Tips for Teachers by Craig Barton

Whole-Class Feedback

Not many educational issues are as divisive as marking and feedback. Given that workload is often cited as a reason teachers leave the profession and that marking and feedback are key contributors to workload, it is only right that we consider how to make it as manageable and effective as possible.

For many years of my career, I spent all day marking and giving carefully constructed written comments to each student. On Monday, I gave the work back to students, only for them to give the written comments, at best, a cursory glance before we began the lesson.

Diagnosis

  1. What is your current marking and feedback policy?
  2. What challenges do you face?

Evidence

Research into written feedback is more conclusive than homework, but perhaps the results are more surprising.

A good starting point in the 2016 EEF guide entitled A marked improvement? A review of the evidence on written marking. Here are the key findings:

  1. The quality of existing evidence focused specifically on written marking is low. Few large-scale, robust studies have examined marking practices. Most studies that have been conducted are small in scale and/or based in the fields of higher education or English as a foreign language (EFL).
  2. Teachers should differentiate between careless mistakes and errors resulting from misunderstanding. Errors resulting from misunderstanding may be best addressed by providing hints or questions that lead pupils to underlying principles. Careless mistakes may be best addressed by simply marking the mistake as incorrect, without giving the right answer.
  3. Awarding grades for every piece of work may reduce the impact of marking, particularly if pupils become preoccupied with grades at the expense of considering teachers’ formative comments.
  4. The use of targets to make marking as specific and actionable as possible is likely to increase pupil progress.
  5. Pupils are unlikely to benefit from marking unless some time is set aside to enable pupils to consider and respond to marking.
  6. Some forms of marking, including acknowledgement marking, are unlikely to enhance pupil progress. Schools should consider marking less, but marking better.
  7. Teachers should consider the multiple trade-offs involved in many decisions about marking. Trade-offs might relate to workload, but also relate to other areas, such as the amount of work undertaken by the teacher versus the student, and the speed with which marking is completed versus how detailed feedback is.
  8. Additionally, a 2016 report from the Independent Teacher Workload Review Group suggested that providing written feedback on pupils’ work has become disproportionately valued by schools, and the quantity of feedback has too often become confused with quality.

In summary, written feedback is

  1. Time-consuming for teachers
  2. Hard to get right
  3. Inconclusive as to its impact on learning

Solution steps

For these reasons, three educators I respect enormously, Daisy Christodoulou, Clare Sealy and Michael Pershan, each recommend shifting away from giving individualised written comments and towards a model of whole-class feedback.

Get whole-class feedback right, and we save hours of time and improve our students’ learning. Here are some ideas to help.

Part 1: At home

1. Identify the key questions to focus on

We need an efficient way of identifying the questions we will address via whole-class feedback. We could:

  1. Mark each question with a tick and cross and note trends on a piece of paper
  2. Complete a QLA
  3. Analyse key students’ work

2. Have a blank copy of the test or homework with you

On the blank copy write down:

  1. Tallies of the number of students getting the question right and wrong
  2. Common errors
  3. Students to ask for explanations
  4. Follow-up questions to recheck for understanding

3. Categorise issues into two columns

If an issue is widespread and reveals a key misconception, I add the topic to the Reteach column. These are the questions I will address during whole-class feedback. Two or three is a good number here.

If an issue is only apparent for a small number of students, or it appears to be a careless mistake, then I add it to the Retrieve column. I will include a similar question in an upcoming retrieval opportunity, such as a homework, Do Now or Low-Stakes Quiz.

4. Take photos of students’ work

Photos are a great reference point for a discussion, and a concrete way to communicate expectations.

5. Prepare follow-up questions

For each topic in the Reteach column, I write two types of follow-up question in advance:

  1. Re-check: similar in difficulty to the original question students struggled with
  2. Stretch: more challenging than the original question

For example:

Part 2: In class

1. Don’t give books or tests back until after whole-class feedback

Research suggests that learning improves if the feedback happens before students know whether they have the original question correct or not:

If students know before the feedback…

  • they got a question correct, then where is their incentive to listen?
  • they got a question wrong, they may be disheartened and switch off

Holding off giving the work back incentivises everyone to keep paying attention.

2. Use the Whole-Class Feedback Trilogy

This is comprised of:

  1. Model + check for listening. Explain to students how to do the question they struggled with a clear, concise teacher explanation
  2. Check for understanding with a follow-up question. Get mass participation using mini-whiteboards for the questions prepared in advance
  3. Stretch with related extension questions. If 80%+ of students got the follow-up question correct, then ask the prepared extension questions, again eliciting mass participation via mini-whiteboards.

This trio of actions strikes the right balance between support and challenging, offering something for all students, regardless of how they performed on the original question.

Do this for two or three troublesome questions per piece of work. This typically last around 20 minutes.

3. Don’t worry about the students who got the original question correct

Often teachers avoid whole-class feedback as they fear it is not suitable for students who got the original question correct. I don’t think this is an issue for several reasons:

  1. We are not giving work back, so they have an incentive to keep listening
  2. The process is quick
  3. It allows us to assess if they really understand?
  4. The stretch questions test the depth of their understanding
  5. Overlearning is a good thing

4. Consider using review cards for corrections

As we discussed with Low-Stakes Quizzes, corrections on the piece of work itself are a waste of time:

Instead, we can ask students to make Review Cards:

Review cards are more personal, quizzable, and hence more useful, than corrections.

5. End with detective work to fill in any gaps

Dylan Wiliam suggests making feedback detective work is a good way to increase students’ engagement and effort in the feedback process. Following the whole-class feedback, it could work like this:

  1. Give out a blank copy of the homework or assessment
  2. Challenge students to work as a pair or group to produce a perfect piece of work
  3. Question some students who are least likely to know to get a more accurate sense of understanding

Part 3: An example of a school marking policy

Here is an example of this in action. The maths department agreed on the following marking policy:

1. Mark with ticks and crosses

2. Find the three questions that caused the most problems

3. Plan a follow-up question + and extension question for each

4. In class:

  • Model the original question
  • Ask the follow-up question
  • Ask the extension question

They chose to give out follow-up questions on paper to be stuck in books each student got the same questions – but these questions could also have been projected onto the board:

Implementation planning

Here are the ideas we have discussed:

Part 1: At home

  1. Identify the key questions to focus on
  2. Have a blank copy of the test or homework with you
  3. Categorise issues into two columns
  4. Take pictures of students’ work
  5. Prepare follow-up questions

Part 2: In class

  1. Don’t give the work back yet
  2. Use the Whole Class Feedback Trilogy
  3. Don’t worry about the students who can do it
  4. Consider using review cards for corrections
  5. End with detective work to fill in any gaps

Use these ideas to complete the prioritisation exercise here.