Skip to main content

Seven Keys to Effective Feedback

Feedback in the classroom is extremely important in order to help students to succeed, but what is true feedback? True feedback is not just advice, evaluation, and grades because none of these gives students the proper tools to improve and reach their goals. Feedback is often described as comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. However, none of these are actual feedback. Instead, true feedback is actually information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a certain goal. To put this into perspective, I will give an example of proper feedback below.

"I'm really happy with your determination to finish this project. I know it wasn't easy, but I knew you could do it. Your helpful attitude makes it clear that you can continue to take on new challenges and grow in this class. Keep up the good work."

Now, this is a great example of proper, helpful feedback. Notice how this example involves deliberate, explicit giving of feedback by another person. The feedback above was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. It also did not tell the person receiving the feedback what to do. This type of feedback will never improve learning in the classroom. There is a big difference between feedback versus advice. An example of advice would be as follows:

"I think that you did a good job so far on your essay; however, I really think that you should re-do your whole introduction. It does not pertain to the essay topic and sounds messy. If you re-do it you will have a better shot at getting a good grade."

This example of advice is doing the complete opposite of feedback. It is telling the person exactly what they should do and sort of criticizing their work at the same time. This will not help the student whatsoever. Instead, it will only make them feel bad about themselves and their work. 

For decades, education research has supported the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback instead, we can produce greater learning in the classroom. If a teacher is consistently giving lectures in the classroom it will produce less than optimal learning. Instead, if a teacher incorporates a more peer instruction type of learning within the classroom, students will consistently be provided with frequent feedback about the level of understanding of the subject being discussed. All in all, less teaching = better results. 

Effective feedback contains many different components. Some of the components include: goal-referenced, tangible/transparent, actionable, user-friendly, timely, ongoing, and consistent. To be more clear, I will define these components below.

Putting the 7 Hallmarks of Effective Feedback to Work in Your Classroom

1. Goal-referenced: Effective feedback must be centered around a goal and make sure the person receives goal-related information about his or her actions.

2. Tangible/Transparent: Useful feedback involves not only a clear goal, but also tangible results related to said goal.

3. Actionable: Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable information. 

4. User-friendly: Effective feedback must be user-friendly so that the user can easily understand it or is not overwhelmed by it.

5. Timely: Effective feedback must be communicated as soon as possible and in a timely manner. It does not need to be immediate, but it should be received sooner rather than later. 

6. Ongoing: Students must have ample opportunities to utilize effective feedback. This way, students will be able to reshape their performance to better achieve the goal they are working toward. 

7. Consistent: Effective feedback must be consistent because students can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. 

Now, you might be wondering: How can schools implement effective feedback as part of a system of formative assessment? The answer is somewhat simple. Educators must gear feedback toward long-term goals. This is because an individual's ability to focus on long-term goals is heavily reliant on ongoing feedback that measures performance. Educators must also focus their teaching methods on more feedback and less teaching. This way, students will be able to take their learning to the next level. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brrr...Icebreaker Time!

 Fieldwork Group 1: The Globetrotters   Miss Maria, Miss Danielle, Miss Mary, Miss Kayla, & Miss Allison It's the beginning of fieldwork and I can't wait! Today, all 5 groups were able to introduce ourselves and play unique icebreaker games with the 4th grade students to get to know them better. After all, it is extremely important to get to know your students before teaching them! All of the students seemed to have a fun time playing each group's game and it was great to interact with them for the very first time.  For my group, we created a game where a wheel was spun with each 4th grader's name on it. Whichever name it landed on was the one who answered the question at that time. After a name was chosen, a question was chosen after. Some of the questions that were asked were: - Sweet or Salty? - Do you have any siblings? - Dogs or Cats? My group did not have enough time to let every student answer a question due to timing, which made some students upset, but the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Models, Strategies, or Methods...Which one?

Models, strategies, and methods all play an important role in the lives of educators as well as their classrooms. However, they are not all the same thing. Although they do share some similarities, they also have many differences. To begin, models represent the broadest level of instructional practices and present a philosophical orientation to instruction. They are used to select and structure teaching the strategies, skills, and methods for a particular instructional emphasis. Within each instructional model, there are several different types of strategies. Strategies determine the approach a teacher may take in order to achieve learning objectives. Strategies can be broken down into five subcategories: direct, indirect, interactive, experiential, and independent. Methods are the most direct way of creating learning environments and specifying the nature of the activity in which the teacher/learner will be involved during the lesson to achieve the educational goal at hand. Some metho...
Post a Comment
Read more

Making History Come Alive

Engage: I have never seen the painting pictured above before now. Although I do not how whose paintings these are and the history of them, I can guess that they represent important people throughout history. I believe that the first painting is a man standing in a court room standing up for something he believes in while the people around him stare in awe. I think that the second one is some sort of religious representation as the lady with white hair is holding her hands together in a praying position with her eyes closed and the lady next to her is holding a rosary. The third picture looks like a family that is about to eat dinner while the mother/cook serves the food on the table. The last painting I believe is a mother and father tucking their child into bed. I am sure that all of these paintings have some sort of important historical significance and I would love to learn more about them. Explore: Making History Alive Using technology in the classroom can make lessons mor...
1 comment
Read more