Feedback update

As part of my secondment to SLT, I am exploring how to improve students ability to give effective feedback to support their learning.

As explained in previous posts http://jamiecollin7.blogspot.co.uk/ this project came about because of the work the PE department had been doing to improve feedback given by students about their own and others performances/work.

For this project, I am working with the dance and humanities departments to explore further strategies to enhance student feedback. Both members of staff were very positive and very keen to be involved with this project.

So why Dance and Humanities? Dance contacted PE towards the end of last term to see what we were doing around feedback and very slightly jealous of our ipads!! I approached the teacher in humanities as I knew that they had done some work on 'feed-forward' (what is feedforward) so I wanted to collaborate with them.

Where are we now? PE are continuing to use Ron Berger's Critiquing strategy of be kind, be specific and be helpful.  http://jamiecollin7.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/feedback-feedforward-adventure.html) Austin's butterfly drawing

This method has proved to be very successful as it has given them a structure and focus in giving better feedback to feed-forward (improve) their peers performances. Below are some of examples from year 8 boys who were critiquing their Parkour group sequence on their Edmodo group page:

'I think we were more organised and prepared for the final sequence as there wasn't long pauses between moves. I think to improve we could have more variety. e.g: different vaults, different directions.'

'I think that in our practice run we weren't sure what to do, especially since the setup wasn't easy to do a lot of movements. After we changed the setup and practised what we were going to do, the performance was on the whole clean and well executed.'

Clip1:nice cartwheel vault Kieran. Next time try and straighten your legs and push them right above you.nice landing though.

Before, the feedback would of been poor with students just saying that it was good, they like it but were unable to properly communicate how students could improve their work. Examples include:

'very good effort Osmond. Just needs to gain more momentum.' 'good effort Kieran. A bit faster next time.' 'well done finn good speed.'

The quality of the feedback still requires work, however it is getting better as students confidence grows and staff give them time in lessons to critique and act upon it.

Giving students TIME to critique their own and others work/performances is crucial otherwise learning is slowed as the lesson flies by. One method used in my GCSE PE lesson is that students write their targets from the previous piece of work, for example a 6 mark extended question, onto the new piece of work they are about to do. By doing this, it gives them a focus of that piece of work especially when they are planning their answer. Once they have completed the work, they are expected to self-assess their work using What Went Well (www) & Even Better If (EBI) method. The next stage is that their work is then peer-assessed and they too have to use the WWW & EBI method in giving feedback. (examples here)

However, students need to be trained in how to give peer feedback and this too takes time and patience. Modelling is essential but it doesn't just have to come from the teacher. Some students are very confident speaking in front of their peers and some don't realise they are giving helpful feedback already but just need to refine it. This is where another method can be used to help improve students giving effective feedback.

This method is critiquing the critique! Basically, getting students to give their thoughts and opinions on the feedback given. This is linked to the feedback criteria (kind, specific and helpful) but it also challenges students to listen carefully to others and help those who need to improve their feedback.

So what are Humanities and Dance doing? Humanities are focusing on how students can use lesson success criteria as a guide for when students are giving peer or self assessment. They are exploring 'verbal feedback stickers' in books and getting students to list feedback given by staff in lessons.

Dance, however, seem to be at bit behind at the moment due to staff absence through illness. They were going to focus on student blogging (Post 16)and the use of students planners (KS3) to write specific targets (strengths and weaknesses and how to improve) for future lessons and get students to work collaboratively using their targets to improve their performances.

Where next? What I want to focus on next is building more time into my lessons so students can give and act on the feedback. One popular method is Jackie Beere's DIRT (Dedicated Improvement & Reflection Time) approach which can be found in her book 'The Prefect OFSTED Lesson.' I know I am guilty of this, like many other teachers, feedback is given through our marking but students don't bother either reading it properly or acting on it. They are more interested in the grade they received.

This takes me to my next focus, marking students work and not using grades as feedback. Instead insisting that students read the feedback and act upon it such as redrafting their work. This can be done either at the start of the lesson, first 10 minutes and for a whole lesson depending on how the group have performed on the written task. Crucially, it comes back to TIME as the major factor preventing students acting on the feedback as teachers need to get through the Scheme of Learning because there is an end of term/unit assessment that needs to be completed by a certain deadline.

My last focus for improving feedback would be to use a stamp system in students books to indicate when verbal feedback has been given. I came across this method in a blog by Alex Quigley @huntingEnglish and thought what a simple but effective idea that students have to note the verbal feedback given by the teacher in a form of spider or bullet points around the stamp. For more information, use the following link http://www.huntingenglish.com/2013/02/09/making-a-marking-policy-a-feedback-policy/

Twitter has ben a revelation to my learning and teaching over the last year and a half. I have read a large number of blogs and discussed numerous topics with other teachers through Twitter. There are some amazing pieces of work going on out there, particularly around feedback. One person I do recommend you follow and read their work is David Fawcett @davidfawcett27 and his blog page http://reflectionsofmyteaching.blogspot.co.uk/ where are lots of post across a number of different topics.

As you can see, it has been a very intense year so far but I have learnt so much and I'm looking forward to continuing my work on feedback with the aim of taking it whole school after Christmas. Hopefully, SLT will agree as my secondment comes to end in a few weeks time. Lets hope the PE (feedback) adventure continues into 2014 and beyond.