Thread by @FunkyPedagogy

Whole Class Feedback 🧵

1/ I love WCF. Not just because it has transformed my work balance (traditional book marking in English is a different class of madness).
I love it because it facilitates greater understanding of where my students are, which makes me a better teacher.

2/ My process is: READ all work; make notes of common errors as I go; make notes of individual student need which isn’t generic; make notes of things I clearly haven’t taught very well first time around…

3/ The 🔑 is, these observations do not just fuel one-off DIRT tasks or similar. They fundamentally change my planning, questioning and the sequence of learning. What the STUDENTS see is a WCF sheet with tips, reminders, models etc. But what lays beneath is far more important.

4/ Example - this week I read all my Y10 paragraphs. It was clear that they had understood and started to apply my formula for thesis statements, but there were a LOT of misconceptions on using the verbs: clarifies, provokes and infers/implies.

5/ The class got WCF and reflected on their own work, but the most effective thing I have done in the lessons following that feedback is repeatedly use MWBs to practise examples and non-examples of these verbs and others in similar contexts. Variation theory for the win.

6/ Feedback is powerful. But focus on what will actually have impact. I regularly speak to my classes along these lines: “I’ve observed that we have a tendency to… so we are going to practise doing…” or “We have slightly misunderstood… so we are going to…”

7/ People say that ‘feedback is a gift’, but I wonder whether the idea of the benevolent teacher bestowing the gift of insight on their students is an unhelpful way of looking at it. Rather, it is a two-way dialogue where student work provides feedback to us.

8/ Viewed properly, that unread pile of essays in my bag holds the promise of feedback to me - reading them will make me a better teacher next week.

This blog is a little out of date based on my current practice, but hopefully useful to some! funkypedagogy.com/zero-written-f…