Characteristics of Descriptive Feedback

1. Characteristics of Descriptive Feedback And suggestions for the classroom: Content from Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning by Jan Chappuis

2. Why descriptive feedback? • Research indicates that providing effective descriptive feedback to students has a huge impact on student achievement. Highly effective teachers provide students with a roadmap to success on learning targets

3. Characteristics of Effective Feedback • Directs attention to the intended learning, pointing out strengths and offering specific information to guide improvement • Occurs during learning, while there is still time to act on it. • Addresses partial understanding • Does not do the thinking for the student • Limits corrective information to the amount of advice the student can act on

4. Directing attention to intended learning… • Success Feedback—linked to intended learning, identifies what is done correctly, describes a quality feature, or effective use of a strategy • “you got all of the questions on parallel and perpendicular lines right” • The information you found is important to your topic and answers questions your reader may have”

5. Directing attention to intended learning… • Intervention feedback—identifies areas in need of improvement and provides enough info so that students know next steps (most effective when linked to intended learning goals) • “you had some trouble with the differences between isosceles and scalene triangles. Reread page 102 and try these again.” • “The drawing you made didn’t seem to help you solve the problem. Try drawing a Venn diagram and placing the information on it.” • See figure 3.3 for more examples

6. Praise and success feedback • Direct praise to characteristics of the work not characteristics of the learner • Remember fixed v. growth mindsets • Watch “I like the way you…”comments. Its not about pleasing the teacher but about “aspects of quality” • Let your learning targets guide your feedback and praise to students

7. Grades as feedback on practice work • “A number of studies have shown that attaching evaluative grades to practice work can cause problems for both high- and low- achieving students. • Studies indicated that once the letter grade is assigned then the comments/feedback are largely ignored • pencil/pen suggestion/strategy

8. Effective feedback occurs during learning • Cultivate a culture of learning from mistakes • Feedback is most effective when there is still time to act on it • Build in time to act on feedback

9. Effective feedback addresses partial understanding • If a student has not partially mastered a concept before giving feedback, they probably won’t understand the feedback. Feedback is for partial mastery of learning targets. • Keep teaching if the student/s have not reached partial mastery

10. Don’t do the thinking for the student • Example of the teenager who is told repeatedly to clean the room so mom eventually does it • Teach what is expected, make sure they know it, hold them accountable for the standard • Use questioning to guide the student to improved products

11. Suggestions for offering feedback • Pictures or symbols—stars and stairs • That’s good, Now this: • Assessment dialogue—includes student self-reflections and teacher feedback • Two color highlighting • The three-minute conference • Peer feedback

12. Suggestions from Amy • Use strong and weak work samples to guide discussions—maybe even randomly (and anonymously) pull samples and analyze as a class/small group • Always use language from the learning target and scoring rubric when providing descriptive feedback • Train students to use the rubric and possibly help develop rubrics and use learning targets when analyzing their own and other student’s work