Providing Actionable Feedback to Students

This post is courtesy of Sarah Anderson, Irondale High School Social Studies Teacher and Mounds View Fellow:

As I look at my daunting pile of essay portfolio folders I am tempted to run back upstairs to my bed and climb under the covers.  It is spring break and my students have been writing essays all year, keeping a portfolio that includes their own reflections about how each essay went and what specific feedback they want me to give them.  Over the course of the year and with the cooperation of my PLC member I have been working smarter not harder, making the job of feedback not quite so daunting (however a pile of 90 essays is still daunting!)

What is feedback?  According to Grant Wiggins (2012 ), “it is goal referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.” Similarly according to  Susan Brookhart (2012),“good feedback is timely, descriptive of the work, positive, clear and specific, and differentiated.”  Therefore, in order to spend the time giving feedback teachers need to be cognitive of the way in which feedback is delivered.  

Goal Referenced or Aligned to a Target

My students are writing essays for an AP History course, they know the standard rubric which includes having a clear well developed thesis, supporting evidence with specific examples, and effectively analyzing evidence. Instead of giving the students the rubric and making check marks if the student has met the goals, I write feedback on their essay and reflections targeting one of these three big areas.  The rubric itself is helpful for me and my own recording but it s not  helpful for a student that needs actionable steps to make progress.  Do I give them feedback on every mistake?  No, my goal is to help my students improve their writing and an exhaustive list of suggestions is not going to help them.  According to Brookhart (2012) “ Choose your words carefully, describe the works strengths and give at least one suggestion for a next step that is directly in line with the learning target.”  For example, at the beginning of the school year with the first essay my focus is the thesis statement.  Maybe the students have some strong supporting evidence within their body paragraphs and I will underline the evidence with a comment arguing that this is what strong supportive evidence looks like, but I will spend most of my time giving specific actionable feedback on the thesis, dissecting the thesis for the student or in some cases re writing the thesis using the arguments they put in the essay. According  to Wiggins (2012), “Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that , if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement.”

Positive and  Differentiated

Each student is at a differing point in their learning and as educators we have a responsibility to meet the students where they are at and move them in their learning, challenge them and help them continue to grow their skills.  Differentiated instruction uses the current work of the student to meet the need of the student, each student may need something different, a prompt for one or a reminder or example for another (Brookhart 2012).  As my students progress throughout the year, each will be in a different place in their writing. The writing portfolios are helpful because I can look at where they were in their last essay, what feedback was given and if they put that feedback to use in the next essay.  A student that has spent their first three essays addressing the complexity of their thesis and has gotten to a place where they have written a well developed thesis can see the growth and I can address the growth instilling not praise but confidence in that student as far as that element of writing is concerned.  Positive feedback promotes learning and allows students to see learning as a journey (Brookhart 2008). I am very careful to make sure the feedback is positive and not praise.  Praise can change the direction of the journey of learning making it about the teacher and not the student (Dweck, 2007).  If the thesis is not strengthening then I can as an educator come up with a different way to address this concern since my feedback is not helping the student progress.  Students are only given feedback and not a score on their essays, because again this a journey of learning and each student starts and ends in a different place in their writing.

Timely

This is the hardest issue to address as an educator. How do I make sure that the students get timely feedback?  How then are the students going to use the feedback that I have given them? In the writing portfolios, I am able to give feedback to students within a week of writing their essays. However, my students will not write another essay for two more weeks. So how do I make this useful to the student?   I have been giving the students their feedback within the week, then I have started to hand out the portfolios again the day before the next essay is to be written. At that time I ask my student individually what element  or elements of their writing are they going to work on during their next essay tomorrow?  Again when they come to class to write that day, they look one more time at their feedback from their previous essay, the content is different but the elements of writing are the same. According to Brookhart (2012) “ Timely. It arrives while the student is still thinking about the work and while there’s still time for improvement.”

Conclusion

Providing Actionable Feedback to our students is our responsibility as educators, if we want our students to grow and succeed they must know how to grow and succeed. Our students must be given feedback that provides them steps to achieve and in order for us to help our students achieve we must work smarter not harder. We must be aligned with a target in our feedback so that our students understand what they are working towards and are given actionable steps to use. We must be  positive in our feedback so they see learning as their journey not ours. We must differentiate our feedback to the needs of our specific students (giving one or two pieces of feedback to help them reach their learning target). And Lastly, we must be timely in our feedback so that our students can address the feedback by “trying it again.”  Therefore I will not run upstairs and crawl under my covers but instead work smarter not harder in delivering feedback to my students.

Brookhart, Susan M. (2012).  Preventing Feedback Fizzle. Educational Leadership. 70 (1) 24 - 29.

Wiggins, Grant. (2012). Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Educational Leadership. 70 (1) 10 - 16.

Dweck.C. S. (2007). The perils and promises of praise. Educational Leadership. 65 (2) , 34 - 39.