Whole-class feedback: a recipe, not a statement

This is part of a series. Click here to read the first post.

As we’ve seen in the previous post, one of the problems with traditional written comments is that they are not that useful. When a pupil reads a comment at the bottom of a piece of work that says ‘you need to be more systematic’, what is the pupil supposed to do in response to that feedback?

The best thing about whole-class feedback, therefore, is the potential it offers you to give more useful feedback that isn’t tied to the format of a prose sentence. Imagine you read a set of 25 narratives by your class that all have problems with tense consistency. You could write at the bottom of each essay: ‘you need to make your tense more consistent’.

Or, you could write nothing on the books, and at the start of the next lesson you could display the following two sentences.

The spaceship buzzed around the sky and then landed. Two aliens get out and threaten the locals!

You could then ask the class to find the error, correct the error, and then find a similar error in their own work and correct that. Here’s an excerpt from a whole-class feedback sheet we’ve designed with some more examples.

All of these activities are more likely to prompt mental activity than a written comment.

However, one risk is that you simply replace unhelpful individual written comments with unhelpful whole-class written comments. Instead of writing ‘be more systematic’ on each pupil’s essay, you write ‘be more systematic’ on the first slide of your powerpoint, and give pupils ten minutes to reflect on how they can ‘be more systematic’. Or you write on the board ‘everyone needs to make their tense more consistent! You have ten minutes to do so’. Yes, you have saved time — but you haven’t improved the feedback. For whole class feedback to be more effective, it has to move from a statement to a specific action; from a written comment to, in Dylan Wiliam’s words, ‘a recipe for future action’.

If you are interested in learning more, I am running a programme of online professional development from January — May 2023 which focusses on general assessment principles. The session on whole-class feedback is on March 13th. All sessions are free for subscribers who can register for them here. The schedule is below.