Feedback strategies and methods

‘Marking’ plays a central role in teachers work. Marking includes grading of a student’s achievement or giving feedback on student’s learning. The school culture should focus on providing feedback on students learning rather than assigning them grades. Hattie and Clarke(2019) mentioned in their book ‘Visible Learning Feedback’ that grades encourage students to develop ego-related mindsets rather than task-related mindsets.

Grading should not be confused with feedback. A good feedback offers guidance on how work can be improved. The ‘comment only feedback’ should provide specific information on ‘where to next’ or ‘how to improve this work’. Feedback fills the gap between what is understood and what is aimed to be understood. Feedback is a vehicle that takes students from where they are at present to where they should be.  For feedback to be effective, it should include comments on effort and strategy. A good feedback helps students create an action plan required to achieve their goals.

The culture in the classroom and the teaching/learning strategies used, decide the impact of the feedback received or understood.

Some strategies that can be used to give feedback are :

1.    SIR (Strengths, Improvements and Response).

Start the feedback by offering positive
 and exact praise for a specific skill 
or learning/progress that has been 
demonstrated.

Provide specific and manageable guidance
 by setting targets or asking questions 
linked to success criteria. Have clear 
expectations of what is expected in 
response from students.

Learners respond to the feedback and 
creates an action plan to close the 
learning gap.

2.   D.I.R.T. (Dedicated / Directed Improvement and Reflection Time)

Feedback should be handwork for students. DIRT strategy saves teacher’s marking time and transfers the responsibility to work towards excellence to students. In this strategy, Students work on draft 1 and check it carefully before handing in. A verbal feedback is given to students or it is peer assessed to identify improvements. Student responds to the feedback and identify improvements. The work is reassessed and moves closer to excellence. The cycle is repeated until the target work is achieved.

There are a number of feedback methods that can be used with D.I.R.T., such as –

Feedback grid : A feedback grid is provided to students at the beginning of the assessment. Teacher highlights the criteria’s met and the areas of improvements. Students read the feedback grip and create and action plan for improvements.

Marking codes : The teacher gives a code from the pre-defined set of codes related to targets to be achieved and areas of improvement. Student identifies the code and create an action plan for improvements.

Peer assessment  : Students swap their work with peer. Teacher discusses the feedback or provides the success criteria and provides sentence starters. Peers provide specific comments, students make amendments and set targets for themselves to improve the work

Whole-class feedback : Teacher observes student’s work throughout the lesson and provides a feedback verbally or via comments on board. Students respond to the feedback.

Annotations in the work : Teacher writes basic annotations like ‘Spellings’, ‘Reason’, ‘Identify’ for areas of improvement and uses them throughout the assessment piece. Students self-assess and improve the work.

Sign/Colour coding : Teacher gives a sign or colour code for areas of improvement and uses them throughout the assessment piece. Students self-assess and improve the work.