How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students

by Susan M. Brookhart

Make sure you go over the last unit's test or assignment before launching into the next unit or assignment. Feedback isn't "feedback" unless it can truly feed something. Information delivered too late to be used isn't helpful. Make sure when you give feedback that there is time built in to actually use the information. Otherwise students will quickly learn to ignore feedback.

To continue our metaphor of lenses, think of a camera taking a snapshot of the student work and the teacher's feedback. That picture should show an episode of learning, where the student learns something about his status or progress toward the learning goal and what comes next, and the teacher learns something about what the student is thinking. That combination will help feedback be as effective as possible.

Teachers who are not expert at formative assessment collect evidence of the quantity of student performance, evaluate the correctness of responses, and reteach topics based on percent correct. This is why the notion of "feedback as an episode of learning" for both teacher and student is so important.

Less effective formative assessment was characterized by teachers' actions, even if they were doing student activities, and typically answered the question "How many of my students have 'got it'?" For students who did not "get it," teachers assigned a review. More effective formative assessment was characterized by teachers asking what students were thinking in relation to learning goals, interpreting the strengths and problem areas in their thinking, and then designing feedback or additional learning experiences for students to target those diagnosed needs.

It was only when I discovered that feedback was most powerful when it is from the student to the teacher [italics in original] that I started to understand it better. When teachers seek, or at least are open to, feedback from students as to what students know, what they understand, where they make errors, when they have misconceptions, when they are not engaged—then teaching and learning can be synchronized and powerful. (p.173)

Feedback events should show teachers what their students are thinking, thus informing both verbal feedback and decisions about next instructional steps—which can be considered a kind of "feedback" in the sense of it being a teacher's response to student learning.

If the role of feedback is to participate in the regulation of learning, then it must be formative, not summative.

Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick (2006) identified seven principles of good feedback practice that support student self-regulation of learning. For each principle, they presented research support and examples of ways to implement the principle in practice. The principles hold that effective feedback (p. 205) Helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards); Facilitates the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning; Delivers high-quality information to students about their learning; Encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning; Encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem; Provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance; and Provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape the teaching.

First, make reflecting on what you are learning about student thinking a regular part of your teaching and assessment repertoire.

Second, make checking for student understanding of feedback a routine part of your teaching and assessment.

One of the best ways you can help students learn to use feedback is to make sure you build in opportunities for students to use it fairly soon after they receive it. The "long view" of feedback, using the metaphor of a telescope lens, helps us remember to focus on the consequences of feedback. Did the feedback improve student learning?

Strategies to Help Students Learn to Use Feedback Model giving and using feedback yourself. Teach students where feedback comes from.

Teach students self- and peer-assessment skills. Increase students' interest in feedback because they own it. Teach students to answer their own questions and develop self-regulation skills, necessary for using any feedback. Be clear about the learning target and the criteria for good work. Use assignments with obvious value and interest. Explain to students why an assignment is given. Make directions clear. Use clear rubrics. Have students develop their own rubrics, or translate yours into "kid-friendly" language. Design lessons that incorporate using the rubrics as students work. Design lessons in which students use feedback on previous work to produce better work. Provide opportunities for students to redo complex assignments. Give new but similar assignments for less complex learning targets. Give opportunities for students to make connections between the feedback they receive and the improvement in their work.

Ground Rules for Peer Editing Read your peer's work carefully. Compare the work with the rubric. Talk about the work, not the person. Don't judge (e.g., don't say, "That's bad");

rather, describe what you think is good about the work and what's missing or could be done better. Make specific suggestions. Tell what you think, and then ask what the author thinks.

Design assignments so they have certain characteristics. Each assignment should do the following: Require students to use the content knowledge or skills specified in the lesson's learning target or longer-term learning goal Require students to use the cognitive process (such as recall or higher-order thinking) specified by the learning target Specify the criteria for good work (which will be the criteria for both feedback and final evaluation) Provide students with complete and clear directions Design your criteria so that they, too, match the learning target or goal. Your rubrics (or other statements of criteria) should do the following: Require student work to demonstrate the content knowledge or skills specified in the learning target or goal Require students to demonstrate the cognitive process (such as recall or higher-order thinking) specified by the learning target or goal Be clear to students

Design lessons in which students use feedback on previous work to produce better work.

Feedback from each successive assignment should inform studying and work on the next assignment.

You can adjust the content and message (the micro view), what you look to learn from it and have students learn from it (the snapshot view), and the opportunities you give to students to advance learning (the long view).

feedback to high-achieving students be a bit delayed and challenging, although sometimes all they may need is verification they are on the right track. She recommends that feedback to low-achieving students be more immediate and directive, scaffolded (broken into smaller steps), specific, and elaborated.

Students who don't have solid prior learning experiences or don't have the learning skills to process the information, or both, may not completely understand what your assignment asks them to do or your feedback on their work. This group includes both learning disabled students and students who, though not identified with a learning deficiency, did not get the foundation they needed as learners

Struggling students will benefit from feedback that helps them connect the process they used with the results they obtained. This is the sort of "cognitive feedback" that the research suggests successful students do internally. You can scaffold this process for struggling students.

Suggest small steps for improvement. The struggling student may need to work on many things in order to actually meet the learning goal, but improvement is supported by breaking complex tasks into small, manageable steps.