Feedback from the teacher | Formative Evaluation in Education

Clarifying Objectives

Description

Clarify the objectives of the lesson (or part of the lesson) to your students orally or in writing. This has two advantages:

The students can work more consciously and more focused towards the goal.
As a teacher, it is easier to give feedback when lesson objectives are clear.

How it works

Make lesson objectives visible by:

mentioning them explicitly at the start of the lesson or when reviewing the lesson at its end;
making them visually visible as well. For example, by always writing them on the same spot on your blackboard, by repeating them during your lesson, mentioning them in the course materials and on tests;
formulating authentic problems to solve;
specifying the goals in a classroom discussion at the beginning of the lesson;
illustrating the importance of the objective, for example in the students' daily lives or hobbies;
linking the goal to what the students have seen in previous lessons.

Tips

Have a student read out the new lesson objective(s) every day or explain it to the class in their own words.
Communicate the goal(s) in a language the students understand; provide support for school language or subject-specific terminology if necessary.

Examples

Linking the objective's importance to daily life:

With the lesson objective 'the learners can use appropriate questions (with the appropriate question words) to gather news/information in French', you tell your students that they can use this skill when they go on a trip to Paris and want to ask in French at which metro stop they have to get off at to go to a water park, for example.

Link the goal to what students have seen in the previous lesson:

'In the previous lesson, we saw the different parts of the house and learnt the adjectives to describe a house. In today’s lesson we will learn to name pieces of furniture and the prepositions of place so you can describe how furniture is located in a specific room.'

Effective Feedback

Description

Giving feedback is providing the students with information about their learning process, learning attitude, a task or their personality in order to learn or be motivated.

How it works

Effective feedback, as summarized by John Hattie and Helen Timperley (2015):

feedback is as precise as possible, but not too long. For example: 'That really is a convenient way to study your vocabulary.'
feedback focuses on positive instead of negative things. For example: 'Your glossary has the right structure for studying.'
feedback has a past, a present and a future. For example: 'This time you worked on your vocabulary really independently, almost without asking for help.', 'How can you ensure that you can use the same glossary preparing for the exam?'

Tips

After checking exercises, provide an opportunity for students to formulate tips themselves to prevent the mistakes they made. On that occasion, you can also ask your students if they agree or do not agree with the feedback you gave them.
Never link interim feedback to scoring. Only give a score when students have completed their assignment, and give them the opportunity to rework the assignment based on your feedback.
Provide answer keys and correction models that students can use autonomously.
To save time, students can give feedback to each other based on rubrics or answer keys. Practise this with your students.

Examples

Learning targets: Figuring out the main idea of a text and summarizing it for your classmates.

Method: Make a mind map to explain to your classmates.

Student A: 'Is this correct?'

Teacher: 'Do you know the main idea of the text already?'

Student B: 'Yes, we have already summarized two parts of the text in a mind map. We've been working hard!'

Teacher: 'I can see that, it seems all right. What are you going to next?'

Student A: 'We need to read the following part and summarize it.'

Teacher: 'Ok, do you know how to proceed or will you need help with something?'

Student B: 'We'll be fine.'

Teacher: 'Ok.'

Written feedback