Refining Whole-class Feedback

I have recently been reflecting on my whole class feedback following homework and in particular summative assessments. This reflection has been prompted by facilitating some twilights we have been running as a Research School focused on effective feedback. The twilight programme looks to exemplify the EEF’s Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning Guidance Report. Within this is the idea is that, after feedback, students will be able to do better at some point in the future. So, by giving them feedback on an assessment or a piece of homework they have just done, the intention has to be that there will be an improvement when they complete a similar task in the future.

The aim of my feedback following an assessment or piece of homework:

- Close the gap between where the learner is and where they could/should be.

- Provide guidance to pupils on what they have done well and what they need to improve on.

Feeding back following homework and assessments is a delicate balance and several questions need to be asked:

- How much time within the lesson do you devote to it? A common pitfall of these lessons is that teachers spend too long standing at the board going through each question and answer then students lose their focus so the valuable feedback is lost.
- What is the aim of the feedback? Do I expect that by the end every student has an answer to every question?
- What do you do about the questions the whole class struggled on? These will need a reteach so when is best to do that?
- What do you do about the questions that only a few students have struggled on? Going through them as a class will not necessarily be useful for those that got it correct. Conversely, not going through them at all will mean that those students that got them incorrect will likely do so again if this is not addressed.

I understand that these questions will vary from subject to subject.

At Durrington High school we have a guidance card on Effective Whole Class feedback- the sections relevant to this blog are highlighted in bold and discussed below:

Re-teach the common errors and misconceptions. Once your assessment reveals that a certain error and misconception is common to the majority of the class, address this via whole-class feedback rather than individually.

Prior to reflecting on my feedback, I would often spend a significant part of a lesson going through the assessment and addressing common areas of misconception. Sometimes this may have involved me re-teaching several topics quite quickly, which on reflection led to cognitive overload.

Instead, as the EEF guidance suggests, I now recognise that the timing of feedback is less important that the quality of the feedback. Therefore, I now delay giving back papers slightly so that I can lay the foundations first. I use part of a couple of lessons to do a mini-reteach of the common areas of misconception, rather than doing it as part of the assessment/homework feedback.

This has made going through the assessments take less time. It has also been really useful, as one of the main drawbacks of my previous technique was that going through the work would drag on causing even the most dedicated students to lose their focus causing the process to lose impact.

Give pupils a chance to practice once the whole-class feedback is complete.

This is an area that I was weak on, I would do this but on reflection it did not happen soon enough following the assessment. So now what I do, is that during the couple of lessons of reteaching I have some questions for students to complete to check their understanding. Once I have retaught the common areas of misconception, I give students back their papers and give them an opportunity to improve their answers to those sections before I go through the answers. I also make sure to revisit similar questions as part of my retrieval practice, so that they have further practice on these topics.

During the feedback lesson I also give students an opportunity to have another go at some of the other questions they got wrong. Whist I may not have gone over it again, just seeing that it is wrong can be enough for students to identify their error and correct it.

The final tweak I have made, and I know that this would not work for every subject, is that I give them the mark scheme so that they can correct their own answers. I make sure that I circulate during this time so that I can help answer questions if students are not sure how to apply the mark scheme or are still not sure if they would have received the mark.

Use pupil exemplars and ask pupils to identify one or two areas of improvement having given clear explanations of what specifically you want them to correct and look for.

As a science teacher the use of examplars is not something I use very often. However, I know that for other subjects this is a hugely beneficial exercise. This involves sharing exemplar student work with a clear criterion for success unpicking this as a class and then allowing pupils to use them to improve their own work.

Allow pupils an opportunity for metacognitive evaluation.

Once students have gone through their papers as described above, I give them the opportunity to reflect on their strengths and areas for development. For those questions they struggled on I ask them why this was:

- Was it due to a lack of subject knowledge and would they now be able to answer it now or is this an area they still need to focus on?
- Was it that they didn’t understand the way the question was worded and having gone through it they would be able to answer a similar question in the future?

Delivering meaningful feedback following an assessment or homework takes careful planning, in terms of identifying what to reteach and when and having suitable questions to check for understanding. Using the processes outlined above I have found more meaningful engagement from pupils in receiving feedback and better learning has taken place. I make it very clear during my feedback and in all my lessons that I have high expectations of them and want them to improve, as this helps them trust me and makes it more likely that feedback will be effective.

14 February, 2025 —