Have school leaders and inspectors forgotten why verbal feedback is routine, important and often, unobserved?
‘Verbal Feedback Given’ and ‘Achieved lesson objective’ stamps. Highlighting the learning intention. A certain number of ticks next to the lesson objectives. Highlighting success criteria. Traffic lighting. All these are habits we have become accustomed to in order to prove we have given feedback to our learners.
Has marking become something we do to appease management and, ultimately, inspectors?
How many hours spent marking?
Marking children’s work has got to be one of the hardest and unrelenting aspects of every teacher’s job. I have lost count of the number of extra hours I’ve spent writing my feedback in children’s books in the form of stars and wishes, highlighting parts of the success criteria and stamping the living daylights out of every tiny piece of work.
Marking is madness
Written feedback doesn’t often require any action from the child when they read it, nor can it regularly challenge them if it does. Not least, feedback is most effective when it is instant. Marking, unless when teaching pen in hand, cannot be instant. I found myself wondering if there was a better way to give children quality feedback and, if possible, to allow them to also feedback to me how they felt about their learning.
Does marking have any impact?
If the extra hours spent accumulatively over a term were worth it, I wouldn’t have had a problem with marking, as all teachers want to have an impact. The truth is, it was making little difference and it was negatively impacting my work-life balance.
It wasn’t until I taught in a school that expected around forty-five minutes of spelling and reading time per day, which required no teacher input, that I began to see an alternative. In this school, there was also no marking policy, just a teaching and learning policy which made no reference to marking, only feedback. So, I took the opportunity to not only improve my work-life balance but to improve the feedback that I could give and receive – immeasurably.
Meaningful Feedback
I now facilitate feedback meetings for all thirty-one learners in my class, every week. There are between five and ten minutes where each child can expect my undivided attention. They are expected to bring their literacy and numeracy books and we will focus on one or two pieces of work they have recently completed.
The impact?
I now have more time in my evenings and weekends. More importantly, children know they have an audience. They also know that they can get one-to-one support during this time if they need any misconceptions explained again. They also have a forum in which they can receive extra challenge and motivation.
Finally, they know that they are going to be held accountable for the work they produce.
How could this feedback policy for your school?
- Each class teacher is free to determine with their class how they will provide feedback.
- Pupils should be able to explain how they get feedback from their class teacher.
- There is no expectation that verbal feedback will be recorded.
- There is an expectation (note, the document below says “exception”) that feedback will have a direct impact on pupils’ outcomes.
What can teachers do instead?
Let’s stop validating and appeasing observers – whether inspectors or school leaders – and expect a little more trust in our classrooms. If people visiting a classroom are looking for evidence of meaningful feedback, focusing on compliant-evidence, such as symbols and stamps to suggest action or consistency, we only have ourselves to blame for fuelling workload and a teacher mental-health crisis.
Where is the professional courtesy, respect and degree of understanding?
Tracking marking by stamps and traditional marking methods suggest that the observer does not have the pupils’ and teachers’ best interests at heart, and is someone who is more concerned with methods to support their bias and or someone who is keen to justify their role…
This sounds like some learning Valhalla and I’m glad it has worked out for you. However, I’m skeptical about the anti-written-feedback debate. I teach English and think that written feedback is effective if handled in the right way. I don’t feel overburdened at all. I’m an Assistant Head but teach 42 periods over two weeks including to IGCSE classes and IB ones. I coach school rugby and lead on pastoral issues, line managing two other departments and having a key hand in teacher development. I realise that marking stamps have no impact on learning but the school’s policy is to use them. So I use them for my own benefit which is to help keep track of the kinds of feedback given and also how the student has responded to that feedback. Verbal feedback is, or course, excellent, but it sometimes can be misunderstood in the same way that written feedback can and I also find that on reflection, some of that feedback can be misdirected in the heat of a classroom environment. For me, written feedback is a record of what the students need to do to a piece of work to make it better and to demonstrate more understanding. Therefore, much of my written feedback is in the form of questions to which students respond. They now have a record to refer to when they are preparing new work. I tend to mark a written piece for each class every two weeks, leaving the rest to self and peer assessments or some ‘live’ marking when I’m running writing time. I’ve found that students enjoy the written feedback. They question it and sometimes challenge it and so a dialogue is maintained. As a teacher, I have a good record of where the student is with some good evidence and a chance to reflect and plan lessons that address the issues as they arise. This is all done for the student but, of course, it satisfies parents and those who conduct book looks as nebulous as they can be.
42 periods over two weeks? Goodness me… I think you need to ask your timetabler to reconsider your contact time as an AHT. Also, have you taken a look at the Verbal Feedback Project research?
Learning by Questions (LbQ) won the Innovator of the Year award at BETT in January 2019 and one of its merits picked up by the judges was it huge workload saving in terms of both marking and planning. Students get live feedback and so do teachers, able to see who needs help seconds after a mistake has been made. Interventions are therefore targeted and with a library of 65,000 ready -to-use , differentiated questions in English, maths and science (Years 3 to 9) and electronic marking teachers’ workload is substantially reduced. Schools using LbQ are reporting huge gains in achievement and a massive impact upon behaviour and engagement.
I followed the project for its first 12 months and set out my findings in my book ‘Learning by Questions: the power of live feedback’. Sir Kevan Collins, former Chief Executive of the EEF, has recently joined the LbQ team. Readers can get a free 60- day trial by registering on the LbQ website.