Question for those with online learners (elementary)

[georgiegirl]

Does your child’s teacher give feedback on work submitted on whatever electronic platform your school uses? (Our elementary students use seesaw). If so, what kind of feedback and how often? How much feedback is reasonable to expect? I’m mostly concerned with written work and work that requires some sort of thinking and creativity.

My first grader hasn’t received any feedback from his literacy teacher in a couple of months. (Last comment was October 12.). He has submitted several handwritten assignments (pic uploaded onto seesaw), and he has worked really hard on some of them. I’m disappointed we didn’t get any comments, not even a heart icon to indicate she read it and liked it. DS’s math teacher does comment about 50% of the time on assignments. And DS just started participating in music class this week, and the music teacher has commented on all three of his submissions. Today DS submitted something very creative and cool (he had to make a family tree and he used LEGO minigifs to make everyone in the family), and I just know we won’t get any response. It’s very disappointing and frustrating. I just want to know what is reasonable to expect.


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[Snow mom]

The only feedback we’ve gotten on digital/school at home work for my elementary student is some sort of encouraging words or something like that. Never any corrections or suggestions for improvement. Not everything gets a response but any response is just going to be “good work” or something generic like that. It does seem that the amount of response is low, especially considering it can’t take much to send a generic encouragement, but I don’t know that the teachers see how important those encouragements are at this age with the non-typical school arrangement.

[doberbrat]

I havent seen a single piece of feedback on dd2's work. I'm assuming she is getting some but I have no insight into any of it. Nor have I seen any work being assigned or done since she's home alone while I'm at work. She had a great report card so I guess its all good but it is slightly disconcerting.

[schrocat]

I have 2 kids in elementary school both 1st and 4th grader get feedback on every piece of work submitted.

[chottumommy]

I've one child in elementary (4th grade) and he gets feedback on most of his work which is gradable which is about 60%. They have a rubric system for each assignment and get points 1-4 based on rubric and also some feedback with encouraging words. Parents can hide the points for their child if it makes them anxious but DS2 doesn't mind and its a good preparation for middle school when they start getting letter grades.

[PZMommy]

I'm currently teaching 1st grade in an all virtual format.

For work on seesaw (which is not much), I respond with a heart and then a short comment. With 22 students, this takes a lot longer than one would think.

The rest of the classwork is submitted by email (this is what the previous teacher set up, and I was expected to follow when I took over). Each parent sends me 4 or 5 pages of work daily in one email (times 22 parents). I look over it, and usually just respond to the email with a good work or thank you. If I notice something specific that needs to be fixed, I mention it, but there is no way I could give specific feedback on every piece of work that was submitted. We are required to give 2 hours of "asynchronous" work a day (district requirement, not my choice).

For tests or any special projects, I give a grade and specific feedback.

Teaching online is so different than teaching in person. In a classroom, I could walk around as the kids ar working and give them a smiley face or feedback, and do that in a matter of a few minutes. Doing that online and typing out comments takes a lot longer. Lesson planning literally takes hours a day to transform my lessons into something that can be done on google slides and putting together slides for each week. My prep time has doubled, if not tripled, in a virtual format. I spend all day on Sunday from about 11am-8:30pm putting together google slides for the following week and having to digitalize any asynchronous work. I don't think many people who aren't teachers realize just how time intensive this process is. They see the 3 hours we are on zoom and think we are home free after that, but the zoom instruction is the easiest part of my day!

On top of all of this I have to somehow squeeze in time to help my own kids with their hours of asynchronous work. I don't know how many times I've emailed my son's teacher telling her we didn't get his work finished, because I was too busy dealing with my work to help him.

[MSWR0319]

We're doing our state's Connections Academy, so not quite the same as a public school with virtual learning. But DS2's teacher (2nd grade) responds to everything we have to turn in with a comment. Sometimes it's a good job, other times there is more to the comment telling him what she really liked or what she thought he could improve. She's got about a 100 students though, so I would expect your teacher to respond as least sometimes.

[georgiegirl]

Thanks for the responses. I feel bad complaining because I know teachers are overworked and stressed out. But it’s really hard for my first grader when he receives absolutely no feedback from his literacy teacher. He often skips class, turns the volume down very low while he plays with legos, or he will act out if he’s forced to participate. So all verbal feedback is negative. He’s on the spectrum (and gifted) and has an IEP. On the upside, he read 20 books in the past week and has spent a few hours doing sudoku puzzles. Guess that’s what happens when you have nothing to do during the 1.5 hours of literacy block every day.


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[georgiegirl]

The only feedback we’ve gotten on digital/school at home work for my elementary student is some sort of encouraging words or something like that. Never any corrections or suggestions for improvement. Not everything gets a response but any response is just going to be “good work” or something generic like that. It does seem that the amount of response is low, especially considering it can’t take much to send a generic encouragement, but I don’t know that the teachers see how important those encouragements are at this age with the non-typical school arrangement.

I agree that even a “good job” is meaningful to kids. And as a parent it’s frustrating to fight with my kid over completing assignments and then to receive no feedback ever. It feels like she doesn’t even read his work. I’ve spent hours helping DS2 improve his handwriting (going from all caps at the beginning of the year to using lower case now), and crickets. Im pretty sure it’s the same with the whole class. No comments on any work since October 12. And that was the third comment. So only three comments since school started.


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[crn]

My remote second grader has had two teachers so far this year. First one they did more group work and not as much independent, but teacher frequently commented on items in seesaw. Second teacher does more independent work, including several worksheet type items turned in to seesaw each day. She does not comment on these items and I don’t think looks at them other than maybe to see if students are regularly completing stuff. They have one longer writing assignment per week and she does respond to that with a short positive comment over the weekend (great job, good writing, love your creativity, etc.). His first class had about 20 students and the current one has 30.