As teachers, we know how important feedback is for our students. It motivates them to learn and
evolve their work to be better, making it fundamental on their journey to get the best grades. Yet,
many of us never consider the idea of teaching our students to give effective feedback themselves.
By encouraging our students to give feedback, we not only improve ourselves as educators, but we
also give the gift of a marking eye to those students. This should, hopefully, allow them to look at
their own work with a more critical eye, so they can see ways to potentially improve their work.
The problem is, how do we encourage our students to give constructive feedback rather than simple remarks such as “I didn’t like it” or “the test was too hard”?
Give Them a Set of Questions
To avoid closed or overly critical feedback, it’s a good idea to give your students a set of questions
that they should answer when critiquing a piece of work. This should help them to outline both
positives and negatives, so feedback is fair and constructive. Some possible questions could be:
- Why did/didn’t you like it?
- How would you change/improve something? Or, would you keep it the same?
- Does something need less/more information?
Allow Students to Give You Feedback
Although getting your students to give each other’s work feedback is a good way to learn, you
should first let them practice feedback. Otherwise, you may find some students disheartened or
angry at the feedback they receive.
Start small, asking them to give feedback on a lesson. Then, you could even make a few mock-up
pieces of work and ask them to give these answers feedback for homework. You can then collect and
give the students feedback on their feedback. This may feel convoluted at first, however, this is a
great way for your students to hone their feedback skills.
Critique Each Other’s Work
Once they’ve grasped the idea of feedback and how to be constructive, it’s time to allow your
students to give feedback on each other’s work. Here you can take names off work if you like, or just
go for it. Encourage your students to question any feedback they received if they disagree and
debate it amongst themselves. This will help them to understand why certain feedback was given
and how they could improve in the future.
Give Feedback to Yourself
Often, the hardest critiques we receive in life is from ourselves. By asking your students to give
feedback – which is fair and constructive – on their own work, you can start to encourage them to
self-mark a piece of work, before they hand it in.
Ensure that any feedback they give themselves is fair. The last thing you want is for a student to be
overly-critical on themselves, which is diminishing to self-confidence. When they give themselves
constructive feedback, though, students begin to see what mistakes they are doing in their work,
allowing them to avoid these mistakes in future.
Encouraging students to give feedback from a young age is one of the most important skills you can
teach as an educator. This ability to give feedback will help them improve their work and grades as
students, as well as help them in their adult life and the world outside your class!