Thread by @Mr_Rablin

🧵Feedback was something that felt like a waste of time for me for a long time with my students. It seemed like I would spend hours providing it only to have it be ignored.

I blamed the kids, when I should have been looking at my practice.

Here's what I've changed...

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For starters, your feedback exists within your assessment ecosystem and is controlled by the values of that system.

The grading system has to allow for multiple attempts at demonstrating proficiency without penalties for earlier attempts for students to value feedback.

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Hand-in-hand with that, your grading system has to center on specific learning outcomes (eg. - standards-based) so students see the feedback as building towards something instead of a collection of isolated incidences.

We all crave progress, but progress needs a goal.

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Those were two of the major changes I made to my assessment system to make feedback more valuable to my students.

On a smaller scale, here are some practical changes I made to my instruction.

First, feedback portfolios.

These are places for students to collect feedback.

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The purpose of a feedback portfolio is (a) for students to be able to quickly access all their feedback later, (b) for students to identify trends, and (c) for students to see feedback shift from constructive criticism to celebration on later attempts.

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This helps students start to value feedback more (not everyone, obviously) because they can actually see how engaging with feedback impacts performance.

A second shift I made after implementing this is to add this question on assignments: "What feedback do you need to...

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keep in mind as you work on this assignment?" Another way I phrase it is to put it at the end and ask, "What previous piece of feedback was most helpful to you on this task?"

Often, students don't engage with feedback because we never ask them to in tangible ways.

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When we connect current learning with previous feedback and ask them how they are utilizing it, it reinforces the purpose of feedback.

Now, all this doesn't work without feedback that students can use to enhance their learning, which is tough because we also have lives.

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This is why I started using a text expander. Essentially, I pre-make comments for the things we're focusing on or errors I'm noticing as trends and then can insert those comments with a shortcut.

I can also add links/resources in the comments to push the learning forward.

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Prior to all of this happening, I actually show the video "Austin's Butterfly" to demonstrate how much growth we can show when we are given valuable feedback and put it to use.

This is especially helpful when setting students up for peer review.

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What this all boils down to is that the value of feedback is directly related to the intentionality of time we have around the feedback. If I just provide feedback and assume they are going to use it, they won't.

I have to provide guidance, structure, and time around...

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how and why we use the feedback, and frequency is key. Once using feedback becomes a habit, it begins to grow in value.

For example, today I had students stop mid-writing ask me if I had any peer review sheets they could use.

We weren't even doing a peer review activity.

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Feedback is part of a culture that has to be built in the classroom. I definitely have a long journey ahead of me to continue making feedback as valuable as possible, but these are just some of the things that have helped move me in the right direction.

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