Success criteria for feedback to be effective and promote student understanding
Less "teaching" and more opportunities
for regular and continuous feedback during an activity e.g. small group work discussions and providing feedback to individuals and small groups vs "lecturing"
Promotes greater understanding
Enables the teacher to continually assess and evaluate
understanding of the topic
Teachers should be aware of their behaviours in class and how they are reacting to students
Teachers can be so busy "teaching" they forget to consider why a student may not be focusing or paying attention. By video recording a lesson once a month the teacher can pick up on their strategies and make regular improvements.
Provide feedback in a timely manner, while the work is fresh in the student's mind.
Feedback should be ongoing and current to the student's work. For example, mark the homework/course work and return it at the next opportunity (the next lesson) so that feedback is occuring on a regular basis and forms the basis for self evaluation and target setting.
Feedback should allow the student to do some of the work! For example, SPAG errors should be flagged up, but the student should make the corrections themselves not the teacher.
Feedback should clearly link to a goal or a focus
For example, if it is a persuasive piece of writing
then the feedback would indicate, "to make this argument more persuasive, you could include evidence to support your statements".
When students are completing an activity readily have the rubric and goal/purpose of the activity on hand for reference.
Feedback should be consistent and high quality; where possible as much as the teacher can, it should be linked to a clear rubric of skills and expectations
Regular feedback should be actionable, useful and specific
Don't rely on grades or "good job" - instead give specific instructions on HOW to improve e.g. reference 2 or more sources from different sources to improve your research skills
Use student friendly language in the rubric and feedback. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use the terminology associated with the subject, but avoid jargon and words that students won't understand.
Don't give too many targets to improve upon; focus on 1, maximum 2
Give students 2 positives and a "next step" in feeding back their work. Create a dialogue with students in their self assessment and response to your feedback.
Feedback should address misunderstandings of the topic before giving an overall target
If the work demonstrates misunderstanding on a topic, re-teach it to the student and then feedback on the follow up activity.