I have been working on leaving constructive feedback on all student work... not just a grade and a sticker or a smiley/ frowny face. Logically I understand that providing feedback should guide students to their next step. It should assist them on what they specifically need to do to improve. On the other hand, who has the time to do that each and every time? I'm just like my students! With practice it will become easier and fluent. I just know it!
However, my administration wants feedback written on all work. This includes work on hallway bulletin boards. Every month I try to change the bulletin board with current work. The current board is science and writing. They drew a picture of a robot and described what it does for them based on the forms of energy we were learning that week. I feel funny writing what students need to do to improve upon for all to see... so what I have chosen to do is write positive comments expressing what I explicitly like in their assignment. For instance, on one assignment I wrote, "I like the way you remembered to use capital letters and punctuation marks." This comment is for the student who generally writes in all lowercase and no periods at all. On other student work I wrote comments about correctly using vocabulary and/ or the great details that they used. I am constantly reminding students to add more details!
Below you will see pictures of my hallway bulletin board and the comments I wrote. Do you have any tips for writing constructive feedback for students? My goal is to always inspire my students to want to improve. How do you inspire your students? (Oooooh, I'm sensing another topic!) How do you manage doing more, writing more and thinking of specific feedback for each student in your time constraints? I'm looking forward to learning from you. :-)
Happy Teaching!
Happy Learning!
(And for those of you who have Spring Break soon...... ENJOY! You deserve it!)
The best is yet to come!
Until next time,
Sandra @The Happy Learning Den
