feedback: hints

reflect on the past to change the future

assessment is about improving future learning;

whereas marking may be ensuring there are no written errors on the page or it can be the teacher guessing what the learner was thinking/ not thinking when they made their error(s).

With feedback the necessity for the teacher to guess is removed and more of the responsibility for improving future learning can be given to the learner.

First: hope that feedback won't be required

By using an assessment code the learner can read the question and their answer again, and may be able to self correct or to get peer help

The advantage of feedback

the learner has the opportunity to self reflect or do meta thinking (thinking about their thinking)
the learner will be primed to adjust their chunk or mental schema ( Kornell et al 2009)
for the teacher has the opportunity to find out the learners past thinking or influence the learner's future "thinking"
the teacher can encourage the learner to "move on" from making excuses (but acknowledge, if need be the learners feelings) and help the learner to "move on" to reflect about their question reading or process or problem solving skills
the teacher can better judge whether the learner should continue to practise the layer or if the layer is "best learned later"
- either by remembering the feedback when the teacher assesses another question on the learner's layer
- or the teacher may decide to "best learned later" the layer at the end of the lesson

Feedback fundamentals

If feedback is required we have found learning, which would otherwise be lost to forgetting, we may be able to save ourselves re-teaching in the future. The key questions to remember are:

what can the learner (and/or teacher) learn from the error?
what can the learner (and perhaps the teacher) do to make sure this error is less likely in the future?

Feedback or re-teaching?

Sometimes the learner, although able to answer questions directly after teaching, can no longer answer questions a few days later. It may be that the learner

has forgotten some key skill but they can recall everything else learned. The dialogue between the teacher and the learner, which is the feedback process, may be able to find that missing key skill and the teacher can re-teach that key skill if a question designed to "jog the learner's memory" is unsuccessful.
has forgotten most of what they seemed to have learned during the lesson - and re-teaching is needed. However since this re-teaching can be "a one to one tutor session" the teacher can ask more leading questions and help the learner embed the learning better (or we could say build up or edit a chunk or mental schema in long term memory). When teaching to the whole class the teacher can't ask each learner a series of leading questions, but the teacher can do this in the feedback process.
is not alone, several/many learners have forgotten or mis-remembered a skill or process. In which case re-teaching the group/class is a good use of teacher and learner time.
sometimes learners show an inability to create or use generalisations, so they are best avoided when first teaching a new skill - instead teach the learner the pattern or skill first, once the layer has been mastered, return to see if the learner can now use a generalisation
needs to remember the meaning of a word (such as area) and the teacher will need to help the learner attach the skill which they already have to the vocabulary. We recommend, to avoid creating confusion about vocabulary and processes to avoid first teaching in the same term of the following (FYI it is not a problem to return to teach the topics close together once at least one layer has been mastered)
- area and perimeter
- MMMRQ (mean, median, mode, range and quartile)
- simplify +/- (1) and simplify x/÷ (1)

Feedback or best learned later?

Did the teacher tried to teach "too hard" or "too much"?

Low attaining learners may find what would be an ideal amount for their peers to learn to be "too hard" or "too much" - please see problem 1: learners have many learning gaps & solution 1 for a discussion about this. The expectation that teachers pre assess before teaching and normally only teach one layer per term from each topic and the guidance on planning teaching using Progress on Topic are given to avoid these problems.

Did the learner miss out on regular timely practice?

Learners can miss out on regular timely practice if they have sporadic attendance, or have recently been away from school for over a week - in which case the teacher may need to decide that some layers (learned before the absence) are best learned later. Sometimes the spacing of maths lessons isn't ideal and there are more than 3 days gap between one lesson and the next - for some classes (or some learners) it may make sense to do more timely practice and less teaching before the gap (and plan carefully which topic to teach before the gap).

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