Effective Feedback happens when students discover their own strengths and weaknesses.

For example, when students take a test, provide an answer key and let them correct their own tests. Ask the students to then write notes to themselves in a learning log about what they got right and what they got wrong and what they noticed.

Effective Feedback happens naturally when students are engaged throughout the evaluation process.

The very nature of Assignment 8 (from the last section) has a built-in feedback loop because the students are continually engaged in the evaluation process from beginning to end. The final student reflection is an act of discovery and it paves the way for dialogue between teacher and student. The final student reflection, too, can serve as effective feedback when conferencing with parents.

As teachers, we have a choice about how to offer feedback to our students on specific assignments. We can take the route of "the doubting game" the predominant western model that includes "argument, debate, criticism, and extrication of the self" as a way of knowing, or we can take the route of the "believing game," which challenges us "to listen, affirm, enter in, try to put ourselves into the skin of people with other perceptions and asks us to share our experience with others." In Writing Without Teachers Peter Elbow discusses these two games - the need for both, and the realms in which each game works best.

Most likely you will need to utilize a bit of both "games " in your role as a teacher. For giving feedback on assignments, however, we emphasize the "believing game."

We ask teachers to develop and use their "believing muscle" - that is "to understand ideas from the inside." As Peter Elbow writes, "The believing game is constant practice in getting the mind to see or think what is new, different...[the believing game] emphasizes a model of knowing as an act of constructing, an act of investment, an act of involvement..." (p. 173, )

What does it mean to "listen, affirm, enter in" when we speak of giving feedback to students?

For starters, the important thing is to read your student's assignment thoroughly - perhaps two or three times to allow the words to sink in and make an impression upon you.

Then, tell what you experienced as a reader when you read your student's words.

In this spirit of engagement, we have identified 4 Elements of Effective Feedback that can be used when giving your students feedback on assignments. The first two elements are inspired from Peter Elbow's work and are a part of exercising your "believing muscle." The other two are developed from "what works" in coaching. They are as follows:

As you read your student's completed assignment, here are the first two elements to consider:

Each are described fully by Peter Elbow in his book called Writing Without Teachers, a book we highly recommend. The excerpts provided here are a useful starting point, especially the section called "Giving Movies of Your Mind," which includes Pointing and Sumarizing.

Element #1 of Effective Feedback

Pointing

Elbow writes:

"Start by simply pointing to the words and phrases which most succcessfully penetrated your skull...somehow they rang true; or they carried special conviction. Any kind of getting through...Also point to any words or phrases which strike you as particularly weak or empty. Somehow they ring false, hollow, plastic. They bounce ineffectually off your skull." (p. 85)

"As a reader giving your reactions, keep in mind that you are not answering a timeless, theorectical question about the objective qualities of those words on that page. You are answering a time-bound, subjective but factual question: what happened to you when you read the words this time." (p.85)

Element #2 of Effective Feedback

Summarizing - Tell your Learner "very quickly what you found to be the main points, main feelings, or centers of gravity [in their writing]...Summarize into a single sentence; then choose one word...Do this informally. Don't plan or think too much about it. The point is to show the writer what things he made stand out most in your head." (p. 86)

How not to give feedback:

In your feedback , do not use words like "good", "great", "nice" or "bad." They are words that do not help a person improve. For example, let's say you wrote a short story and then you gave your short story to a friend or a colleague to read. If that person said, "Hey, that story you gave to me to read was really good," you might perk up and feel happy about the compliment, but it does not help you improve as a writer.

Feedback that would be more helpful is as follows:

Responses 1, 2, and 3 from above are more valuable to you than the "good", "nice" or "bad" comments of ineffective feedback because you are receiving specific information about content - how something in your story affected that particular reader at that particular time (Note: not all readers for all eternity, simply that reader at that time). As the writer, you can then choose to re-write or keep those sections the reader pointed to. That's up to you as the writer. You listen to the feedback and then you have control over what you change or don't change.

A natural extension of Elbow's "Giving Movies of the Mind" - Pointing and Summarizing - are the third and fourth Elements of Effective Feedback:

Element #3 of Effective Feedback

Posing 1 question for your student to consider

Tell your student what philosophical question his/her writing generates for you. What does their completed assignment make you wonder about on a larger level? (Here, we are not looking for rhetorical questions, rather questions that spark your curiosity.) You might even start your question with the words "I wonder..."

An example might be: "After reading the line in your story, 'He never strayed too far from home,' I wondered if the character was helped or hurt by staying so close to home his whole life. What do you think?"

Element #4 of Effective Feedback

Offering 1 or 2 things for improvement

The reason we say to give your student one (maybe two) things is this: If you highlight one thing for improvement, then, the student can take that one thing, remember it, and incorporate it for the future. In our experience, highlighting 3, 4, or more things to improve upon can get overwhelming.

If there are more than 1 or 2 things that you think need improvement in content, keep a written record for yourself of those things that need work and as future assignments come in, check to see if those issues come up again. Chances are that the issue will come up again and you'll have an opportunity to address it at that time. Also, hopefully, you'll see that the 1 or 2 issues you highlighted for improvement have been taken care of. Highlighting 1 or 2 issues keeps things manageable for the student.

For example, if your student stays general in his/her descriptions when answering a question, your "1 idea for improvement" might be:

"When you talk about your classroom, give me a specific example to support your idea - to make your thought come alive for me," or you might point to a specific part of the writing and say "You wrote in your assignment, 'The children seemed curious.' What did that look like, feel like, sound like, taste like, smell like? Filter your description through the five senses."

Pointing to things that are effective in your Learner's completed assignment is another way to guide him or her to give you more of that kind of writing where it is lacking. For example, you could say: "When you wrote that 'Najib's hands were shaking and his voice cracked when he read his paper to the class,' I felt like I was right there with you. Do this same kind of descriptive writing - filtering through the senses - when you simply wrote, 'the children seemed curious.'"

Here is a feedback form to use when giving your students the 4 Elements of Effective Feedback for their assignments. Click on the Word icon below to access the form:

4 Elements of Effective Feedback

If you choose not to use the form, you can also give feedback in 1 - 2 paragraphs, however, be sure to include in your response to your student the 4 Elements of Effective Feedback:

In the last few pages, we have discussed the 4 Elements of Effective Feedback, a tool that you can use in your classroom for giving students feedback. However, you can also teach this form of effective feedback to your students so that they can give each other helpful feedback while working in peer editing groups. For materials, click here.

Assignment 9: 4 Elements of Effective Feedback

HOW TO GET TO ASSIGNMENT 9:

One Way

To do this assignment, click on the link in color at the top of the page. When it appears, press "Save" and name the file so that you can work on this assignment "off-line." You can type right on the assignment template. Be sure to save your assignment on a disk or on your computer hard drive.

Another Way

You can also copy the text below, and save it to your disk or computer.

GOAL: To use the 4 Elements of Effective Feedback as a tool for giving effective feedback to 3 students on their writing assignments.

GIVE: Feedback to others on their assignments at the TWB Learning Cafe.

Assignment 9: 4 Elements of Effective Feedback

4 Elements of Effective Feedback

HOW TO GET TO THE NEXT MODULE:

Usually, you just click "Next" to go to the next page. When you finish a section, however, (as you're about to do when you finish reading these two paragraphs), you need to click on the "Outline" button, which is on the bottom, right-hand side of the page. Look underneath the blue bar and click on the word "Outline."

When you click on "Outline," a screen will come up that will show you the outline for Course 2. Look for the next section to read and click on the first topic in that next section. For example, when you get to the outline now, look under the next section called "Cooperative Learning and A-REEF" and look for the first topic in black lettering called "A Constructivist Approach." Click on "A Constructivist Approach."