number of times I told the student teacher, how do you bring how often the areas they feel most uncomfortable, a shop, and it's where they do the best because they have to ask questions to facilitate their instruction. They have to let the students do it.
So less control, but it's where the students really get to do the work. And so I find myself asking my students teachers all the time, how do you bring that into animal science? How do you bring that into ag business? How do you really let them practice?
Well, I think that's going to be the potentiality of my degree, great point. And the example that you guys read on target, I'm sitting here thinking, how do we, how do we use that potentiality of skilled building practice we talk about the Ag mechanics lab into something like developing financial sheets, you know, balance sheets and financial documents or transplanting or developing a feed ration. We kind of expect people to do it as a pass fail or homework really seeing homework as this developmental tool and even as this idea of practice, I think is pretty important. I think he's both have talked a little bit about it, but the idea of being deliberate in that practice and, you know, if we don't have, if we're not deliberate, if we don't provide feedback, you know, the standard default of all of us in human nature, probably, but especially our students is that they're going to continue to practice the things that are good at and they're not necessarily going to work very hard at or even give some thought to the areas where they may be weak or need to kind of develop and really do need the practice.
Well, it's the old added was it. It's not that practice makes perfect but it's that perfect practice makes perfect and the important practice and the wrong thing, you don't get better at it. And the key thing to getting purpose practice is feedback, good, helpful, informative feedback. Feedback, but also just to stay on the practicing for just a minute, this idea that Brian brought up about developmental practice, I think, sometimes we forget that we're not the first teacher our students have had.
I know we're not the first one who's going to ask them to use math in our class. We're not the first one who's going to ask them to write in a complete sentence. Like, some of these, some of these things and a lot of the ways that we ask our students, the ways that just even in the way we ask them to practice, we forget to draw their attention back to something that they are already practicing and that they do in fact already know how to do this is a skill they already know it's something they're already familiar with. And so, and it without some, and again, this is that deliberate practice piece without some intentionality on our part of highlighting some things for our students about what they already know that they're actually just practicing something they've already learned.
And then the whole thing is, I'm like, oh, my God, this is new and I don't know how to do this because I'm applying it and it's still just math, still just measuring like you, we got this, we can practice this, it'll be okay. I think too, as we think about that feedback piece and the whole idea of practice, it doesn't, it doesn't always have to come from another person to be helpful. And so there's tools out there that students can utilize and they can utilize one another to kind of support and practice and help build those that level of proficiency. I'm not really talking about that but building that proficiency around the content and the topics and even even from a practical standpoint as the teachers are thinking about those things making sure that the practice does align to learning goals and what we're trying to accomplish and how often is it like, okay, we're going to have students practice this today, even though it might not even be aligning to the topic at hand or the learning objective that we're trying to accomplish so making sure that alignment happens.
So I think that's a great way to start out that it doesn't necessarily come from another person because I think we had some different speakers on talking about AI or VR and I think one of the coolest uses of AI that I've seen my colleague did a reading review for our students where they had to put the prompt into AI and then essentially AI quiz them on what were the things, hey, I want you to write this to a certain level of, or like put in the parameters for what I want you to write and how I want you to get there and then ask AI for feedback. And I think often when we hear this practice and feedback particularly together, I think it can be really intimidating in terms of just the amount of time that the liver practice and effective feedback really take it. We'll still talk about feedback and some things to really think about when we're giving that feedback but I think kind of keep in mind that this feedback doesn't always just have to come from you and it doesn't have to come from technology either thinking about where can you leverage your community college and some of the programs that they're doing, where can you leverage your extension folks where can you leverage the other people in your community to really also provide some of that expertise that you might not have in giving more substantive feedback than you are able to give because you're just one person with one person's expertise. Absolutely.
And I think as we think about that too. And this whole idea of practice is making sure that we design and target practice at the appropriate level so that it's challenging for students, not too challenging that we're not meeting them with where they're at but also not too simplistic that it's not going to motivate them and they're not going to feel challenged as we move forward and so making sure that we right size that level of practice so that meets the students kind of at their current level of performance. Yeah, I guess you're talking to me again on this one is think about how many times where we do all of the classroom part and then we go put it in the lab part we go practice the whole thing. I think what this chapter is telling us is okay, we talk about the little bit and then we go practice a little bit and then we come back and we talk about the bit and then we do the next bit and kind of breaking up this practice so that they're again we talk about earlier in the series that expertise and mastery is built in small, intentional kind of steps making sure that we're giving them those steps for that frequency to focus to practice these individuals that along the way.
I think so much of that as we think about, especially Graham we said about me making sure we're at that right, right level that when we asked them our students to practice this big skill, they put it all together and the results is terrible. Like it does not back to our world. It's like it does not look good. That doesn't even look like a be my friend.
But how much time did we spend actually letting them get comfortable situating their travel angle or there's like getting comfortable with those things before we were asking them to demonstrate that whole thing and I think because that initial result can be so terrible and it's similar early if we ask them to take do a pre test or if we ask them to demonstrate a decent like starting animal science with a big dissection like yes there would be some challenge there. There'd also be a lot of tears. Because we're looking at something that's just going to turn out so poorly because we haven't had the practice we haven't had the things that built to it that even for us as teachers and the feedback is really frustrating because we can't even see the developmental errors under all the other technical errors that make the thing turn out really poorly. We just know it's good teaching practice to help us build these skills so that we're not having some flaw earlier in the system to impact with a later step so it's given the feedback and given that practice so that they can be successful.
We'll give them that practice too so they can see their own errors early and that the errors are small enough that they can see them because they think that then puts us in a better position as teachers to be able to focus on how their practice is actually improving if they're not practicing something so huge that they can't even identify where where they might want to improve or where they would be able to set a goal and I think we kind of think back to mastery and we think back to motivation. How often do we make this task so big that if we ask a student to set a learning goal or to set a next step goal for themselves around this thing. The goal is so huge they can't even tell where we're in my practice and I am missing mark. I think that really starts the conversation and I know we've we've thrown the term out a lot already but just what do we mean by effective feedback and what what does feedback look like and and so I think the book does a nice job of talking about.
Tizen exactly what Becky was talking about communicating with students where they are relative to those goals and the opportunities to improve and so thinking about how do we scaffold those those activities in that practice but also how do we do that so that we can give incremental feedback. To and focus on the goals and the things that we want students to be able to achieve in bite sized pieces where there is opportunities to improve and students can see that improvement as they're moving on and continuing through those activities we're working with. I think that idea feedback again just read all this will remind me and challenge me to make sure that I'm providing good feedback because good feedback effective feedback is actionable. If we're telling us we're giving the ones to know here's something you can do to get to this goal of success at a growth.
It's not just be bad even if the feedback is even if they're good don't say this is good why is it good that's the big one for me is I don't do a good job that I keep reminding myself you provide that good feedback to them to say what they do or so they remember. I think this is the piece that I did really really well as well as not that this is bad but what kind of action can they take to then grow in that area. So I think so often we attach feedback to a great we say well I created it I handed it back I did like I put the marks on the paper where those marks go as soon as they went like got a student's hand. Lower the garbage like and unless we are really guiding that process of hey here's like here's where some of the common areas where here's some of the things you really need to think about it but I think one of the things that really challenges me to think about is where am I where am I creating opportunities to be intentional about helping students know what they do and don't understand where the performance is going well and where it's going poorly and this is a lot of Brian's point about like really how are we getting into like those pieces because if we don't know what we do or don't understand and we don't know what's going well or going poorly.
It's going to be really hard to direct a next effort and say here's where to go next and so that really targeted feedback and helping and even helping students give each other that feedback helping them assess those things. We hear about that and we go oh man that's that's going to take a ton of time but it's something that builds efficiency in our classrooms too as we help our students really self assess and be their own feedbackness mechanism and be a peer feedback mechanism it really kind of grows our potential for them to start directing some of those next efforts where we are doing really intensive practice. As you were talking to Becky reminded me of this idea that feedback is not so one shot deal it's got to be continuous and for this growth opportunity in it. I think I remember there was a research that came out again we're going back to a welding example and when the instructor was in the booth with the person giving them feedback both positive and improving feedback while they were welding compared to the student welded they brought them in feedback and went back in a welding on their own.
The person had the coaching on their exponentially improved their welding skills even the next level because I only give them how to do a better job and better practice then it helped them know how to evaluate their own learning for those future steps so that we can do it in every single way but feedback in the moment where we can it's so powerful. I just really like the importance of that feedback when the student can actually use it. I mean I think so often we say we provided feedback but the time when they were going to actually use it is gone and the ability to recall exactly what was happening in that time when that feedback would have been most relevant is gone and we can't be in every single welding booth all the time but as we think about our classes as we think about our how we design I think it goes also back to how we design our practice are we designing our practice with the feedback in mind and are we thinking about how am I really going to make sure that I have designed practice that I can give feedback on and that my students can get feedback on so if I'm really focused on keeping students busy or getting a certain number of things in a grade book. It really pinches me as the teacher to be able to say I can give you I can actually manage the feedback load and be timely with it when you really need it.
As you were talking there Becky and even your previous comments that Brian was able to kind of tie into. As we have these conversations you know there's some always some full circle moments and when we're talking about providing good feedback and modeling feedback and helping students learn that we're really again a term that we've used previously or I've used previously is helping students develop the habit of the mind. And so we're getting helping them develop habits we're allowing through our feedback and through our coaching that we're doing to build autonomy so they can control their own feedback mechanisms down the road they can control their own learning as it happens and so I think there's so many great things happen if we can really start to model and provide the practice but also provide the right kind of feedback so you know if we're doing that well and in maybe the earlier grades with those students that starts to look and take shape a lot different as junior seniors or as their transition into other programs where there's community colleges for your schools technical schools down the road where they do really start to take control and of their own learning which we want to see in the first place. I think that really ties into this idea that the practice to be back together and it's not just effective it's efficient when they're working together it really really propels students in their learning and it gives us the opportunity to kind of step back and recognize how many times have we got it right on our first try.
How many times did it take to do that thing or to get that thing down like it I think takes some pressure off us to think our students need to get it right on their first try and it takes some pressure off of them that you get one shot and then we're moving on. Yeah. Yeah. Can I think at that point.
You know I wrote down as we're thinking about what feedback is and it should be timely should be specific and it should be actionable so as we think about if as a teacher we want to improve our feedback I think those are three components that really spend a little bit of time on timeliness. And actionable and I think if we think about those three principles building in I think we can really start to advance what we're doing in the classroom from a feedback standpoint. And I hope for folks who are listening this actually brings a little bit of really I think it could be really easy to listen to this episode and just really hear all this and think I'm not doing this or I'm not doing that and oh my goodness I have to completely revise my course so I can incorporate better practice and get better feedback and how do I do this but I think as I got to the end of this chapter one of the things that I just felt like was reverberating for me was stop trying to do so day much. Do do do some good practice really well and give students that real practice because we were trying to cover everything we can't keep it relevant we can't give that timely feedback load if we're trying to to grade everything or have our students do every little thing and so I think as we think about building feedback and practice.
In the routine it's not these isolated incidents of grading and testing it's really providing opportunities and expectations for practice. Amen. Good stuff. Yep.
So Ryan am I have nothing else to say so that's going to wrap up our discussion. You just said it so well there's nothing I could add to make it better. You know that you know that's just stop talking and you two can come up with all the great points. A little feedback your guys a little bit.
You're doing great. Thanks. I think we said something about specific. So not in Brian and Mike's example but remember our goal is really to move beyond just this simple repetition really provide feedback that's going to help our students identify their strengths and opportunities for improvement so as you plan that next lesson think about how you can integrate opportunities for low stakes practice think about how you can provide feedback that's really timely specific and actionable and so thank you again for joining us on this installment of our mini series focused on the book how learning works in our next episode will be digging into the role of course climate and learning process and we're looking forward to chatting more than an al pellet steps for our teachers podcast.
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Al pellets check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our guests. Follow us on Facebook Twitter and Instagram stay connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode for Mike and Becky. This is Brian here by the al pellets saying thank you and we look forward to seeing you again. Another episode of al pellets tips for right teachers.