Teacher responds with personalised feedback. Responsive Teaching
Personalised Feedback:
Definition:
Tailored responses that address individual learners’ misconceptions, adjust task difficulty, reinforce correct understanding, provide targeted resources, encourage reflection, and motivate ongoing engagement. Feedback which is relevant and supports each learner’s needs and progress.
Purpose:To reduce discrepancies between current understandings/performance and a desired goal
The discrepancy can be reduced by:
Students
Increased effort and employment of more effective strategies OR
Abandoning, blurring, or lowering the goals
Teachers
Providing appropriate challenging and specific goals
Assisting students to reach them through effective learning strategies and feedback
Effective feedback answers three questions:
Where am I going? (the goals) — Feed Up
How am I going? — Feed Back
Where to next? — Feed Forward
Self level
Personal evaluations and affect (usually positive) about the learner
Self-regulation level
Self-monitoring, directing, and regulating of actions
Process level
The main process needed to understand/perform tasks
Task level
How well tasks are understood/performed
Gaining Independence
Developing resilience and independence is important and future lessons could be adapted to ensure that, for at least a few minutes, learning is independent.
Children who are frequently supported should be marked as "I" when their work is independent.
10.2) Weekly and monthly summative review
‘Engage children in weekly and monthly review: Children need to be involved in extensive practice in order to develop well-connected and automatic knowledge’.
The effort involved in recalling recently learned material embeds it in long-term memory. And the more this happens, the easier it is to connect new material to such prior knowledge.
Reviews could include post-topic assessments or writing analysis.
Each of these scaffolds encourage children to recognise their own mistakes or provide peer feedback
2) New Knowledge
Present new material using small steps. ‘Present new material in small steps with student practice after each step: Only present small amounts of new material at any time, and then assist students as they practice this material’ - The Teacher TELLS, rather than questions.
Our working memory is small, only handling a few bits of information at once. Avoid its overload—present new material in small steps and proceed only when first steps are mastered.
3) Ask questions
‘Ask a large number of questions and check the responses of all children : Questions help students practice new information and connect new material to their prior learning’. (The Teacher's questions are informed by the current assessments made so far this lesson.)
The most successful teachers spend more than half the class time lecturing, demonstrating, and asking questions. Questions allow the teacher to determine how well the material is learned.
Teacher provides personalised feedback based on children's replies to questions.
Talk Partners
Children challenge each other’s assumptions, providing peer feedback
The teacher hears their misunderstandings.
The teacher provides personalised feedback based on the children’s responses
4) Provide models
‘Providing students with models and worked examples can help them learn to solve problems faster’.
Students need cognitive support to help them learn how to solve problems. Modelling, worked examples, and teacher thinking out loud help clarify the specific steps involved.
5) Guided child practice
‘Successful teachers spend more time guiding children's practice of new material’.
Children need additional time to rephrase, elaborate, and summarise new material in order to store it in their long-term memory. More successful teachers build in more time for this.
Children respond in blue pen to demonstrate what is independent work and what is supported.
Teachers demarcate independent work and supported work by marking them with an 'S'. This is only when children have not moved to an independent level of work within the lesson.
6) Mid-Lesson: Check for understanding.
‘Checking for understanding at each point can help children learn the material with fewer errors’.
Less successful teachers merely ask, "Are there any questions?" No questions are a false indicator of no problems. By contrast, more successful teachers check on all students.
Based on the children's responses, teachers can modify or replace tasks for personalised feedback.
The teacher provides personalised feedback based on children's responses to these checks.
7) Obtain a high success rate within the lesson.
‘It is important for children to achieve a high success rate during classroom instruction’.
A success rate of around 80% has been found to be optimal, showing students are learning and also being challenged. Better teachers teach in small steps followed by practice.
8) Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks
‘The teacher provides children with temporary supports and scaffolds to assist them when they learn difficult tasks’.
Scaffolds are temporary supports to assist learning. They can include modelling, teacher thinking aloud, cue cards, and checklists. Scaffolds are part of cognitive apprenticeship.
9.1) Independent practice
‘Require and monitor independent practice: Children need extensive, successful, independent practice in order for skills and knowledge to become automatic’ (p. 18).
Independent practice produces 'overlearning'—a necessary process for new material to be recalled automatically. This ensures no overloading of students' working memory.
10.1) Post-Lesson: Check for understanding (Formative Review)
Teachers analyse outcomes from the lesson and plan future activities based on this found knowledge.
This feedback is less effective than live feedback and, if children have had live-feedback, is usually unnecessary.
Consider future lessons for children who were never able to be independent in the lesson
Scaffolding 2
Barak Rosenshine's "Principles of Instruction" advocate for scaffolding—providing temporary support to students as they learn new concepts. This approach is particularly beneficial for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), as it allows educators to tailor instruction to individual learning needs. By breaking down complex tasks into manageable steps and offering appropriate support, teachers can help SEND students progress towards greater independence.
Scaffolding 1
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) highlights explicit instruction as an effective strategy for supporting pupils with SEND. This involves clear, direct teaching with opportunities for guided and independent practice, enabling students to gradually assume more responsibility for their learning.
Consider future lessons for children who would have reached the same level of success as other children, if they had more time.
Conduct Regular Reviews:
Adapt future lessons to encourage motivation.
Engage children in daily, weekly, and monthly reviews to reinforce learning and aid retention. This repetition helps solidify knowledge and skills over time.
Provide Additional Time for Practice:
Allow children extra time to rephrase, elaborate, and summarise new material, facilitating storage in long-term memory.
Consider future lessons for children who are frequently not reaching an academic ceiling:
Independent Research:
Encourage students to pursue independent research topics, guiding them to explore areas
Group Work
Create opportunities for advanced students to collaborate on complex tasks, promoting teamwork and collective problem-solving.
Metacognition
Encourage students to reflect on their learning processes, helping them develop strategies to tackle more complex material effectively.
Have students acknowledge their successes
Part of this principle is based upon the emotional and motivational boost students will get when they achieve success. It is probably also in part based on the importance of learning information on a deep and fundamental level, so that it could be built on later. Therefore, it is important that students are aware of their successes in order to get the most benefit from them.
Problem-Solving Challenges: Introduce tasks that require creative thinking and innovation, encouraging students to apply their knowledge in novel ways.
Higher-Order Thinking Questions: Pose questions that require analysis, synthesis, and evaluation rather than mere recall. For example, ask students to compare different theories, design experiments, or critique existing solutions.
Flexible Grouping:
Allow high achievers to work in groups where they can tackle more challenging material or engage in peer teaching, enhancing both their understanding and leadership skills.
9.2) Live Marking
The teacher circulates the room and corrects mistakes while they occur to ensure that children learn from them at the zone of proximal development. They check for understanding within the independent practice phase and may return children to guided child practice, if required.
This is the most effective form of feedback. Double marking of live-work is unnecessary.
By fostering independent work habits, teachers can effectively implement live marking, providing timely and personalised feedback that enhances learning outcomes.
1) Review
Teacher begins with Daily Review. ‘Begin each lesson with a short review of previous learning: Daily review can strengthen previous learning and can lead to fluent recall’. (Teacher asks questions based on knowledge established in previous lessons.)
Daily review is an important component of instruction. It helps strengthen the connections of the material learned. Automatic recall frees working memory for problem-solving and creativity.
Children respond with their understanding.
Teacher responds with personalised feedback. Responsive Teaching.
