Receiving Pupil Feedback

Are you ready to hear what your pupils think?

Ask The Pupils

Get feedback on your teaching – from your pupils.

• Spend a short time explaining to your pupils what feedback is and how it is useful to the recipient.
• Provide pupils with a list of ‘measures’ you consider to be significant for successful teaching – or even better, generate their ideas to form your criteria.
• Provide two pupils with the criteria, clip boards and pencils to make notes on your lesson.
• Teach on!
• Meet formally with the pupils. Engage in discussion about what made the lesson successful and how it could be improved for the learners.
• Reflect on the feedback you were given. Sure, the suggestion of sweets on the tables might not be an option, but perhaps more hands-on activities or challenges might be prompted too. Maybe they’d like more teacher talk, or less? But one thing is for sure, if you don’t ask- you’ll never know!

Why is it a good strategy?

• Learners are teachers’ biggest ‘clients’. We want our pupils to buy into the learning we present and their feedback on our lessons is useful reflection tool.
• Providing pupils with a voice makes them feel empowered and valued and shows them respect, building rapport.
• The ‘Ask the pupils’ activity allows us to become role models for receiving feedback, showing pupils how to receive and act upon feedback accordingly.

Tip

As educators, we know how hard giving feedback can be. To aid your pupils initially, offer them a bank of phrases to select from to scaffold their feedback.