CraftED thanks Holly for sharing her practice with us as our feature teacher last month:

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This month CraftED highlights a Kindergarten teacher in Southern California, Holly Kristensen. Holly closed out the 2016 school year using CraftED’s Foundational Strategy: Friendly Feedback . Read on to see how she implemented it with her students,  how it developed her craft, and ultimately led to deeper learning for her students.

What did you observe as a result of the process outlined in the strategy: Friendly Feedback?

“My students became very empowered with this learning strategy. I found many embraced the language of peer feedback as a result of the steps outlined. Those receiving the feedback also became more aware of their work and began to feel more comfortable with editing their work to make it better. My students gained a lot of knowledge and tools to be able to successfully conference with peers. Some students are now even using this language independently during writing workshop…Screen Shot 2016-09-02 at 8.27.50 AM

I think the idea of kinder students giving feedback scares a lot of people or we tend to doubt they are capable. This strategy reminded me they can do it, they just need the scaffolds to get them there.Don’t anyone tell me a kinder can’t do something! 😉

What modifications did you make or would you make next time?

I devoted a lot of time to talking about “good, better, best.” I think this was helpful for them moving forward because we had a common language and understanding about what this meant in context.
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I decided to color code the sentence frames for feedback. Rather than introducing them all at once I did one color at a time.  One day we did green and one day we did yellow. My goal is for them to do all three in one conference, but I found too much information at once , which confused them.

Overall, I was very happy with how this strategy wrapped up and how much it helped my students. 

 


Check out our past Teacher Spotlights:

Kate Therriault of Cardiff , CA implemented CraftED’s lesson: Infographics.  Kate’s work was featured by Piktochart-check out this coverage on Piktochart’s blog and P21 Blogazine. For more support implementing CraftED’s strategy and lesson, read this guest post by Piktochart on our blog,

Jen Isbell of Central Coast New Tech  was featured on Getting Smart’s blog here for her use of CraftED’s collaboration strategy: Problem Solving Protocol. To view the protocol discussed in Getting Smart’s post visit our store and view the bundled product.