Using Feedback to Drive Student Learning
Students love receiving positive feedback, but encouragement can build more than rapport- it can drive student learning to extend beyond the day’s assignment. Feedback is an important tool for recognizing a student’s academic strengths, their investment in the assignment, and encouraging students to think more deeply about their potential learning.
One of the most common questions parents ask when they consider enrolling with PacPrep, is how teachers provide feedback in the 1:1 model. The answer is: OFTEN, DETAILED, and CONSTRUCTIVELY. Weekly reports are sent to parents describing exactly what their students are working on in each class, and students always know where they stand on each of their learning goals. There are some important elements to high-quality feedback, and our Instructional Manager, Kathy Tojaga, supports our teachers in maximizing its benefits. Here she shares some tips that teachers in any school setting can use.
Using Feedback to Drive Student Learning
Students love receiving positive feedback, but encouragement can build more than rapport- it can drive student learning to extend beyond the day’s assignment. Feedback is an important tool for recognizing a student’s academic strengths, their investment in the assignment, and encouraging students to think more deeply about their potential learning. The most effective feedback is targeted, encouraging, and thought provoking. Here are a few tips for providing students with feedback that can recognize their strengths as an individual learner and foster internal motivation for pushing their work further in the next project.
Feedback should reference a skill or specific knowledge
The most important aspect of feedback is referencing one specific skill or piece of knowledge. This demonstrates to the student a full investment in the work they have produced and are giving them individualized and personalized attention. General feedback such as ‘Nice Work or ‘Great Job’ provides praise, but it does not show the student what is good about their work. Concentrating on one specific detail like, ‘I love the imagery you used in the second sentence,’ ‘the way you lined up the subtraction of your division problem made it so easy to follow your thought process,’ or ‘you drew a great connection between the English king and today’s President’ will encourage students to continue producing high quality work.
Feedback should be given in a timely manner
It is crucial to provide students with consistent and ongoing feedback. Providing timely feedback allows students to make targeted daily growth towards achieving their academic and behavioral goals. This also supports teachers in creating efficient and informed weekly updates and focused semester progress reports.
Feedback should be actionable
Feedback should focus on an action that can be reproduced in future lessons. This is another reason timely feedback is crucial: students must be given the opportunity to practice skills over multiple occasions, because they cannot master every skill in one try! Providing specific and actionable feedback on a skill fostered and developed over the course of a unit, semester, or year will be the most valuable to both teacher and student. Feedback can be given verbally, non-verbally, or in written form. Sometimes the best next strategy is quiet, independent work time to test their strengths while teachers observe and plan the next growth target!
Feedback should be positive and constructive
Feedback should always be framed in a positive way. If a student gives an incorrect answer, instead of saying “no,” redirecting them in the right direction is optimal. It will increase a student’s confidence and willingness to engage in difficult questions if the response is “so close! It is related to…” or “I see how you came to that conclusion, I was actually thinking about it from this perspective…” Always validate the response the student gives, because they were brought to that conclusion based on the evidence they had at hand. If a student immediately bursts out an incorrect answer, rather than telling them they are wrong, try politely reminding them to take their time. Restate the question, and set the expectation that they cannot answer until a predetermined “think time” has ended (5-10 seconds).
Interested in hearing more about how PacPrep provides high-quality feedback for our students? Reach out to a member of our team!