Feedback - picking them up and moving them on

For many, marking is the bane of the teacher's existence. I, however, love it, for it is the perfect opportunity to give feedback. Feedback is your opportunity as an educator to have a personal conversation with each student about their learning, what they did well, what they need to improve and how they can do better. As such, done well, it is a massive opportunity for you to engage students by celebrating their successes and then granting them agency to achieve meaningful goals. 

So, what are the key ingredients? Given I did my PGCE in 2011, unsurprisingly I use the acronyms WWW, EBI and DIT. That is:
  • What went well  
  • Even better if
  • Directed improvement task
However, while many teachers tend to focus on the latter two, I want to suggest that the first one, the WWW, is actually the most important.  

Put yourself in the shoes of a mid-level student: you try your hardest, really revise and prepare, put your best into a piece of work, and when that comes back all the emphasis is placed upon what you need to do to improve. It would be quite disheartening, I imagine (and vaguely remember). 

Instead, use feedback to firstly celebrate successes - highlight what the student has done well. Perhaps literally: highlighting in green the positive points they made or nice turns of phrase. I often have a pre-printed bullet point list of attributes I am looking for in a student's assignment which I can simply highlight in green to show what they have succeeded at including. Saves me a huge amount of time, but also means that the student gets a huge amount of positive feedback. This is motivating. This is engaging.

Obviously, looking forward it important too, but make sure that your feedback is practical and actionable. Sometimes, I find the need to distinguish between what could be done to improve the current piece of work and a target for the future: they may be the same, they may not be. 

Another tip is NOT to give a grade, at least not at first. If you give the students a mark, that will be all they see. If you want them to digest your feedback, both the positive and negative, hold this back. 

Finally, don't feel that all this feedback needs to come from you: properly guided, students can give effective and accurate feedback to each other. Another time saver for tired teachers. 

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