providing feedback
Learners need information and guidance in order to plan the next steps in their learning. Oral and written feedback are closely interrelated and provide opportunities for teachers to identify learners’ strengths and to give clear and constructive advice on which areas need improvement.
Oral feedback
Oral feedback is a powerful force for moving students on and will be the most regular and interactive form of feedback. It is both direct (targeted to individuals or groups), but also indirect (others listen and reflect on what has been said).
The main purposes of using different types of feedback are to:
- acknowledge what students have learned and encourage them to reflect on and extend their learning still further;
- recognise that students need time to reflect on their learning;
- encourage students to pose further questions to clarify or further develop their own or each other’s thinking;
- encourage students to make next steps.
Teachers’ comments should always be both positive – recognising students’ efforts and achievements to date, and developmental – offering specific details of ways forward.
The different purposes of oral feedback
Written feedback
Feedback needs to scaffold learning and engage students in a dialogue about their work rather than allow them to make comparisons with other students. Research suggests that there are a number of negative effects when a classroom culture focuses on rewards, grades or marks. Pupils will sometimes avoid difficult or more challenging tasks because they risk failure or low marks. Comparison with other students’ marks often leads to lower self-esteem and lack of confidence about ability.
Students sometimes waste time trying to interpret the meaning of marks and grades rather than thinking about how to improve their work. You may feel that providing feedback in this form could be time-consuming. This need not be the case. If you are clear about the success criteria before setting a piece of work this can greatly speed up the marking process and can also provide you with the likely comments.
hands-on
Below are a number of teacher comments and some feedback criteria (A–D) to help you judge the helpfulness of the comments to the students. Discuss with your partner whether the comments provide information to the student about:
A whether they are on the right track
B their limitations (plus encouragement to correct the work)
C a way to improve their learning
D a way to think through the answer for themselves
- You started off well. Unfortunately you have made the same error in the last three questions. Can you see what this is? You may find it helpful to go back to the grid method.
- Your poem about copper sulphate was interesting. We need to discuss how you think copper crystals are made.
- Attainment 3, effort 2. You have made good progress in your handwriting. Your spelling still needs work.
- I think we need to talk about this work in more detail. Yet again you have not completed the work.
- Well done – 1 merit.
- A good ‘best fit graph’. The conclusion clearly explains the relationship between the force and the extension of the spring.
- There are a lot of inaccuracies in this work. Please check it through again.
- This work shows you have clear understanding of finding the areas and perimeters. What strategies did you use to calculate the answers? What were the important steps for you?
- You’ve plotted some interesting shapes. Well done!
- You have included more adjectives, which help bring the character alive on the page, but your sentence structure is not as varied as John’s. Experiment more by using complex sentences.
- Cracking piece of work. I like the diagrams and the interesting way you presented the impact of man on the environment.
- Keep it up!
- I think you have copied all of this from the Internet.
- Well done. Your presentation for Year 6 pupils was really exciting and engaging. Do you think the time transition would allow those who are not quick at reading enough time?
- Comment inserted in a spreadsheet comment box on cell F5: ‘I think you have used the wrong columns. To work out the ticket prices you would need to look at the costs of the production and how many seats are available.’
- Wow! You have really put a lot of work into this – thank you. It is detailed and balanced and had me ‘on the edge of my seat’. Did you learn a lot from it? The only thing I would change is the conclusion, which caught me by surprise because it did not seem to follow from what you had written in the main section of the account. Does the account need adjusting or the conclusion? Although this is an interesting piece of writing, with an accurate storyline and creative use of adjectives, the paragraphing is very weak and that makes the whole account much less structured than it should be.