5. Giving Effective Feedback

“Feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve, and should avoid comparisons with other pupils. Feedback has shown to improve learning where it gives each pupil specific guidance on strengths and weaknesses, preferably without any overall marks.”

         “Feedback is the information communicated to a student in regard to their understanding of shared learning objectives of a given task against an agreed set of criteria.” This information will include guidance on how to improve. Moreover, feedback is the information that is relayed to the student about their progress and can be based upon a variety of forms of evidence including: marked work, un-graded teacher checked worked, oral contribution, practical displays, draft work and re-drafted work.

        Traditionally in education, feedback has been given by a letter grade on a paper. An “A” student will often continue to be an “A” student throughout his/her educational career. Likewise, students who see themselves as academic failures become discouraged by continually seeing failing grades on their assignments and often will give up on learning. The power of using effective feedback in the classroom has the potential to change a student with the mindset that they are a failure, into a student who believes that success is possible and that they can achieve far more than they ever thought they could. 

      Giving feedback to students is an essential part in teaching; as teachers, we need to look for the best words so that our students do not misinterpret what we say. Our comments must be phrased positively. Furthermore, we need to focus on looking for the ways to improve learning and we need to focus on helping them know what they need to do to become better students. Moreover, feedback is most effective when it is delivered promptly and reflection time is planned into the lesson to allow students time to respond to the comment and if possible act upon it immediately. By delaying feedback students forget the original purpose of the work and the challenges they faced when completing it. The impact of prompt, criteria based feedback on selected pieces of work will have greater long-term impact on a student’s learning and their results and it is of greater benefit than an inadequate attempt to mark everything in detail at irregular intervals.

“Effective feedback encourages students´ motivation, growth, and independent thinking.”