High-Leverage Practice 22: Instruction

I am going to discuss High-Leverage Practices as mentioned on the CEC website organized around four aspects of practice. I hope you will join in the conversation!

HLP22 Provide positive and constructive feedback to guide students’ learning and behavior.

I think it is important to give feedback as soon as possible in order to help students be more successful in class.

I remember my school days when I would turn in a paper and not get it back for weeks. Meanwhile, there were other papers that had to be turned in. How could I make my papers better if I didn’t know how I did on the earlier ones? I would get back the first paper with corrections or suggestions but meanwhile, I had turned in two other papers already with a lot of the same mistakes. If I had known sooner, I could have corrected them before turning them in. I feel this set me up for failure instead of helping me. Plus, after making the same mistakes without knowing they needed correcting was also turning into a habit that would be harder to correct.

I also think it is important to give positive feedback as well as constructive feedback. It is too easy to criticize and find things wrong but for some reason, it is harder to look for the good things that the student does. Many students are happy with negative attention because it is better than no attention and this becomes another bad habit that is learned. I want my students to like positive feedback better than the negative and strive to do better in order to get attention.

When I get classwork that needs to be graded, I try to get it back to them by the next day we have class. I want them to see what mistakes they made so that they won’t make it on the next assignment. I also want them to see the results of good grades if they have worked hard so they know that their hard work was not in vain. The good grades will show that their work paid off and they need to continue this trend. They will learn to take pride in their work.

By giving feedback as quickly as possible, it is easier to change the student’s behavior for the positive. The longer the feedback is delayed, the harder it is to change feedback.

If you wait too long to give constructive feedback, the student might have forgotten what they had done and won’t know how to change their behavior. They also might deny the behavior and it can turn into an argument which is not very constructive.

If you wait too long to give positive feedback, the student might do something to get negative feedback if they feel they have been ignored.

Feedback is one of the key elements to a student’s success in the classroom.

When do you give feedback to a student? Please share.