How should teachers provide verbal feedback to students?
Over the past month, Teacher Toolkit has launched an Action Research: Verbal Feedback project and to date, over 60 schools have signed up with a potential impact on over 45,000 students!
Objectives
The objective is to raise the profile of verbal feedback as the default approach for teacher assessment. I have been conducting some ad-hoc experiments in class with my students and the following recordings in the post are from a year 7 (aged 11) design and technology: textiles class.
The recordings are taken on Thursday 11th May at 2:00pm onwards are captured 20 minutes into the start of the lesson. The lesson is a double-period on a Thursday afternoon. The lessons are 50 minutes each, totalling 1 hour 40 minutes. There is no planned script. The reason for this is to analyse how I may be able to develop a common vernacular or script to use in the Verbal Feedback project.
From May 2017, Teacher Toolkit (TT) is searching for a number of schools to conduct action research in school classrooms from September 2017 to May 2018; designed to alleviate teacher workload and raise the profile of verbal feedback. TT will coordinate participants, samples and documents, as well as publish the findings and share the results of the study with OfSTED and the Department for Education in England.
The objective is to dispel the following myths:
- That written feedback is the most valuable type of feedback.
- That the best written feedback is a conversation between pupil and teacher
- That feedback must be evidenced in a book to ‘count’ towards a) progress b) evidence of acting on feedback.
The intention is that the sample group of schools develop a common framework for teachers to ‘feedback to students’ in a multitude of way and in a variety of situations and contexts.
Data Collection:
Here are 3 simple recordings taken from my class as described above.
Verbal Feedback test 1: “Using verbal feedback to aid redrafting work.”
In this short recording above you will hear me provide verbal feedback to a student so that she can redraft her written and practical work. This student has missed several lessons and lacks confidence. You will also hear me direct a student at the other side of the room.
Verbal Feedback test 2: “Using whole-class instruction to aid objectives.”
In this recording you will hear me direct all students in the class whilst providing one-to-one feedback and question prompts with a SEN student.
Verbal Feedback test 3: “Using verbal feedback to tease out understanding and ‘next steps’ …”
In this recording you will hear me direct a number of students during practical work – including redrafting past completed work in exercise books. Although there is no specific assessment provided, the recording is added to provide a sense of environment.
I hope that I can provide more recordings over the coming weeks using explicit (verbal) assessment frameworks.
Sign up
Ten days later, here is the data taken from the sign up form so far …
If you are interested in being part of this study, please:
- read further information and
- if you are still interested and have consent, sign your school details here.
- Deadline for schools to submit their details is 31st July 2017.
- Hashtag: #TTkitResearch
Really interesting to hear you give feedback to the pupils, and I agree with the objective of the research in principle, however I think your action research may be biased. Your premise is that written feedback being the best form of feedback is a ‘myth’. Whilst this MAY be true, it means that you are in danger of getting a biased sample of participants who all want to prove that premise. Would it not be better to ‘investigate in order to be able define the most effective form of feedback’ which is more open? What would happen if, heaven forbid, written feedback WAS found to be the most effective form of feedback?!
Fair point – will aim to stay impartial. All schools will have two sample groups on both schemes of work. The plan is teacher A to offer ‘verbal feedback’ only and the other sample / teacher B to offer ‘written feedback’ as well as normal conversations with students. The concept is that teacher A will not mark any work other than provide verbal feedback for improvement.
Great, I look forward to reading the results.
I love the idea in principle and I am trying to use slow writing and modelling in class as well as instant feedback. However, how on earth can I give feedback to a GCSE class of 25 History students who have written a 16 mark argument style question? Thanks do use peer assessment but feel that as a teacher I need to have a real feel of what all of my students areas of strength are and areas for improvement. We still need to be able predict accurately what GCSE grade students are working towards. A dvice please.
I do believe exam boards are driving teacher workload e.g. written expectations. Have you read the UCL Verbal Feedback Report?