A common complaint among our students is that they don't receive enough feedback from their teacher on their progress. If I ask the teacher, however, they invariably say that they do give regular feedback, so perhaps the problem is not whether it is given or not, but whether the students recognise it as such.
So how can we make feedback more obvious, and therefore beneficial, to our students?
We don't really go in for report cards like a regular school would. For many teachers our feedback is limited to verbal comments and short notes at the end of essays. In the first case, we may fail to be specific: You did that role-play really well! while in the second case we may be too specific, making comments related only to the fulfilment of that particular task.
One colleague mentioned that in the high school where he worked before joining us some teachers used post-it notes to give children specific feedback on the current lesson. It was a no-fuss method: the teacher silently made notes throughout the lesson and then stuck the notes to the desks as he passed through the class. Apparently it was so popular that childern were clamouring for their page every day, and were genuinely interested in reading the teacher's remarks.
I decided to try this with my teenagers.
What worked:
Individualised comments, specific to each student and to the current lesson.
The students were amused when they read my notes.
Negative comments were not made in front of the whole class.
What didn't work:
In our small class, the students could see very well what I was doing, and as it was the first time, they were interested and distracted by what I was doing. They wanted to see the pages immediately.
I found it hard to put notes on a specific page, rather than all on one page, because I had to search for the appropriate student's name.
I kept forgetting to write my thoughts down, so I didn't have comments for everyone.
I now do not have a list of comments on the lesson, because I've given them away!
I wonder where those notes went to? To the bin?
Follow-up:
I need to think this process through to the end. How are these notes helpful if the student simply reads it at the end of class and then throws it away? How can I systematise this process? How can I be sure that the advice will be followed?
