Teaching and learning commitment

Teacher’s chosen focus area: Feedback
Things observers could consider Support and guidance for observers to offer advice

Effectiveness of feedback to move Try whole class feedback as an alternative. This allows you to take notes in your own

learning forward: teachers write book or file about the work students have produced rather than writing in students’

extensive notes for students on books. You can then use this to map specifically what the common misconceptions

their books but students struggle to are that need to be retaught to the whole class and which individual students you

tell you what it means or how they need to offer additional support to. Instead of focusing on individual attainment,

can use it; WCF will allow you to consider patterns that indicate learning patterns across the

class. It should take less time to work through a set of students’ books and the time

saved can be used to plan how to fill learning gaps.

Feedback to students is general- Generalised feedback is very difficult for students or teachers to act on. As a teach-
ised rather than granular. E.g. you er, it is very difficult to teach children how to write in greater detail without a specific
need to write in greater detail; understanding of why students have not done so. It is important to consider the mis-
conceptions or knowledge gaps that are revealled in the work. If you can’t do this,
consider assessment design. A well designed assessment should allow teachers to
draw clear inferences about what students know and don’t know. If the work pro-
duced doesn’t allow you to do that, redesign the assessment so that it allows you to
be more diagnostic.

Feedback to students focuses on It is really important to tell students what they are succeeding in so that they feel pos-
past performance rather than itive and encouraged, but needs to be delivered alongside specific actions to im-
moving forward; prove. As above, this needs to be focused on ‘how’ rather than ‘what’ i.e. “write an
better conclusion” is not helpful feedback unless the teachers shows them exactly
how to write a better conclusion.

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Teacher’s chosen focus area: Feedback
Things observers could consider Support and guidance for observers to offer advice

Feedback operates like a satnav. This can be tricky, but the key is to give students prompts and clues but not tell them

It gives continuous instructions that exactly what to write or do. The aim of feedback isn’t that they go on to produce a

allow students to improve one one off exemplary version of the initial piece of work because they have been told

piece of work, but doesn’t teach what to write, but that they can apply the steps to a slightly different piece of work in

students the route that can be ap- an improved way. Don’t focus too much on the work that has been done and mak-

plied to other work; ing it perfect—focus on reteaching the steps that can be applied to multiple re-

sponses. Aim to reduce the amount of feedback over time, giving students fewer

improvement cues so they have to think independently about improvement.

Students are given too much feed- Focus on the one or two things that you most want students to improve. If you read

back at one time; students’ work and there are several problems/ misconceptions, there is little point

trying to address them all the next lesson. Separate feedback into easy fixes and

longer term problems. Identify the little things that can be quickly retaught and ad-

dressed in the next lesson. Plan how to reteach the bigger problems over several les-

sons. Students will be overwhelmed if they are presented with too much feedback—

even if it is specific and helpful. Less is more—sharp, granular feedback that is not

overwhelming.

Students are told what they need Displaying the actual work of a student who has been successful can be really pow-
to do to improve, but not shown; erful. Identify examples of work that is successful and show it to students under the
visualiser, explain to them specifically what the student has done well. Reinforce to
students that they are all capable of this standard with practice. If there is not one
example that can be used, taking the bet bits from a range of students can also
work well.

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Teacher’s chosen focus area: Feedback

Things observers could consider Support and guidance for observers to offer advice

Students are given specific im- Try creating find and fix grids. This simply involves making a note of the commonly
provements to make to their work, occurring errors in students work and creating a table that includes the issues. For ex-
but struggle to do so; ample, if lots of students were not spelling a particular word correctly, the teacher
might write the word, spelt incorrectly, in a box of the table. The students then spot
the error and correct it. This is a much more concentrated way of correcting errors/
misconceptions and easier for the teacher to then go through the corrected re-
sponses with the students.

Feedback as motivation: students There are likely to be numerous factors that cause a student to have a poor self im-

feel demotivated by feedback age as a learner and teachers can use feedback to slowly chip away at this and

and doubt their ability to succeed. help them see themselves as good at the subject. Even if students have struggled

They have a poor self image as with a task, focus on the celebrating the positives. Identify areas of success and en-

learners; sure students know how well they have done. When students have failed to grasp

something, tell them that it is hard, but with more practice you have complete belief

in their ability. Tell to them that it is perfectly normal to forget thing because that’s

how memory works. Constantly use feedback to point out to students how much

better they are getting at the subject. Some children will only see themselves in

terms of failure and what they can’t do– positive feedback can help build resilience.

Some students prefer to appear This is known as attribution theory and is based on the perception that intelligence is
lazy and will claim they didn’t try fixed so it is less embarrassing to claim lack of effort rather than lack of ability. Feed-
rather than admit that they could- back can be used to challenge this idea. Feedback needs to explicitly focus on the
n’t do a piece of work; task and not the student. Only use grades when absolutely necessary to make stu-
dents more receptive to feedback. Consistently communicate to students that er-
rors are an essential part of learning.

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Teacher’s chosen focus area: Feedback

Things observers could consider Support and guidance for observers to offer advice

Teachers praise students a lot: they Although well-intentioned, praise for mediocrity actually undermines high expecta-

aim to praise all students. tions. If praise can be ‘won’ for semi compliant behaviour or poor quality work, there

is no point in working harder.

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References: useful further reading/ viewing to recommend:
TCC Teaching and Learning Hub: https://sites.google.com/view/cpdtcc/home
Caviglioli, O. Sherrington, S. 2020 Teaching Walkthrus. John Catt Educational
Lemov, D. 2015. Teach Like A Champion 2.0. Jossey Bass.
Bennett, T. 2020. Running the Room. John Catt Educatonal
Murphy, J. 2020. The Research ED guide to literacy. Page 107 “How can we develop vocabulary in the class-
room, Alex Quigley. John Catt Educational.
https://fhesteachingandlearninghub.wordpress.com/researched-surrey-2020/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-y-8wn6dL1UaVoSwAvE8QjhDeunacUcK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C7K-r7J6-w&list=PL-y-8wn6dL1UaVoSwAvE8QjhDeunacUcK&index=38
Coe, R. Rauch, CJ. Kime, S. Singleton, D. 2020. Great Teaching Toolkit. Cambridge Assessment Int. Ed.

Other links are contained in the PD booklet.

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