Students Appreciate Meaningful Feedback

Students often ask about grades:

“Is this graded? How much is this worth?”

I readily reply, “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” they say.

“Will you do better work and learn more?”

“Yes,” they often respond.

“Then your work is graded.”

I don’t like grades.

Does that assessment show they really know 90% of that topic? Does a conglomeration of grades averaged together actually show how well they understand.

This year I’ve had several serious conversations about eliminating grades with my students. They agree that it would be better - though, despite my clarification, I think some still don’t realize it does not mean the absence of learning and struggling with content.  (The big concern for some is getting into a good college. They are seventh graders! So much pressure they are putting on themselves.)

These conversations and my thoughts about grading led me to read Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School by Starr Sackstein.

A quick and practical read, Hacking Assessment offers tips to help you go gradeless. I’m not there yet, but it gave me lots to chew on and some things I could try right away.

When assessing, I had already removed a grade equivalent on rubrics, instead indicating level of mastery. I also had stopped indicating a grade on student work. They would have to look at the online grading portal to see that. I wanted students to focus on their work, their learning, and my feedback.

Sackstein discusses feedback in Hacking Assessment.  She references work by  Aric Foster and Mark Barnes around detaching the assessor from assessment:

The process taken during assessment is to “merely record what I see, how the work does or does not address standards, resources to pursue to amend areas of concern, and a new plan for resubmitting the work. My goals are to keep my comments as objective as possible,....while not judging harshly or praising superfluously.”

As a start, I latched on to the idea of providing feedback in the form of “I see” and “I don’t see,” referencing the standards and expectations. For example:

• I see you have two specific examples to support your first reason.
• I do not see effective use of transitions.

I found that this focused effort on feedback detached me more from the process of assessment.  I also found that it was more efficient and quicker to provide feedback in this manner. I was not longer riddling the students’ work with comments. Instead, it was a more global look at their overall work as related to the standards, expectations, and rubric.

I was pleased with my efforts, pleased at the ease of giving feedback in this manner, and hopeful the students would find it useful. So, after the students experienced this method of feedback, I felt compelled to ask them what they thought of it.

Their experience was literally 100% positive. Here are some comments:

• I like this feedback because it showed us what we clearly did or didn’t do.  When it's just the rubric it tells us a list of things we could have done wrong, while this was clear.  It made it easier to improve because we know what to fix.
• I like this style of feedback because I can figure out exactly what I did wrong and how I would be able to get there. Knowing exactly what I did wrong lets me know what I’m supposed to do to meet exemplary.
• I liked the way you presented feedback because it helped me realize the things that are good in my writing and the things that I can work on.  Now I know some things I do should stay the same and some things I can change to make my writing a solid piece.
• I did like this type of feedback because it is very straightforward and explicit.  This helps me better understand what I didn’t and did do well on.

I am going to continue this method of feedback as students are completing work and when they are finished.  I hope to incorporate other aspects of Barnes’ work such as providing resources and actions to encourage improvement and providing specific focus areas to resubmit (rather than the entire piece).

These efforts should help move me toward a gradeless classroom that focuses on rich feedback, growth, and learning and is student centered. Students will probably react favorably even if parents initially may respond negatively and administrators may be reluctant.

I look forward to this next phase of my journey.

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If you are going gradeless or revamping how you give feedback, or if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.