💥 Taking Whole Class Feedback One Step Further

How can teachers reduce their marking workload, and take whole-class feedback, one step further?

Is it possible, that a teacher can reduce their marking workload, as well as improve the quality of their feedback? This blog and video explain how…

I’ve been championing verbal feedback since 2014.

The more challenging the school, the crazier the marking…

Only last academic year, I published the Verbal Feedback Project (UCL, 2019) alongside Mark Quinn to provide a body of action research evidence provided by teachers, particularly those working in disadvantaged schools in England, where research typically shows that the more challenging the context, the more likely teachers will be asked to mark (more) by frequency and by coloured pen.

In a meta-analysis paper published by John Hattie et al (2020), the research revisits the power of feedback from Hattie’s visible learning database. In summary, the new research concludes that the original data contained many duplicates which may have influenced effect size rankings.

Thus, is feedback king?

Taking feedback one step further!

One gem from the original paper identified three very important types of providing feedback:

1. “feed-up” (comparison of the actual status with a target status),
2. “feed-back” (comparison of the actual status with a previous status), and
3. “feed-forward” (explanation of the target status based on the actual status).

I have explained these in the video below using the current and well-circulated whole-class feedback sheet.

Download this resource

Taking it one step further, and if we consider other forms of feedback: Written, verbal and non-verbal, plus the three types of feedback listed above, we can take research and build upon the current resource.

I’ve included a copy here, taking whole-class feedback one step further and you can watch me below explain how it works…

Some words of caution…

There are some very important disclaimers to make clear.

“Feedback is complex and must be differentiated. It takes many forms and to be effective, the more information it contains, the more powerful it can be” (Hattie, 2020).

Well, this potential goes against everything this resource stands for.

Whilst whole class feedback is the ideal alternative for teachers to use to help reduce the marking burden, as ever, one strategy never works. It’s important to select and implement various interventions in the classroom. However, I do hope this tool reduces elements of your marking workload as well as improve the impact of your feedback on students.

It’s important for teachers to use a range of strategies to suit the context in which they teach. Assessment, whether in or out of the lesson, should help students make progress. Whole-class feedback sheets can work, but it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it, that matters.