FreshGrade Taught Me How to Give Effective Feedback

Article written by: Kimberley Moran from We are Teachers

If you’re anything like me, you spend more time than you want on organizing systems and note taking to track student progress. I wanted to spend more of my planning time learning to give good feedback. FreshGrade is a free platform that helps teachers not just plan content and communicate with parents, but also document students’ work and give them fast and effective feedback.

So I decided to give it a try. Here’s what I’ve learned so far. When you sign up, it’s easy to immediately begin to plan lessons, empower students, and showcase growth that matters. The platform lets you invite parents to have an easy window into your classroom. Since they can see their child’s portfolio, they can see photos, videos, or assignments. It’s so easy for me to add a photo or leave a little note to my students or their families, and I have control over who sees any content.

This one platform keeps me organized

Here is a video that shows how the four primary tools for teachers are built into one platform:

This part wowed me: With FreshGrade, I can work with students to help them create a multimedia-rich story of their learning. They, in turn, can reflect on their work which helps them increase metacognition. When parents view their child’s learning through presentations, images, text and vidoes, they’ll get a more balanced view of your classroom family and where their child fits in.

FreshGrade’s free professional development supports you and saves time.

As soon as I created my free account at FreshGrade, I signed up for Getting Started With FreshGrade. It’s a short course that shows you exactly how to get started quickly. I’ve found that I need this kind of PD because I don’t want to waste time figuring out how to use a new platform.

Right away I could tell that my grading was going to become more about commenting on the student work as they did it. This quick feedback is valuable because my students see what they did and can make an immediate learning shift, rather than wait two weeks until I return a paper. This one platform solved my biggest teaching problem. I finally feel like I meet the needs of every one of my students.

FreshGrade can help you solve your teaching problems, too. Start this year ready and organized.

Learn more about FreshGrade