Tag: assessment

Why “Good Job!” Isn’t Good Enough Feedback

We’ve all written it. That encouraging red-pen scrawl at the bottom of a student’s work: “Well done! Keep it up!” It feels kind. It feels supportive. But here’s the uncomfortable truth — it tells the student absolutely nothing about how to improve. And if improving is the point of education, we might need to rethink our feedback habits.

John Hattie and Helen Timperley’s (2007) landmark paper on feedback remains one of the most cited works in education research for good reason. They found feedback has an average effect size of 0.73 on student achievement — making it one of the most powerful influences on learning. But — and this is crucial — the type of feedback matters enormously. Vague, evaluative feedback (“good work”) has minimal impact. Specific, actionable feedback changes everything.

The 3 Feedback Questions Every Student Needs Answered

Hattie and Timperley’s model centres on three fundamental feedback questions. Every piece of effective feedback should address at least one of these:

🎯 The Three Feedback Questions
  • Where am I going? (Feed up) — What is the learning goal? What does success look like?
  • How am I going? (Feed back) — How is my current performance relative to that goal?
  • Where to next? (Feed forward) — What specific action will help me improve or extend my understanding?

Most teacher feedback addresses only the second question — and often vaguely. The most underused is the third: feed forward. This is where the real learning lives. For a broader overview of how feedback sits within the assessment cycle, see our earlier post on understanding assessment for, as, and of learning.

Written Feedback: Making Every Minute Count

Let’s be honest — marking 28 books on a Friday night is a special kind of exhaustion. So the question isn’t just “what makes feedback effective?” but “how do we make it sustainable?” Here are three approaches that work in real Australian classrooms. And if you’re still building your broader formative assessment toolkit, that earlier post is worth a read alongside this one.

1. The 2 Stars and a Wish. A classic for good reason. Two specific, evidence-based positives (“Your use of the word ‘cascade’ to describe the waterfall was a beautiful word choice — it sounds like what it describes”) and one specific, achievable next step (“Now try beginning your next sentence with a different sentence starter — can you avoid starting with ‘The’?”). Quick to write. Clear for students.

2. Coded Feedback + Class Discussion. Instead of writing the same comment 20 times, develop a simple code. Underline powerful word choices in green. Circle punctuation errors in orange. Then have a five-minute class debrief where you address the patterns you saw across the whole class. Targeted, efficient, and the group discussion deepens understanding.

3. Verbal Feedback Stamp. A rubber stamp that says “Verbal Feedback Given” or a VF notation in your mark book. Stop and have a one-minute conversation with the student — face-to-face feedback is often more powerful than written feedback anyway. This counts as rich assessment evidence under AITSL standards.

Peer Feedback: Don’t Underestimate the Power of 9-Year-Olds

Peer feedback, when taught explicitly, can be extraordinarily powerful — and it’s directly aligned with the Australian Curriculum’s Personal and Social Capability strand. But the key word is taught. You cannot simply say “swap books and give each other feedback.” Students need sentence starters, they need a clear rubric or checklist, and they need to practise in low-stakes situations before applying it to valued work.

A simple scaffold: “I noticed that your writing… [observation]. This worked well because… [explanation]. One thing that might make it even stronger is… [suggestion].” Model it. Practise it together. Then watch students take genuine pride in helping each other grow.

The Feedback Loop: Closing the Circle

Here’s the question most teachers forget to ask: did the student actually act on the feedback? Dylan Wiliam (2011), whose work on formative assessment is widely used in Australian schools, argues that feedback only improves learning when students have the opportunity to use it. If you mark work on Friday and move on to a new topic Monday, the feedback loop never closes. Build in “feedback response time” — even 10 minutes at the start of the following lesson where students read, reflect, and act on your comments.

“The most important thing about feedback is what happens next. If nothing changes, it wasn’t feedback — it was just a comment.” — Adapted from Wiliam, 2011

A Final Note for Preservice Teachers

When you’re observed on prac, assessors are looking for evidence of AITSL Standard 5: Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning. They want to see that your feedback is purposeful — connected to your learning intentions, specific to the student, and genuinely designed to move their learning forward. “Good work!” won’t cut it. A targeted, warm, specific comment? That’s the mark of a reflective, professional teacher.

When it comes to designing tasks that make feedback truly meaningful, it’s also worth reading our post on creating a performance of worth — summative tasks that give students something genuinely worth their best effort, and give you something genuinely worth your best feedback.

💬 Your Turn! What’s your go-to feedback strategy? Have you tried coded feedback or verbal feedback stamps? We’d love to hear what works in your classroom — share in the comments below!

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). (2018). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Standard 5). https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102

Clarke, S. (2008). Active learning through formative assessment. Hodder Education.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487

Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Solution Tree Press.

I’m so over a KWL

Recently I have been looking at examples of integrated units of work, mostly from preservice teachers. Unfortunately, most of them commence an inquiry unit with a KWL (Know, Want to know and Learned) chart. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the occasional use of a KWL chart as an excellent diagnostic assessment of prior knowledge. If you don’t know where the students are at (their prior knowledge) then you could have to go away and spend more solitary evenings revamping your planned unit of work. This post walks through a few genuine alternatives to a KWL chart worth trying instead.

A traditional KWL chart template — Know, Want to Know, Learned

So what are the alternatives to a KWL chart? There are plenty of alternatives out there and I would love to hear from you below to add your favourites. One unit of work was for a Year 5 class about endangered animals and how we can protect them. Instead of a KWL chart, I suggested the following:

I would encourage you to think outside the KWL chart as an initial activity. Instead, could you present the students with a Venn diagram (3 circles) and 3 photos – a koala, a Tasmanian Tiger and an emu and ask them to note the similarities and differences? Hopefully, they will notice the koala is endangered (on the east coast of Australia) and the Tasmanian Tiger is extinct. The pairs/small groups could report back to the larger group and discuss their findings. The Venn diagrams go on display and already you have assessed their prior knowledge and created words for the word wall (endangered, extinct, nocturnal, etc.) 

A Venn diagram activity — one of several alternatives to a KWL chart

More Alternatives to a KWL Chart

Other teachers use a picture book or an image to arouse interest and commence discussions about the topic. The art is in asking probing questions to ascertain prior knowledge. There is not much point in showing a YouTube video before you assess prior knowledge as you have just contaminated their prior knowledge by presenting the information.

What advice would you give beginning teachers to introduce a unit of work/assess prior knowledge without using a KWL chart?

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course.

https://www.edglossary.org/formative-assessment/

Formative assessment is the ongoing day to day check of student learning. It can be a simple thumbs up or thumbs down to check understanding or can be more complex and time consuming such as a Kahoot Quiz to check comprehension of the content. It is a checking of the pulse to check on student learning – to see what is understood and what needs to be learned or retaught. Often teachers use formative assessment to see how their teaching is going – did the children understand this concept/process or do I have to reteach it in another way?

Good formative assessment strategies don’t need to be complicated. A well-chosen strategy — quick, low-stakes, and easy to act on — tells you exactly where students are up to before you plan the next lesson.

Formative Assessment Strategies to Try

However, before we get too carried away, it is important to understand some of the formative assessment strategies you can use to assess student learning. The following list is not exhaustive:

  • questioning
  • work samples
  • interview
  • observation
  • self assessment
  • peer assessment
  • journals
  • etc.
Students using a laptop as part of a formative assessment strategy

Once you have decided upon the purpose and the type of formative assessment you will conduct, it is important to also decode HOW you will keep and store this data. This is known as a record keeping device. For instance, if you choose to observe how each child is working collaboratively on a small group task, how is it best to record this information? You could use a checklist which has differing levels of agreed statements of what collaboration looks like in a small group. Sure, you could video each child at work and store the video in their portfolio, but you will still have to watch the video at some stage to make an on-balance judgement about the child’s capacity to work collaboratively. Alternatively, you could make the agreed statements on what collaboration looks like with the children and ask the children to complete both self and peer assessments of their collaboration.

Fortunately, many of the time consuming “old-days” formative assessment tasks are being made easier through the use of technology. Apps and software such as Kahoot, Plickers to check understanding and others which allow the student to illustrate their understanding such as Explain Everything, Google Forms or even a Padlet. Through careful planning in the initial stages, the astute teacher will have highlighted in their term planner the learning activities that will be used as a formative assessment so the task does not become onerous and really is an authentic assessment of student learning.

Assessment

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students.

https://www.edglossary.org/assessment/

Assessment is a word that can drive fear into both students and teachers alike! The word “assessment” originally comes from the Latin words “ad” meaning to or at and “sedere” meaning sit, so the word means “to sit beside”.

In practice, this breaks down into three purposes — assessment for, as and of learning — each playing a different role in the classroom, from day-to-day check-ins to formal reporting.

Assessment is about the gathering of data to make judgements about student learning. The data can come from the students, teachers or from standardised tests. The purpose of assessment is to primarily gauge student learning. When planning a unit of work, teachers must be cognisant of the ongoing need to assess student learning and to revise their teaching plan accordingly. One of the first tasks in successful planning t is to know your stuents, so the first assessment task might be to assess prior knowledge to gauge “where the children are at” so the planning can be specific and targeted to the children’s needs.

Assessment for, as and of learning — the three purposes of assessment

The Three Types: Assessment For, As and Of Learning

Basically, there are three purposes of assessment — assessment for, as and of learning:

  • assessment for learning;
  • assessment as learning and
  • assessment of learning.

Assessment for learning involves the teacher making inferences about student progress to inform their teaching. The emphasis here is using mini assessment tasks to inform the teaching and to assist the student to learn more. It is about improving teaching and learning, rather than achieving a mark or a score. It can provide feedback to encourage the student to move forward and to improve.

Assessment as learning involves students reflect on their own learning to inform their learning goals. Assessment as learning encourages students to take responsibility for their learning and to be reflective. It requires students to ask questions about their learning, to refcelt and to modify their learning gaols in order to succeed.

Assessment of learning involves teachers using the evidence of student learning to make judgements about student progress towards the standards/outcomes/objectives/content descriptors as mandated by the educational authority.

The two types of assessment are formative assessment and summative assessment. As their names imply, formative assessment is ongoing assessment during the learning process and summative assessment usually occurs at specific periods, especially at the conclusion of a unit of work. Whereas formative assessment is primarily for the student and teacher, summative assessments are usually for external stakeholders, such as parents at report time or for government and educational jurisdictions.