How do you give feedback…

…to each of your 45 students?

Hello all. Welcome to the 175th edition of TEPS Weekly!

Can every student in a classroom receive effective feedback during a 40-minute lesson?

Bindhu, a Grade 7 Social Science teacher, recently attended a Teacher Professional Development (TPD) session on formative assessment. One idea particularly stayed with her – students learn better when they receive feedback while they are learning, not only after the lesson is over.

Inspired, she decided to implement it in her classroom the very next day.

She was teaching the topic ‘Weather’. After introducing the concept and asking a few questions to check students' understanding, she divided the class into groups of five. Each group received a question to discuss and answer together.

As students worked, Bindhu moved around the classroom. She observed their discussions, looked at their notebooks and gave feedback wherever she noticed misconceptions. She clarified doubts, asked probing questions and guided students to improve their answers.

But when the bell rang, she realised, in the entire 40-minute period, she had been able to interact effectively with only six or seven students.

The next day, she tried again. This time, the students who were confident and active kept calling her to check their work. At the same time, a few struggling students needed longer conversations to understand the task. Bindhu naturally spent more time supporting them. By the end of the lesson, many other students had received little or no feedback. Bindhu felt disappointed and thought about it reflectively after the class: 

• Formative assessment is good. Providing feedback is also good. But in a classroom with so many students, how can I provide feedback to everyone?

• Sometimes, the classroom behaviour itself does not give me enough space to provide feedback. What can I do then?

• If I spend more time with struggling students, how will I reach the rest of the class?

• If I give feedback to only a few students, will the others feel left out?

• The idea of giving feedback sounds effective. But is it really practical in my classroom?

This may seem like a relatable experience for most teachers in India. We try to do something good – give feedback to affect student learning – and it becomes overwhelming due to the number of students and the variation in students’ learning arcs. So what can a teacher do?

What are a teacher’s options?

The first step is planning for how to give feedback. Bindhu planned meticulously about what she would do in the class and when she would give feedback to the students. What can she plan better going forward?

Anticipate student difficulties

A step that Bindhu can take is to think about where students may face difficulty in the lesson. Once she identifies these areas, she should plan some time in the lesson to specifically point out these misconceptions or errors to students in general. Bindhu can anticipate that students: 

1. may confuse the meaning of the terms ‘weather’ and ‘seasons’

2. may confuse ‘weather’ with ‘climate’

3. may find it difficult to connect long-term weather patterns with day-to-day changes in the weather

Reduce the need for feedback

Knowing that students are probably going to confuse the terms ‘weather’ and ‘seasons’, it would make sense for Bindhu to spend some time in her lesson to explicitly explain the difference between these two. Use examples, ask students, and get students to spend time thinking about these two terms. 

Of course, we know that just because we have spent time on it does not mean that students have understood the difference between weather and seasons.

Whole-class feedback

Planning to point out some common misconceptions and bringing this to the attention of the whole classroom of students is a form of feedback. In Bindhu’s case, this would make students think about the terms, weather and climate more. 

This type of feedback is generally not the most effective but still needs to be part of the routine. Spending time discussing and asking questions about these terms is a great way of giving feedback to students. Another thing to think about whole-class feedback is that sometimes, this type of feedback doesn’t land for the students who need it the most. 

Students who don’t understand enough about the difference between weather and climate may not even know that they need to re-listen to the teacher about this difference. This is the student version of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 

However, this type of feedback works best when the teacher has figured out that there is a misconception or error that is common across almost the whole class.

Create student checklists 

Another way to give preemptive feedback is by creating checklists for any procedure or understanding of a concept. Bindhu could create a checklist to answer the question, “What is true about weather and not climate?”

• Long-term vs. short-term; which is which?

• Can I give an example of a weather event? 

• Can I give an example of what climate is?

…and so on.

All the above approaches can be with or without actually assessing students. This means that feedback from the teacher is almost built into classroom routines. Like with all routines, these will also take time for students to get used to and understand how this feedback helps their learning and understanding.

Apart from these, more pointed feedback can be given after an assessment. For example, you can ask a question to students at the end of lessons and have them write their response on a small slip of paper that you can collect. Once you have seen these exit slips, you should be able to give specific feedback to each cohort of students depending on their understanding. 

After assessing using a tool like an exit slip, you can use the feedback strategies mentioned earlier in your next lesson. At the same time, you can also do any of the following:

1. Make homogeneous student groups

You may make groups based on the feedback that the students need. So this reduces the number of times you will need to give feedback to students. If you have 5-6 groups, these groups of students can be given feedback together, making it easier for the teachers.

2. Make heterogeneous student groups

In such a setting, students who have understood the concept well can be matched with students who are struggling with it, so that peer learning can happen. 

We started by asking if all students can get effective feedback in a 40-person classroom, and we hope that some of these strategies may help. There may be a need to relook at how we think about feedback, and that it need not always be reactive, but could also come from a place of experience and expertise.

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Edition: 5.30