Towards the end of last term and at the start of this I have been looking to develop my strategies for ensuring students make the most of their feedback and hopefully therefore make the most progress.
One of the big issues with this is time and efficiency. This is especially true in my lower school teaching. If I am honest I am always going to make sure my priorities (GCSE and A-Level) are taken care of. That is partly because I don't feel that I have to be as efficient at closing the gap with my GCSE and A-Level classes as I do with my lower school classes because of the following reasons:
• My GCSE/A-Level classes are smaller and I see them more often than my lower school classes.
• My GCSE/A-Level students are older so can work more independently whilst I am speaking 1-1 with other students.
• My GCSE/A-Level classes are probably more assessed and can therefore remember their feedback more often.
• If students in my GCSE/A-Level classes are struggling it is much more feasible to bring them back on a lunchtime or after school to work 1-1.
• My GCSE/A-Level students are motivated by a real exam so are much more likely to want to improve.
So what I am setting out to do this year is to develop my teaching so that I ensure more students close the gap. But I am aiming to do it in a way that is efficient enough so that all my students can do this more effectively, not just my examined classes.
I am going to base my attempts to close the gap around the following three principles. I do not believe these are groundbreaking in any way but I do believe they will help all my students to close the gap.
1) All feedback must be acted on.
I have always asked all my students to show that they have understood assessment feedback. Whether it is year 7 completing a SHP analysis of the 'Mystery of the Skeletons' or my A2 personal study students, all have had to act on the feedback.
Having given students a target for their work they then had to do something to show me they had understood it. If a year 7 hadn't included enough facts and figures to back up their arguments for example, then they had to find five facts they hadn't included and add them to their work.
What I am doing this year is to ask all my students to act on all their targets no matter the significance is the work. My students have to write where they have worked on this under the target so that I can quickly see when looking through their books. For some pieces of work the students may be able to add to the original. For others they would have to do something on another page. I have asked my students to number the pages of their books to make it even easier for me to find.
At the start of a lesson I will give the students 5-10 minutes to look at my marking and to close the gap. I am giving lesson time to show the importance of this task, even with year 8, where I only see them once a week, I am going to force myself to ensure that I make time for this.
I am then be able to quickly scan through this when I next see their books. I have ordered a stamp which says "@Westylish says "Feedback acted on! Well Done!"" Obviously, if they have still not understood I will then be able to bear that in mind for that round of marking.
2) All feedback must inform.
At the start of a new piece of work all my students must write a previous target that they are going to apply to this particular piece of work. Obviously, some targets may be related to a certain type of piece of work and may not apply to the new piece. Students will have a choice and must write the target and what they are going to do in this piece of work to make sure they don't get the same target written down. With my lower school classes I will use a Kagan structure to share what has been written.
3) All students must reflect on their work before handing it in.
The idea for this came to me from one of my A/S students last year. At the end of every assessed piece of work he wrote down what I had told him to do last time and how he believed he had managed to achieve those targets on this piece of work.
The way he did it was to sort of have a bit of a 'pop' at me. As if to say "well you said this last time and look I've done it now, so you better give me a higher mark!"
I was really impressed with this and I am going to make all my students do it inevery year. When I tried it for the first time with my GCSE class quite a number of students were forced to write "last time you told me to do this and well, I still haven't done it. But I will do next time." A few students decided to take their work home and hand it in tomorrow in light of this 'revelation'.
This last example shows how important it is to force students to return to their targets.
To finish
All three of these strategies are basic. But what I am trying to stop is the advice and feedback I give being wasted with students slipping through the net and not closing the gap.
I believe that all of these three strategies can be adopted without significantly adding to my workload even with the 90 or so year 7's I see a week.
I do believe that they will take up some lesson time but what's the point in marking taking up my time if the students do not get the real benefit out of it?
I hope that by systematising my teaching in this way far fewer students will slip through the net and far more will be able to close the gap.