Science6th, 7th, 8thYear 7, Year 8, Year 9
How to turn feedback into a conversation in middle school science
How to get every student to review and improve their own lab answer, through a back-and-forth with Sparky instead of a comment they skim.
Jemel Fanfan | Founding Member at Flint
"I created a bot using Flint that supports students in reviewing and improving their answers. This process fosters ownership of learning and helps students develop reflective skills—turning feedback into a conversation rather than one-way critique."
John Salgado, Middle School Science TeacherWhy this matters
In a 7th grade science class, one student writes that a heavier pendulum swings faster without checking the data. Another cites the right trials but never says why they matter. Both get the lab back days later with a comment in the margin, and the next lab answer has the same gap.
Feedback a student has to answer
In a study of 12 fifth and sixth grade classes, students who got comments without a grade did best on later tasks, and students who got a grade with the same comments did no better than a grade alone (Butler, 1988).
In Flint, each student talks through their own answer with Sparky, Flint's AI tutor. Sparky asks one question at a time, uses what the student is into outside class, and never rewrites or scores the answer. No teacher can have that conversation with 30 students about every lab answer.
One pendulum question, two students revising their answers
Every student gets the same question and the same table: the time for 10 swings with a 50 g and a 200 g bob, on 25, 50 and 100 cm strings. Everything after the question is one student's own chat.
Maya
Understanding check
Maya
Yes. Heavier pendulums swing faster because gravity pulls harder on heavier things.Sparky
Maya
14.3 and 14.2 seconds. They basically tie.Sparky
Maya
They land together. I'll change my claim: a heavier bob doesn't swing faster.Changed her claim to match the data
Jordan
Understanding check
Jordan
No. 50 g vs 200 g: 10.1 vs 9.9 s, 14.2 vs 14.3 s, 20.0 vs 20.2 s.Sparky
Jordan
0.2 seconds is about how long it takes to click a stopwatch.Sparky
Jordan
It slows down. So string length changes the time, and mass doesn't. I'll add that.Added his reasoning, then found what does change the time
Every fix is in the student's own words. Sparky can make interactives like the pendulum race inside a student's chat when testing a claim beats reading about it. Maya and Jordan are examples we wrote for this page. Sparky learns a student's interests from the chat and can save them as memories, which students can see and delete in Settings.
See who fixed their answer and who is stuck
Sparky grades each finished chat against your rubric. The activity page shows who needs help right now and what the class still misses, and you can open any session to read the student's chat from the first answer to the last.
Example activity page
After a pendulum lab in Science 7
The school and students are made up for this page. In this example, most of the class now says mass doesn't change swing time, and the skill to practice next is explaining why the data supports the claim.
Set up the activity for free
The pendulum activity is in Flint's public library with the data, question, guidelines and rubric written. Open it, select Try this activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and move it to a class. To test it as a student first, select Try session myself in the activity settings.
To use your own lab, attach its question and data in Guidelines for Sparky and keep these lines:
Example guideline
Ask the student what they're into outside class, then ask for a claim, evidence and reasoning. Don't rewrite or score their answer. Ask one question at a time about the part that's missing or doesn't match the data. When a claim doesn't match the data, make an interactive the student can test it with.
For more science activities, see Flint for science.
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