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Session 4 – Making feedback purposeful and manageable, part 1: What does effective feedback look like?

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Session overview:

How can we make feedback purposeful and manageable?

This session will focus on:

Understanding what effective feedback looks like
Sharing some strategies for making feedback manageable

Approximate session length: 55 minutes

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What does effective feedback look like?

Watch Mick Walker talking about feedback and its many forms and the differing effects it can have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50iFojlCUA&feature=emb_title

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What does effective feedback look like?

The four levels are:

Task: How can the task be completed or improved?
Process: How can I do better at tasks like this?
Self-Regulation: How can I manage myself to be a better learner?
Self-Evaluation: How good am I?

(Hattie and Timperley, 2007)

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What does effective feedback look like?

Task

e.g. rewrite your answer to question 3 removing the brackets at step 2.

Process

e.g. always underline key words in the question, then write a plan linked to them.

Self-regulation

e.g. Which strategies that you used today worked well? Why?

Self-evaluation

e.g. You are great at maths.

Task

e.g. rewrite your answer to question 3 removing the brackets at step 2.

This type of feedback is directive and helps to improve the current task. However, its effects are limited as pupils are unlikely to be able to transfer this correction to other tasks.

Process

e.g. always underline key words in the question, then write a plan linked to them.

This level of feedback helps pupils to understand underlying features of success in the subject and supports them to transfer their skills.

Self-regulation

e.g. Which strategies that you used today worked well? Why?

This is about helping pupils to understand more about how they learn by helping them to self-monitor, recognise how well they are doing, and to think about how they can respond to improve their own learning.

Self-evaluation

e.g. You are great at maths.

Pupils like praise and it may help to motivate, but praise based on the pupil has little effect on learning, as it offers no useful information about how to improve.

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What does effective feedback look like?

Research into the use of these targeted levels of feedback has concluded that consistent feedback of any one type is insufficient. If feedback is too task-focused, pupils will have difficulty transferring it to other concepts. If it is too general, they may have difficulty applying it to specific tasks.

The most powerful approach therefore is to offer balanced feedback that links types – task, process and self-regulation.

When you are deciding what feedback to give a pupil, consider what you want them to change, then help them to make that change by giving them feedback that targets that level(s). Ensure that your feedback is accurate and clear and provides specific guidance on how to improve.

Once you have decided what you want them to change (e.g. something to do with the task), you then have a decision to make about how you will share that feedback.

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Reflection

Reflect on the following questions and record your responses in your notebook.

What did you want the pupil to change?
If there were many things you wanted the pupil to change, challenge yourself to decide which change would have had the biggest impact.
Reflecting on the feedback you gave, which level of change (task, process, self-regulation, self-evaluation) did you target with it?
On reflection, would you give the same feedback again? Why/Why not?

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What does effective feedback look like?

How are you going to feed back the information to pupils?

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1. Written feedback

Watch the video of Mick Walker discussing the merits and limitations of written feedback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCF_4mQ1J74&feature=emb_title

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1. Written feedback

Meaningful: marking varies by age group, subject, and what works best for the pupil and teacher in relation to any piece of work.
Manageable: marking practice is proportionate and considers the frequency and complexity of written feedback.
Motivating: Marking should help to motivate pupils to progress. This does not mean always writing in-depth comments or being universally positive.

Meaningful: marking varies by age group, subject, and what works best for the pupil and teacher in relation to any piece of work. Teachers are encouraged to adjust their approach as necessary and trusted to incorporate the outcomes into subsequent planning and teaching.

Manageable: marking practice is proportionate and considers the frequency and complexity of written feedback, as well as the cost and time-effectiveness of marking in relation to the overall workload of teachers. This is written into any assessment policy.

Motivating: Marking should help to motivate pupils to progress. This does not mean always writing in-depth comments or being universally positive: sometimes short, challenging comments or oral feedback are more effective. If the teacher is doing more work than their pupils, this can become a disincentive for pupils to accept challenges and take responsibility for improving their work.

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1. Written feedback

How to make written feedback more effective for pupils:

Awarding grades for every piece of work may reduce the impact of marking, particularly if pupils become preoccupied with grades at the expense of a consideration of teachers’ formative comments
The use of targets to make marking as specific and actionable as possible is likely to increase pupil progress
Pupils are unlikely to benefit from marking unless some time is set aside to enable pupils to consider and respond to marking
Some forms of marking, including acknowledgement marking (e.g. ticks or VF to indicate verbal feedback), are unlikely to enhance pupil progress. A mantra might be that schools should mark less in terms of the number of pieces of work marked but mark better

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2. Group verbal feedback

Group verbal feedback is about giving targeted verbal feedback towards a group of pupils or the whole class. The teacher would read through a set of books and take notes on how the whole class have responded. Then, in the next lesson, the teacher responds to the most frequent issues that came up by giving general feedback to the class or group.

It is important to highlight that written marking is only one type of feedback. Verbal feedback is one of the most commonly used forms of classroom feedback. It can be provided on written work in the form of re-teaching misunderstandings or intervening and guiding pupils through the lesson. Using verbal feedback can mean you can address misconceptions and give immediate correction in-lesson.

In many instances, verbal feedback will be given to individuals. You have seen examples of how to do this effectively when responding to questions and answers in module 3, or when monitoring independent work and balancing the levels of feedback you should give in module 4. However, giving group verbal feedback is also highly effective. Below is one example of how it can be done.

Group verbal feedback is about giving targeted verbal feedback towards a group of pupils or the whole class. The teacher would read through a set of books and take notes on how the whole class have responded. Then, in the next lesson, the teacher responds to the most frequent issues that came up by giving general feedback to the class or group.

The teacher may select one pupil who has done well as a model of what they are looking for. Alternatively, they could select a pupil’s work that could be a model for responding to the feedback. Either method would support pupils to build a mental model of how to act on the feedback.

A further method of using group feedback would be to provide immediate correction by stopping the whole class (or group) to address a common misconception you have seen arising.

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2. Group verbal feedback

Watch the video of group verbal feedback in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTlq4gqOIQ&feature=emb_title

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2. Group verbal feedback

There are three ways that giving group feedback can be done:

Reteaching: allows you to challenge misconceptions or knowledge gaps.
Revisiting models of work: allows pupils to compare their work to a successful model and improve their work against it.
Revising process: allows pupils to understand the thought process and choices which help to create good work.

There are three ways that giving group feedback can be done:

Reteaching: allows you to challenge misconceptions or knowledge gaps.

For example: In maths, pupils are consistently forgetting to complete the final step of solving a word problem (which is to re-read the problem and answer the question). Initial teaching can be repeated here with the use of fresh examples and reminders of the steps.

Revisiting models of work: allows pupils to compare their work to a successful model and improve their work against it.

For example: Helping pupils identify missing features of a writing genre. Revising models allows pupils to improve their work and understand what success looks like.

Revising process: allows pupils to understand the thought process and choices which help to create good work.

For example: Taking a weak answer (or creating one yourself) and modelling rewriting or correcting it on the board.

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2. Group verbal feedback

Hear from Secondary teacher and teacher educator Elizabeth Carroll, as she explains why she finds group verbal feedback such an effective strategy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkdaD01lyV8&feature=emb_title

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3. Symbol marking

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3. Symbol marking

Hear from a fellow teacher as they discuss how they have used symbol marking effectively in their school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CdJE3ysdg&feature=emb_title

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Summary

Responding to feedback

A key point to remember about effective feedback is ensuring that pupils have sufficient time to respond to it. This may look different depending on the age and stage of the pupil, but ultimately you must build in time for pupils to enact the change that you are hoping to see.