Effective Feedback

Providing students with effective feedback that clearly tells them how they are doing is essential in learning. I was reading an article that talked about a student who told her teacher she learned nothing from the feedback she got, and it made me think about assignments that I had gotten marked in the past. I remember getting back essays that getting a mark, but not explanation of why I received the particular mark; thus, I did not know how to improve on another assignment or essays. On the other hand, an English teacher provided the best feedback, which was useful; I would write a draft of my essay and meet with him to talk about what I need to fix, then I would write up a second draft and he would give more one on one feedback, before writing a final draft of the essay. I thought this was really useful as the teacher would give me a mark for each draft, and tell me how I can improve my writing skills, in terms of grammar. Mamchur noted in her “Six Traps of Evaluation,” that teachers need to spend more time on providing comments and accurate feedback that can be helpful; thus, the English teacher meeting and going through the paper with me would be more useful than just marking our papers, and noting the grammatical errors. Consequently, when students are given feedback that consists of comments suggesting strengths and weaknesses, the students are less confused than when reading words like “good job” or given just a mark. When I was volunteering, I noticed that some teachers were using the rubric system to write down what the student did well in, and what to work on in their next writing; for instance, a student might have done well in grammar and spelling, but needs to work on putting things together in well-structured paragraphs that consist of sentences. When we only give grades or numbers, then students are confused about what they did well on, or what the point of the work was. Students with different learning styles require particular information about their mark as well—like the judging or introvert students—because a grade or mark means nothing to them. Teachers then have to very careful about different learning styles and types in their classroom, when giving feedback.