Verbal Feedback Given….

A great deal has been discussed recently about marking.  DIRT (see previous article)  is making a big impact on how we mark and there have been many other developments, such as this article by English teacher Andy Tharby.  This also reminded me of an article I read earlier in the year by the excellent Alex Quigley entitled ‘Make your marking policy a feedback policy’.  As always, Alex talks a great deal of common sense but there is one strategy that jumped out as being particularly useful – the use of the ‘Verbal Feedback Given’ stamper.  Whilst written feedback is of course very useful in terms of developing student learning, so is verbal feedback – it’s regular, in the context of the learning that is happening there and then and so deserves to be highlighted.  So I immediately went on to Amazon and ordered some – here.

This is how I’ve used my stamper…..

As students are working on a task, I will move around and monitor what they are doing and read their responses. So for example, they may be responding to a question, that relates to a key aspect of the learning:

Having read their response I will give them a specific piece of verbal feedback to improve their work ‘This is a great start, but you could improve it by using an example of an energy transfer’. I will then pull out the stamper and stamp their work, as a record of my verbal feedback:

The student then has to write down a short note of what the verbal feedback was.  It’s important that this is recorded for future reference e.g. when they are revising:

They then have to do the improvement suggested from the verbal feedback – and so close the feedback loop.

As this is key improvement strategy, they could also record it on their progress tracker sticker, on the front of their book/ folder:

What’s good about this strategy?

• It’s quick and effortless
• It can be highly regular
• It gives a higher profile to the vebal feedback that students receive
• It allows them to log and record their own personalised improvement strategies
• It makes me as a teacher think about the verbal feedback I am giving
• It gives a purpose to the feedback I am giving as a teacher
• It makes the student respond to the feedback and so closing the feedback loop

A great new edition to the toolkit!