UNIT 33 GIVING FEEDBACK

 We should start giving feedback without a grade Brookhart suggests that we teach kids to learn to incorporate our feedback and that we should design similar assignments in which students have opportunity to use the feedback. Research has shown that writing comments is more effective for learning that giving grades (Page, 1958; Butler and Nisan, 1986; Gioka, 2006). I tried this with my Grade 11 Chemistry students after they wrote in their reflection journals. I commented on various points that they made in their journals without giving them a grade. The quality of students’ reflections increased over time.  Furthermore Feedback is giving information to someone about their learning and/or showing them that you have understood (or not) what they have said. In the classroom, teachers can give feedback to learners, and learners can give feedback to teachers or learners can also give feedback to their classmates.

When teachers give feedback to learners, they give them information about their learning. Teacher feedback can focus on learners’ language or skills, the ideas in their work, their behaviour, their attitude to learning or their progress. The written or oral feedback should include guidance on how learners can improve their work.

Nobody is going to teach us how to be a good teacher, it depends on us the determination and the desire to give our best to become the teachers that we really want to become.

Source: Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., & Williams, M. (2011). The Teachink Knowledge Tests Course . United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.