Day 14: feedback

What is feedback for learning, and how well do you give it to students?

 

     The obsession with giving students feedback is a fairly recent one. Not that I never gave feedback to my students before. It's always been a vital part of being a teacher, but somehow recently it has become the number one priority on everyone's list. Not only do you need to gave feedback, but you'd better have the evidence to prove that you do.
     Most of my feedback has always been person to person. After an oral I will talk to the student about how they did, make suggestions for improvement and set goals.  Written work gets handed back in less than a week after it has been handed in, with the necessary comments and if need be I will also go to the student to talk about it. This seems to work well, but to be sure you will have to ask my students.
     I have found it much harder to deal with giving students feedback on their "approaches to learning". Very often these concepts are hard to grasp and especially hard to keep track of.  A while ago one of my colleagues suggested using Class Dojo, an online system that helps with keeping track of approaches and giving students feedback on a regular basis. I've started to use it, but it will be a while before I can assess it usefulness as a feedback tool. So far the students like it, and I'll see if I can keep it up. To be continued...