Inquiry Wrap-Up: Focusing on Feedback

  Feedback is one of the most important processes in a classroom.

Without receiving it, students will not be able to identify their progress, to see the strengths they’ve developed and the areas they may need more help with. Feedback gives us a chance to add more meaning and purpose to students’ education. It lets them feel seen. Giving feedback is also a valuable skill and process for us educators. It forces us to be extra thoughtful toward each assignment turned in, and gives us a chance to connect with each student, whether it be instantaneous, responsive feedback during a lesson, or longer, more substantial feedback on assignments. 

We’ve all been taught the importance of good feedback in our classrooms. But what that “good” feedback looks like is much harder to pin down than a checklist of things to include on a rubric, or even in your formal written feedback returned to a student. You can give objectively correct, fantastic feedback that is beautifully written and clear. But what happens if the student never reads it, or is never given a chance to think about it? It all goes to waste. That’s why back in February, I decided to start researching feedback methods that were sustainable for teachers without compromising the effectiveness for students. Here’s what I found out:

Findings and Application:

First, let’s focus on the teacher side of things. None of us want to be sitting behind a mountain of essays or clicking through assignments to grade into the wee hours of the night. So, seasoned ELA educator and current principal Zane Porter simply suggests, don’t. 

Leaving work at work may seem unreasonable in this field. However, Porter emphasizes its importance, encouraging teachers to do their best to leave grading at school, to “find every nugget of time and exploit it, making sure not to procrastinate” (11). Finding and taking full advantage of the nugget can be easier with some of his other tips, such as remembering that “our classes should be full of assessment, but not necessarily grades” (Porter 12). You are not obligated to grade every single piece of paper that graces students’ desks. Pre-assessments and summative assessments need to be reviewed formally, but many formative assessments and skill-builders for students do not need to be entered into the gradebook. Edutopia writer and ELA teacher Rebecca Alber suggests a method that may leave you feeling less guilty about this: The One-in-Four Rule. As the name suggests, Alber’s strategy is to grade one assignment out of every four that you give to students. This allows consistency without overwhelm, while still giving you plenty of data to guide instruction and places to give students feedback. You also don’t have to tell students which ones you will grade if you are worried about motivation. For example, you could collect your students’ daily writing notebooks at the end of two weeks, and then review four of their entries, giving them comments and a grade. There’s accountability and sustainability in this method, and, in this example, everything you are grading is in one place. Staying organized is helpful for you and your students.

Turning more toward students, another way to ease your grading workload and maintain accountability is clear learning targets and clear deadlines. Having a good late policy that you maintain will help you keep better track of what assignments you actually have to grade. And having clear learning targets posted where students can see them is a small push that will help them actually do those assignments and see the value in them, Dr. Susan Brookhart explains. Brookhart argues that feedback is like fireworks; it can either fizzle out and be ineffective or truly shine. It fizzles when "students aren’t trying to reach a learning target—or don’t know what the target is, or don’t care” (Brookhart 26). Learning targets can be thought of as the objectives in your lesson plan—adjusted into “I” statements from the students’ perspective. This will let students know exactly what is expected of them. And give you something to look for in grading, or when discussing the student’s work with them.

Dialogue is another extremely important aspect of giving feedback. Interact with students about their work, give them comments that are both praiseful and constructive in class and in writing. And most importantly, Brookhart says, give students immediate and specific chances to work with feedback. Have workshop days to work with feedback. If a student gets an answer wrong in a lecture, give them a guiding question, then check their understanding again. If a student struggles with just a thesis statement, don’t make them rewrite the whole paper. Work with them to help them understand the topic, then have them rework just their introduction or thesis. Revisions should not be busywork; they should be valuable growth opportunities. 

Talking with students about specific issues to improve their understanding is infinitely more valuable than rewriting an entire essay over one missed target. In fact, according to Dr. Bryan Corbin, his (college) English students showed a strong preference for critical feedback. Students want to know how to improve, not just be told that everything is great. Another strategy from data scientist Bhagya Maheshi’s research is to use feedback forms in the classroom. On these forms, students can request feedback on certain areas of the paper; this could easily be adjusted to match learning targets. They help teachers know what students care about in their work, and can be a good jumping-off point for writing comments or, even better, for discussion when conferencing with students about their writing.

Going Forward

There is no “one-size-fits-all” method to giving feedback, unfortunately. What works for one teacher or student may not work for the next. But there are steps you can take to make feedback feel more meaningful, and I encourage every educator, new or veteran, to consider what they can do to make the process easier on themselves without sacrificing its value for students. 

Next year, I will be teaching high school English, specifically English 2 and English 3. Some things that I know I want to build into my classes from my research are frequent writing conferences with students, feedback forms, and the one-in-four method of grading, specifically in writers’ notebooks. I’ve already used student forms to get feedback on assignments from them and briefly examine their understandings, so these feel like logical next steps to improve my first year of teaching. These structured forms of feedback and routines will provide me with consistent ways to give my students time to read and utilize the feedback I give them without overwhelming them. 

Sources

Alber, Rebecca. “Tactics for Tackling the Grading Dilemma.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 5 Jan. 2010, www.edutopia.org/grading-dilemma-strategies-tactics.

Brookhart, Susan M. “Preventing Feedback Fizzle.” Educational Leadership, vol. 70, no. 1, Sept. 2012, pp. 24–29. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=87bdb0bd-64ba-306e-bec1-e3a4b5ad0dab.

Corbin, Bryan. “Students’ Wants and Preferences for Essay Feedback in College Level English Courses.” Education Resources Information Center, English in Texas, 2019, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1261842.pdf.

Maheshi, B., Dai, W., Martinez-Maldonado, R., & Tsai, Y.-S. (2024). Dialogic feedback at scale: Recommendations for learning analytics design. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 40(6), 2790–2808. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.13034

Porter, Zane G. “Three Practices to Help English Teachers Thrive.” English in Texas, vol. 48, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 9–13. EBSCOhost, research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=2f2e3095-f091-37c9-8222-6e1dc624b0c8.