How can learners be encouraged to engage more fully with the formative feedback given? – ATB
This is the basic area of my research but I also wish to explore ways in which dialogue between teacher and pupil can be initiated and sustained in order to ‘close the gap’ between a learner’s current performance and their target. I also want to use this to help students become more reflective, independent learners.
My Observations
As teachers we spend a huge amount of time marking students’ work but the investment of this time is only useful if students internalise and act on the advice given in order to improve the quality of their work. More often than not we spend more time writing the comments than the students do reading them.
Dylan Wiliams summarises this well- the total time spent by teachers on marking costs the taxpayers £billions for very little benefit, making it the most expensive PR activity in history.
So is there really any point in marking at all?
The Sutton Trust report ‘Pupil Premium Toolkit’ listed effective feedback as the highest impact action (adding eight months of learning per year) – against the lowest cost.
WHY BOTHER? Effective marking allows us as teachers to show the children that we teach that we value their efforts. It allows us to judge our own effectiveness as teachers. It is when we can make strategic decisions about the next steps children need to make. But more importantly it is a rare opportunity to have an individual dialogue with every child. Without it most of the children we teach would never get that one to one feedback they need in order to make outstanding progress. When it is done well it allows us to personalise our feedback, targets and praise. It is a crucial skill for every good teacher. Hayley Thompson AST
I find a great deal of resonance with both of these extracts and personally believe that high quality, effective marking can make a real difference to the final outcomes for students. From personal experience work, if work from a student is not marked there is a clear decline in its quality both in terms of the content and the presentation. Students are keen to minimise the time spent on activities that are not of their own choosing and see little purpose in devoting hours of their time to something that will never be looked at. ( I can sympathise with this..I rarely paint my toenails)
From my research into current thinking it is not the quantity of feedback that matters but the quality and impact of the feedback given. So we need to keep the volume of marking in proportion to the impact it can have on improving learning outcomes. Learning outcomes can only be improved if the feedback is studied and acted upon. This also needs to be a rapid cycle so that learners can act on the advice immediately whilst the key ideas are still current and relevant. This is especially important in content led subjects such as Science.
I came across some examples where teachers had used highlighters to indicate areas of success and areas for improvement. This seemed to offer a clear way of communicating to students where their work needed to be improved in a simple and efficient manner as well as celebrating areas of strength. This also offered a platform to engage thinking skills as students would be required to determine what was wrong with their work in order to decide on how it could be improved. This level of engagement was what I was hoping to achieve rather than a simple note taken of my diagnosis of what was wrong with their work which at best is a fairly passive learning experience.
Build in ‘struggle time’ before providing feedback. “Learning happens when people have to think hard” [Coe]. Over-guiding students is less effective than “delaying, reducing and summarising [Bjork].
So fewer words and more highlights…
My Actions
I made the decision to initially focus this style of marking on extended tasks such as homeworks comprising of a selection of past paper questions or QWC type tasks to allow opportunity for detailed feedback to be given. Each student would also receive a comment to guide as to major areas that need to be addressed and suitable actions to take to resolve these issues.
- This highlighted feedback would then be followed by dedicated reflection/improvement time at the start of each lesson where assessed work had been returned. Here students would be expected to complete corrections/actions to improve their work.
- They would also be asked to reflect on how much effort they felt had been put into the work and how they perceived the standard of the work. Students would also be asked how they intended to use the feedback given to improve the quality of the next piece of work.
So armed with highlighter-pink for a problem and green/yellow for good bits I embarked on a colourful research project in Sept 2015.
My Observations
As the project is only 6 weeks old, the long term impact cannot yet be determined. I hope that by making my marking more effective the overall performance of my classes will be improved with possibly a positive residual somewhere……
The short term impact can start to be considered.
- Students have responded positively and actively search out the pink highlights during reflection time. They comment that this is easier than reading prose comments to identify where there is a problem (many of our students find reading handwriting difficult).
- Many students, particularly the MAT enjoy the challenge of ‘spotting the mistake’.
- Students collaborate, compare and discuss their work to identify reasons for errors in their work and this has promoted quality peer interactions in lessons.
- There has been a marked reduction of the repetition of the same error in subsequent tasks. (A frustrating feature ever present in earlier work as students failed to read/assimilate the advice given and apply it to the next task).
Unexpected outcomes
- A reduction in the amount of copied homework -students now appear to value their homework tasks more. The prioritisation of reflection time for homework seems to have raised its profile in the eyes of the students.
- Many students are actively seeking to improve the quality of their work over time and the completion rate of tasks set has been sustained at a high rate over the first half term. (as opposed to the regular drop seen in previous years)
- It has been possible to differentiate more effectively by giving additional support/guidance for weaker students to help them identify their mistakes whilst offering far less help for the more able.
- Possibly the weirdest outcome. I have become a more reflective marker. In choosing which parts to highlight I have found myself becoming far more analytical. Freed from the need to pepper the work with comments and words I have been able to focus on what the students are actually doing and why the mistakes are occurring. This has allowed me to amend my teaching in a more focused way.
Future Developments
After Christmas, once students are fully conversant with the processes outlined above, I intend to develop this further by asking the students to produce the summative comments for each piece of work and pose questions for me to respond to. This will then act as a vehicle for using pupil voice to inform the teaching and learning within my lessons. I will still need to provide comment based support for some learners as these higher level thinking skills take time to develop.
Maybe one day just the highlighter on its own will be sufficient to promote development, with students discussing ideas and collaboratively suggesting effective pathways and actions to secure improvement. This is surely the aim of every teacher-to develop the independence and self confidence of every learner. To enable students to analyse and improve their own performance seeking support from both their peers and their teacher. I feel that this is a realistic goal for my Yr 13 group as they are both able and highly motivated. I may also be able to go some way to achieving this with both Yr 11 Double and Triple groups.