I have spent six hours of my life this week giving feedback lessons for the baseline tests. Luckily the year 7 ones drastically improved once I realised how genuinely confusing they all found feedback.
All my classes have WWWs (what went wells) and EBIs (even better ifs), learning questions and brightly highlighted learning ladders. They’ve all responded in green pen, answered my questions and corrected SPaG mistakes.
I know that this all looks great in their books. Ofsted loves it, and therefore so does my school.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand why feedback is important, and why giving students time to reflect is invaluable for their progress. However, my school’s policy means that these students spend an entire lesson responding to feedback so regularly, that their targets, WWWs and EBIs seem to be meaningless now.
My year 9 class groaned as they walked in and saw the title “feedback”. They sat with their heads slumped in their hands as I gave some general comments about what they did well in their assessments.
They feel like they are just ticking boxes and going through the motions; responding in green pen with half-hearted comments because that’s what they’ve been told to do, not because they are actually reflecting consciously on the work they did and how they can improve.
I am sure some schools have come up with really inspiring ways to give feedback, but at my school both the teachers and the students seem so aware that all they are doing is jumping through hoops for some unknown entity to tick-off “feedback” and “progress” on their checklist at some point in the future.
Ofsted is important, and more significantly giving effective feedback is important, but I worry that doing so in this way just removes all meaning. We have discussed making changes in our curriculum area meetings, but it seems as though everyone is so busy at the moment that they don’t want to fix something “that ain’t broke”.
After school tonight we had a book fair. When the email was sent around the subject made it sound much more inviting than it turned out to be. We ended up having to bring a sample of our own classes’ (marked) books down to the hall for every teacher in the school to peruse at their leisure. Of course this included senior leadership (a good chance for them to check up on everybody).
Clearly everyone had picked out their best books and the turnout was pretty impressive. It may feel meaningless, but on paper, the feedback looks incredible. The aim was to share ideas across departments and with the local primary schools too, but it was a little nerve-wracking having the headteacher flick through my year 7 books.
Our department seemed to come out of the ordeal unscathed and with a few ideas from other departments for even more ways to prove to Ofsted that we have marked the students’ books.
On a lighter note, we will have yet another INSET day this week. Four-day week! I know it’s not really so, but it sort of feels like it. It’s our professional development day so as an NQT I don’t have any more commitments other than a 30-minute meeting with my mentor.
I’m probably more excited than I should be at the prospect of spending an entire day marking – but getting a huge chunk done will take a huge weight off my shoulders.
- SecEd’s NQT diarist this year is a teacher of citizenship, RE and humanities at a school in the Midlands.