Providing effective feedback – A guide for teachers

A generic support document for Stages 4 to 6 which guides languages teachers in providing effective feedback.

Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on student achievement. It enables students to close the gap between where they currently are in their learning and a unit of work’s learning intentions and success criteria.

Effective feedback:

• communicates your assessment of a student’s performance
• stimulates students to reflect on their own learning
• provides advice on future learning.

Feedback may include teacher feedback, peer feedback or a student’s own feedback, for example through a student learning journal.

Peer feedback

Giving effective feedback takes practise, so your students will most likely need some guidance before they provide feedback to each other.

To support them in the process:

• always model what good feedback looks like
• remind them that they don’t need to give feedback on everything all at once. Discuss how this can be overwhelming and therefore ineffective
• ask them to give feedback which relates to the activity or task, and which is explicit and actionable. Discuss what this looks like
• consider using scaffolded strategies or templates – we have provided some examples below.

Remember, you can also ask students to provide anonymous feedback to each other too, which might be a good way to start. This document supports students to provide effective feedback to their peers.