4 Ways to Help Students Engage With Feedback

As a teacher, you’ve probably had this same experience: You give students written feedback on a formative assessment, and they either don’t even look at it or look so quickly that you can be sure they didn’t really take it in.

I kept seeing this in my own secondary classrooms and wanted to find a way to make the written feedback I was giving more meaningful and ensure that my students were actually doing something with it. I decided to focus on giving my students more time to process feedback so they would understand what they need to do to improve, and providing structured protocols that allow my students to reflect on the given feedback.

All of this has helped me create a classroom environment in which feedback is truly useful because my students have the opportunity to make sense of it and consider how to apply it.

Guiding STUDENTS to ENGAGE WITH FEEDBACK

These strategies have helped my students more meaningfully engage with feedback, allowing them to more effectively use it to improve.

1. Paraphrasing feedback. One of the first ways I’ve helped my students more meaningfully engage with written feedback is by asking them to paraphrase the feedback in their own words.

When students receive a formative assessment back with written feedback, I give them 10 minutes to review and paraphrase what I’ve written in their own words in their notebooks. When students have to rewrite the feedback in their own words, they need to actually read it, understand what it is saying, and think about what it means.

In addition to helping students take time to carefully read feedback, this gives students a record in their notebooks of the feedback they’ve gotten that they can look back on over time to identify trends.

2. Guided reflection. To help my students not only review given feedback, but reflect on it, I have students complete a guided reflection via Google Forms. Once students receive their assessments back and have begun to read through the feedback, I set a timer for 10 minutes and have each student complete the reflection form that includes the following questions:

• What did you do well on the formative assessment?
• What could you have done better on the formative assessment?
• How can your teacher better support you in the future with learning about these skills?
• What questions do you have about the formative assessment or about the feedback you received?
• Overall, how satisfied and happy are you with your performance? Why?

As students answer these questions, they have to not only reiterate the feedback they got from me, but also think about what actions they can take to improve and what support they need from me.

3. Feedback gallery walk. While the Google Form reflections allow students to consider their feedback and next steps in a private way, I also like to give students the opportunity to process feedback with their peers. To do this, I have students engage in a feedback gallery walk.

First, I have students complete a simple four-square organizer in which they add bulleted notes to each of the following four boxes: What Content This Assessment Covered, What I’m Proud of So Far, What Feedback I’ve Gotten, What Steps I Can Take to Improve.

Students spend about 10 minutes completing this after receiving their assessments and written feedback. Then, students all leave their organizers on their desks, and I give the class 10 minutes to walk around the room and review what their peers have noted.

Before students complete the organizer, I remind them that what they are writing is going to be reviewed by peers, and that everyone should be respectful and empathetic during the activity.

As students walk around, they identify similarities and differences in what their peers are working toward. Once the 10 minutes are up, everyone returns to their seat, and we have a brief whole-group discussion about the trends. Students also share out the key steps that they think can help themselves and their peers improve.

4. Structured discussion protocol. The last activity I like to use to help students more deeply engage with feedback is through the timed, structured discussion protocol “What?, So what?, Now what?” In this protocol, students discuss the feedback they’ve received on their assessment with a peer and share their thoughts on how they can improve going forward.

Not only does this give students the opportunity to really think about the feedback and what they want to do with it, but also it helps students recognize that everyone around them is working hard to improve too.

MAKING TIME FOR This Work

I don’t do it for every formative assessment, but when I can, I will devote a whole lesson to processing feedback. I try to do this as my students are approaching a larger, summative assessment to ensure that they have time to review, process, and apply feedback before they have to complete a higher-stakes task. When I dedicate a whole lesson, I have students complete each of the four activities outlined above in order.

When there isn’t time for a full lesson to be spent on feedback, I still make sure I do something. I’ve found that even spending five to 10 minutes paraphrasing or reflecting on feedback can make a huge difference for how students approach their next assessment.

In my classroom, I’ve found that time spent focused on feedback is time well spent. My students have developed their ability to recognize areas for growth and make concrete plans for how to improve because of the time they’ve spent processing and reflecting on feedback. My students not only have shown significant improvement on their summative assessment since we began more deeply engaging with feedback, but also now recognize feedback as a powerful tool for learning.