With a group of 29 students, I needed to explore methods that would develop students ability to give appropriate and constructive feedback (www - what went well) and feed-forward (EBI - even better if..).
I decided one method to use was to allow students to peer and self assess their work was through a extended 6 mark GCSE PE question. During the first couple of weeks of the course, students learning focused on reasons for and benefits of taking part in physical activity. As part of the exam, students have to write an extended answer worth 6 marks. To expose students to this type of question, I asked them to answer a 6 mark question after 3 lessons of learning.
I gave students about 15 minutes to write their answer. Literally they were thrown in at the deep end. The rational behind my madness was to see if they had read and understood what the question was asking them to do and to assess their current level of learning.
Once students had finished, they had to self assess their work by writing WWW and EBI before swapping their answers with their partner who had to assess the answers against the mark scheme & levels (success criteria). They too had to write WWW and EBI comments before both student had a discussion about each others feedback and feedforward comments.
While this was happening, I moved around the room reading students feedback/feedforward comments expecting them to be very simple and not very helpful. They didn't disappoint. See examples below.
As a group we discussed the importance of constructive feedback, I asked students to write some constructive comments which they then shared with the rest of the class. Students evaluated these comments and made some suggestions on how they could be improved. They then had to re-assess their work and write new WWW and EBI's. The final task was to write how were they going to use the feedback/feedforward to improve their work. This proved a bit tricky for some who wrote very brief comments.
Between this question and the next, students focused their learning on Influences on taking part in physical activity. I used post-it notes as a form of feedback. A brief summary of the two lessons are listed below:
- students were grouped into 6 teams by using triptico - no arguments about who they working with, they just moved.
- Each group had a sub-topic area to research in preparation for the 'market place'.
- students either had to 'sell' or 'buy' in the market place. The seller presented their research to buyers who visited the stall. AT the end, buyers returned to the original stall to share their 'goods' with their group.
- The group had to produce a mind-map of the 6 influences.
- All students then took a post-it note with their name on and moved around the stall to assess the mind-maps. They had to put their post-it note next to their favourite mind-map and return to their group.
- I selected students who had placed their post-it by that particular piece of work to give feedback (www) and feed-forward (ebi) to the group.
- This proved to be a lot better than their first experience of giving FB and FF.
With improvement shown by students, I gave them another extended 6 mark question to answer. Before they started they all had to look and read the EBI from the previous question to remind them of what they had to do when answering this particular question.
This time, students felt more confident to peer and self assess answers using the mark scheme to support them. I also used @davidfewcett27 'critical buddy' method and put certain students together so low attaining students were able to assess examples of well answered questions, discuss their own work and receive constructive feedback/feed-forward. Examples below
I am pleased with how students are steadily progressing and developing their use of constructive feedback. They are buying into this 'culture' of feedback and seeing whats in it for them. I will definately continue to use 'critical buddies' within my lessons. Let the feedback adventure continue!!
