Zack Frame - Post #1 - Providing Feedback Early and Often

Okay, as it turns out, I’m a little behind on my blog posts. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but my very first post for my clinical experience (day one), I posted it in WebCT—not exactly what I was suppose to do. Then, unfortunately, I never really got around to making my blog posts. So here I am!

Honestly, I didn’t spend a lot of time observing when I first began by clinical—at least not in my second period class. My first period acting class is an introductory acting class. When I arrived the first period class was working on monologues (finding them on the Internet, working with classmates) to get ready to perform for grade. It wouldn’t have made a lot of sense for me to pop in and do much with this class because they were already involved with what they were doing.

But it wasn’t until my second period acting class that I was able to really utilize Marzano’s strategy for providing feedback early and often. When directing a play, you have to provide feedback about what is happening onstage almost immediately. The beautiful thing is, that in the theatre—and when directing—the feedback doesn’t necessarily have to be an oral critique. If the performers do something funny, and you laugh, that provides the performers with an instantaneous feedback. And since Marzano suggests that providing students with feedback early and often is a good thing, then giving students or performers instantaneous feedback, is also a good thing.

I used this strategy for an entire week while I helped the students prepare for their competition piece that they would be performing the following weekend. Students would do a scene, I would stop them, tell them to change some things, let them do the scene again, stop them again, more changes, more acting, more feedback, more changes, more feedback, well, you get the idea. This went on for about a week. Towards the end of the week I would allow the students to run through their entire competition show while I took notes. The feedback given was not quite as immediate as is when directing, but once the students finished their run through, I had them all sit on the apron of the stage, and then delivered a detailed oral critique that they would be able to use to make their performance better. When performing on stage, and teaching theatre classes, Marzano’s strategy of providing feedback early and often is of utmost importance!