I used the results of my formative assessments every day to help shape my lesson plans. Often times I wrote 2 lesson plans in case the formative assessment at the beginning of class did not go well and we needed to go back and review some things from the previous lesson. I tried to correct the homework every day and give that back to the students so they could see their mistakes. When I corrected the homework I tried to not just give them a score, but also correct their mistakes so that they could look at these and see what they did wrong. I think a method I would use next time would be to have the students correct their own mistakes because I think they may have learned more from that. This was the most important feedback I gave to my students. I wanted them to learn from their homework and not just receive grades. I also was fortunate to receive feedback from my students. 

          Before class every day my students had a designated math lab time, where I was able to assist them with any problems they had on the homework, or answer questions that we might not have gotten to in class. I did not do this every day because they did have other homework that they needed to finish and they also had to spend time on their online math program, but I did have this opportunity to get feed back from my students. One day in particular they told me that they had trouble with the homework. Because of this I ended up changing my lesson for the day and going further into detail about the topic covered in the homework.

            I was usually available throughout the day to help students with questions they may have had. Sometimes I stayed after school to help students with their homework. If students did not turn in their homework, they were required by my cooperating teacher to come up during their lunch recess to complete it. I too decided to adopt this policy and by the end of my teaching experience I had all of my students turn in all of the work I had assigned. This feedback to and from my students really shaped my daily lesson plans, as I mentioned before, sometimes I would use an alternate lesson plan if my students did not seem to be understanding the homework.

            In the short amount of time I taught at Falls City Elementary, I did not have much contact with my students’ parents, but I expect to have a lot next semester in my student teaching experience. I did observe my cooperating teacher give feedback to parents for some of his students, and overall the parents at Falls City are very supportive of the teachers and the school as a whole. Grade reports were printed out and shared with parents, and phone calls were made home. I was able to tell one student's mother that her son was doing very well in my class when she came in to pick up his work the day he was absent. Other than this however I did not contact parents. My cooperating teacher told me that he prefers to call parents, as not many actually have e-mail because Falls City is such a low income area. I agree with him and I believe that when I do contact parents it will most likely be through phone calls or in person conferences. E-mail is a great tool, but not everyone has access to it and it is sometimes hard to convey what you mean in electronic form. I also plan on contacting parents when their students are doing really well or making progress, not only when their student is struggling or misbehaving. I believe that providing parents and students with both positive and negative feedback will enhance the learning experience and better give an overall view of how a student is learning.

The slideshow in this section provides some examples of feedback that I asked my students to give me so that I could better improve my teaching in order to serve them.