Tuesday 27 November 2012

Feedback - Feedforward adventure

Its been a while since my last blog and thought it was a good time to blog about my continuing PE adventure.

My previous blog looked at how students gave feedback to each other and how they used it to move their learning forward (feedforward).

During the last month, students in my opinion, have shown good progress and gained confidence in critiquing their own and others work/performances. Its not just been in my GCSE PE group but in KS3 & 4 lessons as well. Students have responded positively to the critique culture of be kind, be specific and be helpful with the feedback in order to improve students learning.

Within GCSE PE, students are constantly writing at the end of their own and others pieces of work 'what went well' (www) and 'even better if' (ebi). This lead to student discussions about what has been written with students then writing a learning target(s).

Similar results have been shown by KS3 & KS4 students using the 'be kind, be specific and be helpful.' Previously students quality of feedback to each other was poor, and as a department, we wanted this to improve dramatically. Often students rushed their feedback to others, making very brief comments that weren't specific or helpful to the performer. By introducing these three simple terms, students started to realise the importance of quality feedback will enable them to improve their work (feedforward).

A simple way I demonstrated this to students was to draw a football on a whiteboard, however my football was square and I was proud of my football, really proud. 'Sir, its square that's not a football, its rubbish.' I was devastated by this harsh criticism. So I asked for any positive comments, someone to be kind about my football no matter how rubbish it looked. 'It has nice straight lines for a square sir.' A smile appeared on my face. Students identified that you must be kind first to make people feel confident and positive.

'A football is round sir, you need to draw a circle.' So I did, the smallest circle I could. 'No sir, that's too small, it needs to be bigger.' You can probably guess what I did next! The biggest circle I could on the whiteboard. 'Sir, now your being silly.' But my point was proved, feedback needs to be specific.

Once I had finally drawn a normal sized circle, 'it needs a pattern sir.' I drew lots of wiggly lines from top to bottom. 'Thats not right sir, the pattern on the ball needs to be lots of hexagon.' Brilliant, the penny dropped. From then on, students can tell others that feedback needs to start positively, be kind and then you have to be specific with feedback so it is helpful for students to improve.

I also used this example recently at my school's first T&L forum which made staff smile and laugh but made them understand that a simple example can have a very powerful message to students.

The next stage of this feedback and feedfoward adventure will be to focus on the 'how' part of how to improve.

Hopefully it won't take me a month or so to blog again! Let the feedback - feedforward adventure continue!

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