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Session 3. Feedback That Improves Learning
Objective. Give feedback that says what worked, what to improve and what to do next, and plan time in the lesson for pupils to act on it.
Most teachers spend more evening hours on marking than on any other part of the job, so it is fair to ask what returns it brings. Feedback can help a great deal, yet it can also be ignored or even discourage a pupil when it is vague or about the person. The aim of this session is to spend your limited minutes where they change what pupils do next, and to stop spending them where they do not.
Key ideas
Feedback is for the next piece of work
- The test of feedback is simple: did the pupil do something better afterwards? A comment that changes nothing was not feedback.
- Black and Wiliam warn that in many classrooms marks and grades get the attention while useful advice gets little.
- Pupils often read the number, compare it with a neighbour and stop. A comment without a mark, or the mark given later, is more likely to be read.
What good feedback contains
- Say what worked, in specific words: 'You drew the bar model with equal parts.' Specific praise tells the pupil what to repeat.
- Name one thing to improve, not ten. Choose the one that matters most for the outcome.
- Give a next step the pupil can do now: 'Check the units in line 3 and redo question 5.' Comment on the work, not on the person.
Feedback you can afford
- You cannot write a long comment for 35 pupils every day. Choose: oral feedback during seatwork to 5 or 6 pupils, or written feedback on one task per week.
- Use whole-class feedback: scan about ten books in 5 minutes, note the top three errors and one strength, and teach them to everyone next lesson.
- Use codes (for example S for spelling, ? for unclear) that pupils have learned, so each comment takes seconds.
Time to act on feedback
- Feedback is wasted if pupils never act on it. Reserve 5 to 10 minutes at the start of the next lesson for pupils to redo or improve one item.
- Peer feedback works when you give pupils a short checklist and sentence starters: 'One thing that works is ... One question I have is ...'.
- Teach pupils to check their own work against the rubric before handing it in.
The feedback loop
What the feedback is about
Feedback can be about the task ('line 3 is wrong'), about the way the pupil worked ('try estimating first to check your answer'), about how the pupil manages their own learning ('you checked each step, keep doing that'), or about the person ('you are clever'). The first three can all help. The last rarely does, and it can teach a pupil that ability is fixed, which makes difficulty feel like failure.
A useful habit is to aim most comments at the process. 'You solved it by drawing the bar model' tells a pupil a method to reuse. 'Well done' does not. When you read a piece of work, ask which strategy produced this result, and name it.
Hints, not answers
When a pupil is stuck, the fastest help is to give the answer, but then the pupil has learned nothing new. A hint ladder keeps the thinking with the pupil: first ask 'what is the question asking you to find?', then 'which formula could link these two numbers?', and only if needed show the first line and let the pupil finish.
The same idea works in writing. Instead of correcting five spelling errors, underline the line and write 'Find two spelling errors in this line'. The pupil does the finding, which is the learning. Reserve direct correction for errors the pupil could not possibly find alone, such as a fact they have not yet been taught.
Examples from the classroom
Twelve minutes, six conversations
Scene. Malika's Grade 3 Uzbek-medium class in Tashkent writes four sentences about Navruz. While 27 pupils write, she kneels beside six of them for two minutes each. She asks, 'Which sentence is your best? What would make it stronger?' Each child adds a detail. She has written nothing in a notebook, and the pupils improved the work during the lesson.
Insight. Oral feedback during the task lets pupils act at once, so no evening marking is needed.
Thirty-four notebooks in five minutes
Scene. Jasur teaches Grade 7 geography in Bukhara. He scans ten notebooks after school and writes three notes: most pupils label rivers correctly, nine confuse a lake with a sea, and four forget scale. Next lesson he spends six minutes on the lake-sea difference with a drawing and five on scale. Only four pupils get a personal note.
Insight. Whole-class feedback targets the common errors and returns his evening.
A hint ladder in physics
Scene. In Dilnoza's Grade 9 class in Samarkand, Aziz is stuck on a speed problem: a bus travels 90 km in 1.5 hours. She asks, 'What are you asked to find?' He says speed. Then she asks, 'Which formula connects distance and time?' He writes speed = distance divided by time and solves it: 60 km per hour. He then explains the steps to a neighbour.
Insight. Hints kept the thinking with the pupil, so the learning stayed with the pupil too.
Common pitfalls
- Writing long comments that pupils never read or act on.
- Correcting every error, so the one that matters is lost among ten.
- Praising the person ('clever girl') instead of the work or the method.
- Giving feedback after the unit has ended, when pupils can no longer use it.
From 'Good, 7/10' to a Next Step
- Alone (10 min): read the six pupil work samples and the teacher comments in your Activity Kit. For each, mark the comment: does it say what worked, one thing to improve and a next step?
- In pairs (15 min): rewrite the comments for samples 1, 3 and 5. Keep each to two sentences. Swap with another pair, who tick the three parts.
- As a group (10 min): scan the six samples and fill in the whole-class feedback sheet: top two errors, one strength and a 5-minute re-teach plan.
- Plan the lesson time (10 min): where in your next lesson will pupils act on the feedback, and what will they do?
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which part of feedback was most often missing in the original comments?
- How much shorter was the whole-class feedback than writing six comments?
- What time in your week can you protect for pupils to act on feedback?
Reflect
- How often do my pupils redo work after my comments?
- Which of my comments would I be unable to act on if I were the pupil?
- Where could whole-class feedback replace individual writing?
Try it tomorrow
- Give two minutes of oral feedback to five pupils during next lesson's seatwork and note what each changed.
- Replace one set of marks with a comment and a short task: 'redo question 5 using this hint'.
- Use a hint ladder with one stuck pupil instead of giving the answer.
Further reading and links
Say what worked, name one thing to improve, give a next step, and leave time for pupils to act on it.