Scenario

A Math teacher is working on a new Feedback Policy for her department (note, not a Marking Policy) to incorporate the use of exit tickets as a means for feedback and formative assessment. Exit tickets are popular at her school, but had the problem of the tickets being marked by teachers who were writing comments, but who quickly found that they were writing the same things over and over again – not an efficient use of limited time. It was clear that students generally made similar mistakes and had similar misconceptions. On other assignments, teachers were struggling with not being able to effectively and timely respond to what they found from weeks previous as their teaching sequence had moved on. Writing comments on assignments, even within the next few days, resulted in students not remembering - or caring about- the work from the prior lesson when the grades were returned, as they had moved on. If there were misconceptions, these haven’t been addressed and students have been left to allow these misconceptions to become embedded, making it harder to fix them.

When thinking about feedback she has three overarching aims:

1. Feedback must help students to improve.
2. Feedback must be useful to teachers.
3. The benefits must outweigh the costs.

The Feedback Policy

The teacher recognizes that marking and feedback are separate but linked ideas. Marking can be done by students or a teacher. Useful feedback can be given by the teacher, who has the expert knowledge to do so. The new feedback policy is as follows:

• Teachers give feedback every lesson, to individual students or to the whole class.
• Exit ticket in approximately 50% of lessons.
• Exit tickets contain questions intended to help you ascertain the limit of students’ current understanding.
• All exit tickets marked but no extensive comments required. Instead note down mistakes/misconceptions, give whole-class feedback when exit tickets are returned. Use this as a teaching opportunity, students write their corrections in red on the ticket. This ensures feedback is given and considered on a regular basis.
• Use the feedback you receive from exit tickets to inform your planning.
• Move around in lessons, correcting spelling and mathematical errors as you see them.
• Take advantage of opportunities to assess students’ grasp of the work – quick quizzes, whiteboards, for instance. Regular low-stakes testing helps them to remember what they’ve learnt, and helps you to see what they can remember. Numeracy Ninjas in Y7 & Y8 (and above where appropriate) is one way we will all do this.
• All homework and class work to be self-marked, teacher to check completion and quality during the lesson.

Policy in action:

When exit tickets are marked the teacher ticks what is correct but also indicates mistakes or omissions by, for instance, circling, but does not correct them or try to find a comment for the sake of a comment. The teacher makes a written or mental note, as necessary, of the errors and misconceptions and uses these to plan the next steps. They may choose to devote more lesson time to the topic and can spend their freed-up time sourcing or creating appropriate resources to address the problems. When the tickets are given back, the teacher feeds back to the whole class, and every student is expected to annotate their ticket with the feedback. This means that those who made mistakes get them corrected the next lesson rather than in a week’s time, and that those who didn’t get to know what kinds of mistakes to watch out for, which should increase their chances of future success on similar work. Teachers also regularly assess the students through mini-tests, end of half term tests, and Numeracy Ninjas in each lesson, as well as targeted questioning, use of mini-whiteboards and other regular ways of getting instant feedback.

This exit ticket below has been marked but not handed back yet. It uses a past exam question.