Feedback Strategy: Mistakes Dialogue

I have been working on an accompanying manual to my text book "How To Teach Reading and Spelling: Brining the Science of Reading Into The Classroom." This manual will give specific feedback on how to think about and correct mistakes. It gives a framework on how to organize your thoughts to give meaningful and corrective feedback about reading, spelling and phonemic awareness and accuracy mistakes. Additionally, the manual will provide activities, games, reading and fluency passages, word lists and more to accompany each of the lessons.

Below is a teaser with more to come.... SH and CH

The student reads the word, chip as ship. SH and CH both use the lips puckered forward, however the air quality is different, a stream of air versus a puff. Therefore, my feedback dialogue will state what is similar and I will ask them about the type of air used when they say /sh/ and /ch/ and then I ask them or tell them the letters that go with those sounds.

Now I am ready to formulate the dialogue between myself and the student.

1. I want to tell the student what they spelled or read accurately.

2. I will reteach the concepts or facts that are applicable to the mistake.

3. I ask them a question(s) with alternate answers so they can think through the answer and be a part of the correction process.

When introducing this feedback dialogue to my students, I want to state clearly what we are doing,

explaining how we will work together when the student makes a mistake.

“When you make a mistake,

• I will tell you what you did accurately

• We will talk about the ideas and facts that relate to your mistake

• I will ask you a question so you can self-correct.”

Scenario

I am working in a small group of students, playing a matching game with the consonants on some cards and pictures that have an initial consonant sound to be matched to the letters.

One student selects a picture of a chick and matches the letters SH to the picture. The correction dialogue:

1. 1.“I agree that when you pronounce the word, chick, your lips are puckered forward at the beginning of the word and sound is unvoiced.” (what is correct about the mistake)

2. 2.“When you say the sound, /sh/ the air is coming out in a continual stream or a puff?” (Get my student to analyze what they did )

3. 3.“When you say, chick, is the air coming in a stream like /sh/ or puff like /ch/ at the beginning of the word?” Answer: puff (Compare their answer to the correct answer)

4. 4. I then tell them: “The letters that make /ch/ are CH.” (Tell them the letters)