This session will help teachers focus on effective oral feedback to enable pupils to retain their confidence, unlock their potential and enable them to overcome difficulties to succeed. Poor feedback can demoralise and sap the confidence of many pupils so that they cannot achieve.
Objective
To explore a variety of approaches to support effective oral feedback.
Outcome
By the end of the session participants will have identified how to provide effective oral feedback that strengthens pupil progress.
Introduction (10 minutes)
Introduce the session by asking participants what effective oral feedback is and why it is important. Take some feedback and make the following points.
- Effective feedback enables pupils to retain their confidence, unlocking their potential and enabling them to overcome difficulties to succeed.
- Equally, poor feedback can demoralise and sap the confidence of many pupils so that they cannot achieve.
- Oral feedback happens very frequently in ICT as pupils develop their techniques and understanding; this is usually done as pupils are engaged with a particular task.
To be effective, feedback needs to:
- be immediate and context-specific – wherever possible comments need to be made at the point misconceptions occur and in the context of the specific learning
- be positive and focused – comment on what has been achieved, then unpick what exactly the pupil has misconceived in order to clarify understanding and specify the action the pupil needs to take next
- encourage reflection – so that pupils become part of the process, see that assessment is not something done to them, and identify what they have learnt and what they need to improve
- provide scaffolding or supportive next steps that enable pupils to progress and move forward.
Activity: Oral feedback (25 minutes)
Give participants Handout 3: Misconceptions (PDF-50 KB) Attachments and ask them to study the screenshots. These are typical of a range of pupil misconceptions. To move the pupil forward we need to establish what the misconception is, identify what we have failed to teach them, and then develop questions that enable the pupil to draw on previous experience, knowledge and understanding to structure their new understanding.
For each screenshot, ask participants to work in pairs to decide:
- what the pupil's misconception is
- the key questions they need to ask to prompt the pupil to reflect on the misconception
- the key questions to enable the pupil to move forward.
Allow working time before taking feedback. There are possible responses for each scenario.
- Scenario A
Potential misconception
The pupil has entered the currency in the cells as well as the number. While this works for £ sign it does not do so for p. The pupil has used the SUM function but this displays the wrong result. Possible misconceptions are that the pupil does not understand that spreadsheet cells deal only in numbers (though some signs seem to work) or that they do not distinguish between 49p and £0.49.
Possible structured response
- Is this the result you expected?
- Why does this cell (B5) have a £ sign but B6 does not?
- What happens if you change cell B3 to 49 (and .49)?
- What do you think will happen if you change B4 to 12 (and .12)?
- What will you need to do to the numbers in B5 and B6 to get the total to add up properly?
- Scenario B
Potential misconception
The pupil has used the space bar to centre the heading and to indent the first paragraph. It may be that the pupil does not know how to centre or indent or that, although taught the technique, he does not understand why it is important.
Possible structured response
- Can you show me how you centred the heading on the page?
- How do you know it is in the centre?
- What happens if you make the heading bigger? Will it still be in the centre?
- Is there another way you could centre the heading?
- Scenario C
Potential misconception
The pupil is using a template but has not understood the significance of the preset frames to contain the text. The pupil may have not been taught how to use the application or may use a blank slide and a text box to insert text, applying a template later, or may have misunderstood the use of templates.
Possible structured response
- Can you show me how you put text on a slide?
- How did you put the background pictures on?
- What happens if you click on the box 'Click to add subtitle'?
- Is this an easier way to insert text?
- What happens when you create a new slide?
Conclude this activity by summarising participants' responses.
Plenary (5 minutes)
Conclude this activity by making the following points.
- Pupil misconceptions can run deep and a sustained effort may be required to unravel what lies behind the error.
- Providing questions that scaffold the pupil's understanding is not an easy task.
- Rehearsing responses, as in this activity, enables teachers and practitioners to be better prepared.
- It is important to provide frequent and focused feedback to motivate pupils.
Clarify your expectations on how this activity will inform their future work.
