How and When to Give Feedback

Feedback is a powerful tool that can profoundly impact student learning and success. However, not all feedback is created equal; some approaches to feedback can propel students toward growth, while others may hinder their progress. What is the secret to effective feedback? How can educators unlock its power and potential to maximize student growth? How can teachers pull feedback into the classroom to ensure it is timely and actionable?

Let’s Review the Characteristics of Effective Feedback

In an article for ASCD, Grant Wiggins identifies key elements that make feedback particularly effective in enhancing student learning. These qualities include:

• Goal-Oriented or Goal-Referenced: High-quality feedback is closely aligned with clear learning objectives and goals. It gives students a sense of direction, helping them understand what they are striving to achieve and how their current performance is positioned in relation to those objectives.
• Transparent and Clear: Feedback should be transparent and easy for students to understand. It should clearly communicate the strengths and areas in need of development or revision in their work and suggest specific strategies the students can use to make improvements.
• Actionable: Effective feedback is not just informative but also actionable. It offers specific guidance on what steps students can take to improve while they are still working on the piece (not after it is completed). Actionable feedback goes beyond pointing out errors; it provides concrete suggestions for how to correct those errors and make progress.
• User-friendly (more specifically, student-friendly): It’s important that the feedback is communicated to students in language they can understand. If they do not understand what the feedback is saying or what it means, they will not be able to successfully act on it.
• Focused and Specific: Specificity in feedback is vital. Rather than providing general comments, high-quality feedback zooms in on particular aspects of a student’s work. It highlights what was done well and what needs improvement in a precise and detailed manner.
• Timely: Timeliness is critical when it comes to feedback. It should be given as close to the learning experience as possible. Delayed feedback may lose its relevance and impact. Timely feedback allows students to apply it to their work immediately.

By incorporating these qualities into the feedback process, educators can create a feedback-rich environment that not only informs students about their progress but also empowers them to take meaningful steps toward improvement.

Focus on Process-based Feedback

Process feedback focuses on evaluating and improving the steps, strategies, or techniques that students employ during the learning process. Instead of assessing the end result, process feedback focuses on the journey and supports students as they make progress toward a clear objective or desired result. This form of feedback can have a profound impact on student learning in several ways.

Process feedback is vital in enhancing student learning by honing their metacognitive skills, guiding their efforts, boosting motivation, and fostering a growth mindset. By focusing on the process rather than the product, educators can help students become more effective and resilient learners.

Actively Engage Students in the Feedback Process

In John Hattie and Helen Timperley’s (2007) paper, The Power of Feedback, they assert that effective feedback should answer three questions. By encouraging students to delve deeply into their work and the feedback they receive, these three questions pave the way for enhanced understanding, growth, and academic success.

• Where am I going?
• How am I going there?
• Where to next?

The first question Hattie poses is deceptively simple yet profoundly significant: Where am I going? This question prompts students to articulate the learning goal or objective for a particular task or assignment. This ensures that they comprehend the destination or desired result of the activity or assignment at hand. This approach creates clarity and transparency, enabling students to navigate their tasks with purpose and intention.

The second question is, How am I going there? It engages students in reflective thinking. This reflection centers on the process-based feedback they receive and what it reveals about their progress, growth, strengths, limitations, and areas where they need further support. By actively contemplating feedback and its implications, students gain insights into their individual learning journeys. This self-awareness empowers them to take ownership of their progress and identify areas where they can collaborate with their teachers to further develop their skills.

It is Hattie’s final question, Where to next?, that holds the key to transformative growth. This inquiry challenges students to formulate a declarative sentence or statement about their intended actions in response to the feedback received. By contemplating their next steps, students solidify their commitment to leveraging the feedback and actively integrating it into their learning process. This forward-thinking mindset propels them towards continuous improvement and fosters a growth-oriented approach to education.

When we challenge students to answer these three questions, we help them develop their metacognitive muscles and develop a clearer understanding of their skills, abilities, and areas of need.

To facilitate this reflective process, I have created a graphic organizer that educators can employ to encourage students to delve deeper into their tasks, feedback, and personal growth. This tool serves as a catalyst for critical thinking, enabling students to extract maximum value from the feedback they receive. By exploring the task, the feedback, and its implications, students develop a more profound understanding of their own abilities and how they can utilize the feedback to elevate their learning experience.

Pull Feedback into the Classroom with Blended Learning

Too often, teachers take feedback home because they are stuck at the front of the class guiding a whole group lesson and don’t have the time and space to sit alongside learners, supporting their individual progress toward learning objectives. This creates mountains of work for teachers outside of school, and students do not receive the feedback they need to improve the piece as they work on it. This is one of the workflows Dr. Katie Novak and I reimagined in our book The Shift to Student-led. We note that this traditional, teacher-led workflow often results in feedback on finished products instead of a focus on giving feedback during the process when it can have the greatest impact on student learning.

Teachers using universally designed blended learning models, like the station rotation model and the playlist model, can pull feedback into the classroom, ensuring that it is timely, focused, and actionable. Adopting these models not only enhances the immediacy and effectiveness of feedback but also promotes a healthier work-life balance for educators, affording them the chance to disconnect after school hours.

The Station Rotation Model

The station rotation model does exactly what the name suggests. It is a series of stations, or learning activities, that students rotate through. Typically, there is a teacher-led station, an online station, and an offline station. To be considered a blended learning model, at least one station must be an online learning station. Teachers typically use their teacher-led station for differentiated direct instruction, but it is a wonderful opportunity to provide feedback on work in progress.

For example, a teacher might run a series of stations, like those pictured below, to make time for real-time feedback sessions at the teacher-led station. In this rotation, the instruction is delivered via a video that students can self-pace through, and the offline station engages students in a peer feedback activity.

The following are tips for making a real-time feedback session at the teacher-led station run smoothly.

• Explain the purpose or value of this feedback session
• Focus on giving feedback to a single skill or element of student work
• Provide students with a place or routine for capturing their questions (e.g., add a comment to a digital document or write it on a Post-it).
• Keep your eye on the clock since you have limited time with each student’s work.
• Use technology to speed up feedback with keyboard shortcuts and links to instructional videos to support revisions.
• Require students act on the feedback during the session (e.g., use the 3 questions graphic organizer).

The Playlist Model

The playlist, or individual rotation model, is a blended learning model that empowers students to take ownership of their learning by giving them control over the pace of their learning. This model presents a sequence of carefully curated learning activities designed to move students toward specific learning objectives or desired outcomes.

When I support teachers in designing playlists, I encourage them to add “teacher check-ins” to strategic moments in their playlists. When a student hits a teacher check-in, they pause and conference with the teacher. This one-on-one time can be used to review formative assessment data, discuss student progress, or provide feedback on works in progress (e.g., writing assignments, performance tasks, projects).

Feedback during a teacher check-in is a wonderful way to support students as they work and better understand their individual progress and needs. Teachers can use what they are learning during these feedback sessions to make modifications or additions to the student’s playlist to personalize their learning experience, ensuring they continue to progress toward the learning objectives.

Wrap Up

Effective feedback is the cornerstone of a dynamic and responsive educational environment. It goes beyond mere evaluation, serving as a bridge between what is understood and what is yet to be mastered. Effective feedback is clear, direct, and specific; it provides learners with actionable insights tailored to their individual learning pathways. It encourages reflection, fosters resilience, and promotes a growth mindset.

To ensure feedback is prioritized during class time, teachers should integrate it into the very fabric of their instructional models. Designing lessons using blended learning models like station rotation and playlist models, educators can create dedicated time and space for feedback, which is as integral as providing instruction. By prioritizing effective feedback, educators do not just teach; they prepare students for a lifetime of learning and growth.