feedback
The purpose of a feedback is for students to find out about their work and experience and learn from it. For a feedback to be useful and effective for students (for them to take it on board), it should be timely, specific, understandable and actionable, and it should link back to the established purpose/goals of the given lesson.
Teacher Constructive Feedback
When giving students feedback I always ask myself To whom am I comparing to? I believe that feedback should not be just about the task itself being compared against a criteria rubric sheet. There is more to learning than just the end product. According to Fisher (2009), we should be comparing students with their "true peers" with 'true' meaning students who share similar achievement profiles (p. 69). Furthermore, if we are assessing differentiated learning tasks in order to address students' mixed ability levels and needs, then we certainly can't give feedback based on standardised rubric criteria.
I also think that students' ongoing progress should be monitored and compared to students themselves as individuals, and when improvements are made student success should be celebrated. At the very least students should be informed that their success is also their teacher's success.
Following are illustrations of the types of feedback that I gave to students on my rounds: feedback about the task, feedback about the processing of the task, and feedback about the Self as a Person.
Focus areas: 3.6, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5
Teacher Corrective Feedback
When I have to correct students' work, I go by the rule "don't give them the answers unless you really have to". Instead, I code their work based on what types of mistakes they've made. In this way I am encouraging students to think for themselves and not relying on their teacher for something they could figure out themselves. Students' work is checked again once they have had a go at correcting their coded mistakes and only then they are given all the answers.
Student Corrective Feedback (Self-Assessment)
Sometimes I like to give students the opportunity to assess themselves as a way of taking responsibility for their own learning. When this happens, I also get them to compile their mistakes and make a note of how many of each type of mistake they made. This helps students understand what to work on next to improve in the future.