Effective feedback is one of the greatest challenges for teachers and most powerful predictors of learning.  Come explore current brain-based feedback strategies and how to build students' metacognitive understanding of their own learning to enhance their ability to be full partners in their education.

During this workshop we will:

• Begin with a brief and fun exploration of how and why our brains use feedback.

• Privately examine what’s working and what needs work in our settings when it comes to making sure our learners are getting the kinds of feedback they need to make the progress we expect. 

• Examine how to build the capacity of youth to develop their own internal feedback loop about their learning by enhancing their understanding of how they learn and the tools and strategies they can employ to shape this process; allowing them to be full partners in a feedback loop with teachers.

• Review a menu of options and resources to determine where to focus our energy during “work time,” when we’ll take some small and specific next steps to improve how we orchestrate feedback in our settings.

• Circle up in small groups and participate in speed tunings, showing and describing what we created during work time, posing our most pressing questions, and listening to what our peers think.

Bill Rich is a long-time Vermont educator and education leader.  He is an expert in utilizing brain-based best practices in the classroom. Bill is a “big-time believer in using what we know about the brain to inform what we do in our schools." In his work with teachers and schools throughout Vermont, Bill begins with the brain; exploring crucial and compelling findings from the field of cognitive science that provide the “why” for the learning that lies ahead.