Key Points:
- Plan it into your instructional sequence
- Every assessment should be precluded by self/peer/teacher feedback
- Build in DIRT after feedback is given
- Ask questions to encourage engagement
- Give a place for feedback to be used
Feedback is an instructional factor that has the potential to be the number one driver of student learning, but only when implemented effectively. Effective feedback has three characteristics: it is timely, accessible, and relevant. Here are five tips for improving the timeliness of feedback.
Include Feedback By Design
Feedback can often be an afterthought–something we jot on an assignment to correct a misconception or a note on an assessment to justify a certain grade. When we include feedback by design into our instructional sequence, we can plan for maximum impact. When you are planning lessons, ask yourself, “Where will feedback have the greatest potential to pivot student work and understanding?”
Precede Assessments with Feedback
Feedback often fits best between formative and summative assessments. Once students have had a chance to engage with the learning criteria and make early attempts at meeting outcome goals, that’s when feedback will be relevant. We also don’t want feedback to come too late. Students lose interest in feedback when they feel they’ve finished a task or are too wed to their ideas. Peer, self, and teacher feedback all have the greatest impact in the “early draft” stage of learning.
Follow Feedback with DIRT
Feedback without engagement is a wasted effort. If we want students to engage with feedback, the best thing we can give them is time and structure. Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time (DIRT) is a strategy pioneered in the UK, where students are given regular, structured time to read, respond to, and act on feedback. This greatly improves the learning that comes from feedback.
Ask Questions
By asking questions in our teacher feedback, we encourage students to engage with the feedback by responding. This engagement, when coupled with a structure for responding and revising work, is a great way to level up the impact of feedback. Tools like Floop’s feedback conversations can help this happen naturally, but paper-based feedback conversations and feedback conferences work well too!
Prompt Application
Finally, we can include application prompts in our feedback to increase student engagement with feedback. This might look like suggesting the next steps or directing towards resources. By offering students a way to apply their feedback, we scaffold a thinking process they can carry into other classes and into the future.
These five strategies are just a few ways teachers have found to improve the timeliness of student feedback. What have you tried in your classrooms?