High Quality Feedback on Student Writing

What is Feedback? 

Strategies for Effective Feedback on Student Writing: Practices for Teachers by Teachers

Similar to a personal trainer, teachers have to help students improve their learning moves, increase their cognitive stamina, build their background knowledge, and so on. Teachers will not accomplish this by solely giving motivational speeches or admonishing them to display more grit by working hard and persevering through the challenges they encounter. Therefore, constructive, targeted feedback becomes the tool, practice, and strategy by which students work toward becoming skilled writers (and readers).

Brookhart (2017) states, "Giving feedback on writing is a special responsibility. If you ask students to write thoughtfully to you, it would be hypocritical of you not to write (or speak, if your feedback is oral) thoughtfully back to them. And students will notice!" (ASCD, 2017). Brookhart (2017) offers the following five strategies for teachers to consider as they provide feedback on their students' writing. 

1. Before the students write, make sure they know what they are trying to learn (more specifically than just “writing”) and what qualities their writing should exhibit. Unless students are trying to learn something specific, they will experience teacher feedback as additional teacher directions they have to follow. So, for example, if students are writing descriptive paragraphs, they should know what the kind of descriptive paragraphs they are aiming for looks like. Criteria for success might be that they (1) use adjectives that describe by telling what the object of their description looks, sounds, tastes, smells, or feels like; and (2) help their readers feel like they “are there,” experiencing whatever is described themselves. If this is what students are aiming to do, then the feedback questions are already set up: Are my adjectives descriptive? Do they conjure up sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch? Did you (my teacher and my reader) feel like you really experienced what I was describing that you were there? The best feedback on student writing tells students what they want to know to get closer to the particular vision of writing they are working on.

2. Describe at least one thing the student did well, with reference to the success criteria. Focus your feedback on the criteria, not on other features of the work like handwriting or grammar, unless that was the focus of the writing lesson). Even the poorest paper has something to commend it. Find that and begin your feedback there. Students can’t navigate toward learning targets by filling in deficits only; they also need to build on their strengths. And don’t assume that just because a student did something well, they know what that is. The best feedback on student writing names and notices where students are meeting criteria that show their learning.

3. Suggest the student’s immediate next steps, again with reference to the success criteria. Your feedback does not need to “fix” everything possible. It only needs to take the student’s work to the next level. Select the one or two—whatever is doable in the next draft of the writing piece—things that the student should do next, given where they are right now. The best feedback on student writing moves students forward in their quest to reach a learning goal.

4. Make sure you learn something from the feedback episode, too. Too often, teachers think of feedback as their expert advice on students’ writing. But every opportunity to give feedback on student writing is also an opportunity for you to learn something about what your students are thinking, what kinds of writing skills they have, and what they need to learn next. The best feedback on student writing gives teachers a window into student thinking; it doesn’t just advise students.

5. Give students an immediate opportunity to use the feedback. Much feedback on student writing is wasted, because students don’t use it. Many teachers subscribe to the myth that students will use the feedback “next time” they write something similar. However, it’s not true that students have some sort of file drawer in their heads, with files labeled according to type of writing, that they will magically open at some point in the future. No matter how well-intentioned the student, this just isn’t how it works. The best feedback on student writing is followed immediately by a planned opportunity, within instructional time, for students to use the feedback.

Hammond (2019) contends that teachers should adopt the following five principles not only in terms of effective feedback, but also as their approach to instruction as a pedagogical philosophy: 

1. Channel the principle of the first pancake. "We don’t help kids realize that conscious incompetence is the first step in getting good at something. We are always aware of how bad we suck at first. This is where the “warm” part of warm demander comes in. You have to reassure the student that they are on the right path. Don’t blow smoke at them. This is not time for a “grit” pep talk. You “warmly” let them know this is normal" (Hammond, 2019). Just like when people cook pancakes. For some universal reason, the first one is always burnt crispy on one side, and runny, uncooked, and beige on the other. But no one gets upset. No, people wait for the cook to make the necessary adjustments based on feedback of how that pancake turned out. The bad pancake just gets unceremoniously tossed in the trash (or given to the dog). Design thinkers call this prototyping and iterating. Teachers should help students begin to map the path to getting better and not be afraid of the first pancake.
2. Remember practice makes permanent. Deliberate practice becomes key to getting better at something. But, not all repeated actions are deliberate practice. Learn the difference and then create the right conditions for students to do deep practice. Teachers cannot skim over skills in the rush to “cover content” or stay with the pacing guide (Hammond, 2019). Remember, only the learner learns. Therefore, teachers must help students build these learning muscles so they can process the content. Attached below is Cushman’s list of the key elements of deliberate practice.
3. Accept errors as information. In order to get better, students need feedback loops. But before students can use feedback, they have to get and become okay with errors. Teachers should help students reframe mistakes as a source of information about what needs adjusting in order to hit the target. If students are scared of mistakes because they think it says something about their intelligence, they will not push for the next level of mastery (Hammond, 2019).
4. Adopt a “let’s watch the game tape” stance through instructional conversation and actionable feedback. Related to accepting errors as information, teachers should help students extract the right information from those failed attempts. Help them take an inquiry stance to their own learning. Athletes and coaches watch game tape after the game in order to see what went right and what went wrong. They analyze it rather than get emotional about it. Help students develop their analytical eye toward their own performance so that when they are in the middle of learning, they can deliberately try new learning moves (Hammond, 2019). This requires making time for conferencing where teachers are able to have an instructional conversation with their students about what they were thinking when they chose a particular strategy or move. The instructional conversation helps to make the students' thinking visible for the teacher to coach them to do a new thing next time.
5. Get meta-strategic rather simply meta-cognitive. So, this is related to watching the game tape. The instructional conversation has to be about what strategies the student employed and why. Again, it helps make the invisible visible so teachers can help students level up their moves. Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible calls this helping students become “meta-strategic” – the ability to size up the task and then ask himself, herself, or themselves: “Of the four strategies my teacher taught me, which two are most helpful in tackling this problem?" When conferencing, this is a great question to get inside the student’s head.

Strategic Use of Rubrics for Providing Feedback on Student Writing

Rubrics help ensure that the assignments are evaluated fairly and consistently. Rubrics also provide students with clear learning goals, specific requirements, and acceptable performance standards for each assignment. This means that they help students become more aware and better able to efficiently evaluate their own work. When the assignments are scored with the rubric, students can easily identify and understand what area needs further effort in order to meet the performance standard. 

Why use rubrics? While grading criteria can come in many forms, they often take the form of a rubric—a structured scoring guide. Because of their flexibility, rubrics can provide several benefits for students and teachers:

• They make the grading criteria explicit to students by providing specific dimensions (e.g. thesis, organization, use of evidence. etc.), the performance-level descriptions for those dimensions, and the relative weight of those dimensions within the overall assignment.
• They can serve as guidelines and targets for students as they develop their writing, especially when the rubrics are distributed with the assignment.
• They can be used by teachers to isolate those specific skills requiring additional instruction and interventions during class.
• They are useful for norming assessment and ensuring reliability and consistency in grading written assignments.
• They are very adaptable in form–from basic to complex—and can be used to assess a specific skill or skills in a written assignment.
• They can be a data source for teachers to improve their teaching practices and determine next steps instructionally.

To aid teachers in their use of rubrics to provide targeted and constructive feedback on writing, the Committee has comprised the following list of resources. 

Facilitating Peer-Peer feedback Single Point Rubrics: Article; Template

CMAS Scoring Rubrics by Grade Level

AP Literature and Composition

International Baccalaureate

Hess- Rubric Development Tool for Teachers 

Hess - Depth of Knowledge Rubrics for Speaking and Writing

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