How to give and receive feedback from students about learning.

There is no simple answer to planning great feedback that allows your students to thrive. It is as complex as they are. I am at pains to point out that what I am about to outline is far from a complete set of ideas, but the following list may act as focusing lens to help sharpen what you see as important for the lesson you are currently planning. The culture of the classroom and the institution’s, your and your students’ perceptions are very much front and centre in the realms of feedback, so we will start with that.

Developing a culture where feedback is valued, wanted and well received?

• What routines, systems and procedures do you use to ensure that ‘threat’ is reduced and feedback will not be interpreted as a personal affront?
• What have you done to help students understand that feedback is part of the learning process?
• Do you use self and peer assessment strategies to develop student error detection and self-regulation?
• How do you value honest student responses so that errors are readily offered?

6 steps to planning receiving feedback from students.

Step 1 - Remind yourself of the lon learning intentions?

What was important last lesson?

What is important in this lesson?

What will be important next lesson?

What will be important at the end of the academic year?

Is this a threshold concept?

Step 2 - Where is the best place to focus the assessment?

Are you working on a long-term outcome that brings together many ideas and involves more complex thinking?

Are you working on short-term outcomes so repeating the information is key to longer-term learning?

What are the misconceptions, known difficulties and common errors associated with this concept or this task?

Step 3 - What exactly are you looking for?

How important is the idea? Is it a threshold concept? A known concept? A Long term learning intention?

How might student knowledge change over time or over the teaching sequence?

How will you know if the students are getting to grips with this idea? How might this change as they become more confident or understand it better?

Are you looking to see if they understand the idea, if they know the idea or that they can apply the idea?

Step 4 - Constructively align tasks and assessments.

Are you interested in them developing or constructing meaning of the idea or assessing if this has been learned?

Is there any chance for means end thinking or guess work?

Step 5 - Design assessments that you can trust.

Have I assessed the big idea more than once?

How big is the decision I will make based upon this information?

How much trust is necessary?

Do I trust that they know it? Or have they just worked it out from the clues in the assessment?

Step 6 - Make the information manageable.

When do I need this information? Can it wait for in between lessons to be processed and used?

Will sampling the class suffice?

Does having a valid assessment matter at this point in time?

How does the gathering of information fit with the flow of planned activities/ learning or the lesson?

Can a computer do the compilation of the evidence for me?

8 steps to giving students feedback.

Step 1 - Establishing the purpose of the feedback.

• Are students developing an understanding? Applying or building on knowledge? Producing work where quality matters? (Are domain skills involved)? Are they struggle to complete a task?
• Is there an opportunity to develop their self-regulation?
• Who or what is the feedback for? The student? To fulfil a policy? For observers?

Step 2 - Consider the form of feedback (or if more Instruction is needed?)

• Do students know enough for the feedback to be helpful?
• Are the tasks constructively aligned enough for task level feedback to be helpful?
• Are answer sheets, guide sheets or rubrics needed?
• Will marking codes be a useful time saver?

Step 3 - Establish a context for feedback.

• How does the teaching sequence support the current learning?
• What prior knowledge do they need to be able to act on the feedback given?
• Are the learning intentions shared, agreed or owned by the students?
• How can you make the goals clear to the students?
• Is exemplar work used to set the direction and quality of the student work?
• Is a rubric established early in the sequence of producing the work?
• Is there a way of making the feedback something that is sought by the students rather than offered by the teacher?

Step 4 - Consider the timing of the feedback.

• Is the potential feedback needed for this task or concept best if provided immediately during the activity, or might some delay be beneficial?
• Is the task best defined as a construct, demonstrate or assessment task?
• How would testing and tests be structured in this topic to aid long term retention?

Step 5 - Establish the correctness, or not, of the student learning?

• What are the signs, evidence and clues that this piece of work is on the right track?
• Is there a hinge point opportunity?
• Is the hinge point activity robust enough to exposure misunderstandings and gaps in understanding?

Step 6 - Consider how the feedback will induce thinking.

• How does the feedback narrow down the range of potential answers or solutions?
• Does the feedback avoid leading the student to use a means end or a ‘trial and error’ approach?
• What are the purposes of your planned questions? Are they to assess, to induce thinking or a convoluted form of social control?
• Is there an opportunity for students to ask high quality questions?

Step 7 - Consider how the feedback develops self-regulation.

• Is student knowledge secure enough to add potential extraneous cognitive load?
• What is the balance between securing knowledge and developing self-regulation?
• Is there a choice of meaningful tasks to follow formative assessment?

Step 8 - Set targets.

• What might you have to re-teach? How will you represent the ideas differently?
• What are the long-term goals for students with this concept?
• Is there any opportunity for “feed-forward” between tasks?
• Do some targets take precedence over other?

Further Reading

Nicol and Macfarlane Dick https://www.reap.ac.uk/reap/public/Papers/DN_SHE_Final.pdf

Hattie and Timperley http://www.columbia.edu/~mvp19/ETF/Feedback.pdf

More student perspectives on Critiques.

listen to ‘Student perspective on critique’ on Audioboo


I love this students sense of community, that taking part so that everyone can learn, it was worth taking a risk for. She is very honest and says that it was "strange" to volunteer, but it was evident that she was enjoying it even during the scrutiny. I'm glad she articulates how she felt during it changed. It is obvious she felt safe during the critique and she clearly values the feedback norms established at the beginning of the lesson.

1. Step up, step back.
2. Hard on content, soft on people.
3. Feedback must be kind, specific and helpful

It is pleasing to note that not only has she got a clear idea of what she needs to do next but feels she is more bale to critique others. I love how students she critique and critiquing as instantly transferable.

i was curious about this transfer so I asked a student who was part of this whole class critique.

listen to ‘an audience member talks about critique’ on Audioboo

It's obvious straight away that the sense of community has extended to the audience, who were appreciative not only of the person volunteering work for critique, but of the comments of other students. However, it is clear that critiques go beyond giving feedback to one person. It is clearly away of establishing what is high quality and then a chance  for you to reflect upon your own work. These students may only be 12 years old, but they can distill a process. The teacher action of extracting the key ideas or success criteria, as the work was critiqued seems to be the key in allowing him to do so.

Drafting work and Portfolio books- An Update post.

As a prelude to this post it will be worth reading Nick Dennis succinct blog post An Ethic of Excellence- in opposition to “quickfixes”, which coincidentally is kind of the point here. This post is a reflection to my learning goals set at the start of this academic year.#

I must confess to sense growing well being when considering the impact of Portfolio books. The majority of students now understand their purpose which is a vast improvement from our first attempts at using them. This has presented two major obstacles to overcome. 

Firstly, the hard wired nature of completing “schooling” tasks. That is to say that once complete students believe they are finished. This is unsurprising as most of what they do at school is precisely this. Task done, teacher ticks and on we move – the relentless factory model of education at its most pernicious. Thankfully this cycle is easy to break, although whether it remains broken is a different question.

Secondly, and this is entirely based on the student experience of the above, is that students genuinely do not understand what their best is, since they have rarely had an opportunity to demonstrate it. Surely that’s a teachers job, but the delivery model again occludes.

So, what I have learned so far is the importance of culture. All of my year 7 and 8’s have so far written up one practical piece of work, identified and stressed as “work to be proud” of. Obviously, some students grasp this straight away others remain ignorant, bu,t the culture remains expectant of excellence through hard work and the drafting of work. Each write up has began in lesson time ensuring a shared structure and success criteria for these piece of work and then have been completed as a home learning task. This has then been followed up through a whole class critique of one or two students work to refine and exemplify what excellence could look like. The students have then again been given (a little) class time and a home learning task to improve their work. Again care has been taken to mention that their portfolio work, with that multiple drafts of improving work, is another way to demonstrate successful learning and another way to value their hard work.

A problem encountered.

 If you know a redraft is coming how do you put all your effort in when you know you’re going to do it again. I have no answer to this yet, but I hope the portfolio book will help at least place some expectation upon these tasks. This renders task selection ( and design) essential. I am sure some of my students have encountered this sentiment and have expressed it verbally as well as in sub-par work. They have said things like “will we have to re-do this?” which I have taken care and time to challenge in a positive way. My response has always been to distinguish between redoing and drafting. Redoing implies copying out neater like cutting the lawn, while drafting infers improving and learning. It is a fine distinction, particularly for students, but what is at the heart is the establishment of a critiquing and drafting culture.

So far all students have improved their work in at least two features of their work. Some have made huge leaps in their work. It may be easy to detract from these improvements and claim its due to teacher influence or help from peers and therefore not reproducible by students in their everyday work. But, this is not a quick fix, teaching for its better part is not a set of tricks, tools or gimmicks. It’s about trustful relationships where challenge and expectation can over time develop not only good scientists (in this case) but also a vibrant work ethic and aspiration. At the very least these students now have a model of, if not excellent work, at least good (or for some improving ) work in their books. Its ownership and it’s a starting point.

The recurring power o critiques.

Through all my experience of running critiques with students one thing has continued to surprise me, and that is how much these discussion remain about learning science ( content knowledge). This in itself is a massive selling point for the selection certain tasks at regular intervals throughout the year to critique and redraft. It allows you to revisit and develop understanding of the content that your subject values. It forces students to question what they understand and what they don’t and give opportunity for them to communicate this in several ways. It’s teaching.

The next steps will be more evident after the next student task. Year 7 have began writing up a long term experiment on plant growth, so different content knowledge but the scientific thinking utilised in design, carrying out and analysing experiments remains constant. After the initial discussion of the success criteria, I can already see the improvement, and I’m suitably expectant of work approaching their best. Year 8, is a little more problematic as their next task is an extended writing one, so the similarities are less specific and therefore the transfer I am hoping for is more cultural. We will see if this happens. 

Critiques- feedback and learning at High tech High.

Critiques an essential element to the success the students experience at High Tech High. Critiques are basically a formalised peer and teacher assessment session, but through their regularity, intensity and genuine sense of a learning community these turn into something all together more powerful. A real learning forum, as David Perkins would put it "an opportunity to learn from the team".

The foundation of these critiques are three simple norms, which are now proudly on display and referred to in my classroom.  I like the term norm as it makes it very easy for me to say that these things are normal in successful classroom). These are:

1. Hard on content, soft on people- I always exemplify for my students, for example "When Sean explained about how the light refracts in the eye he did not use any scientific words. Would become the explanation of the how the eye refracts light did not use any scientific language". So far, my students have liked this, giving them confidence to give critical advice to classmates and friends alike. Self correcting has been evident with students rephrasing sentences to give feedback. I feel it has really helped them talk about the content more rather than the presentation.

2. Step up, Step back - Focus on the age old problem that some students will not offer suggestions and others will dominate. Dylan William's advice on no hands up rule applies double here! I like the terminology here makes it a much more student friendly than a rule. This was expertly done at HTH with students being invited to give their advice ,opinions and feedback.

3. Feedback should be kind, specific and helpful- requires no further explanation, although I was amused that the first time I held a critique in this style not one bit of positive feedback was given. I let my students go and did not correct this, as they were clearly trying to be helpful and were battling well trying to be specific. I told them at the end and they thought it was hilarious, in an embarrassed sort of way. The second time around they made sure that they had a bit of praise too. I only give this anecdote as a way of emphasising the need to give feedback on the process of critiquing as well as the content on show.

At High Tech High the Projects run for a long period of time, which naturally allows for the undertaking of what can be quite lengthy feedback sessions. The expert teachers I observed doing critiques were aware that it is hard work for students and can be monotonous, so they managed this situation with aplomb with great sensitivity to how students were responding and giving appropriate breaks and if necessary rescheduling of some group presentations to enable students to get the best feedback possible. It really mattered to everyone.

The teachers also had planned for the feedback that they wanted to be discussed. This tended to be around the content of what was being learned during the project, as well as the quality of the understanding, making this a real chance to explore misconceptions. The basic format was that each group of student in turn would present where their project was at the time, and then the class would discuss the work being guided by the questions the teacher had established. These were on display and guided the conversation as opposed to directing it, so there was plenty of scope for more explorative discussion. Every group also asked for specific advice about their own project which ranged from looking for tips and tricks on how to improve the presentation, yes/ no feedback on whether something was clear and too much more complex request about the content and context. These led to sophisticated dialogue between students, but, the art of the teacher was to interject and clarify, prompt and extend at opportune moments. The teachers role in subject content ( pedagogical content knowledge mostly) was vital, so that they did not revert to the "elementisis"(elements first) approach to teaching and learning. Instead it allows teachers to teach within the context of what the students need to know within the bounds of their projects. See David Perkins wonderful book "Making Learning Whole" for more about elementisis.

The ownership of this feedback by the students, facilitated (and sometimes) given by the teacher was one of the reasons that the quality of the student projects was so high. Due to the creative nature of (all?) the projects at HTH, I am reminded of Geoff Petty's Six phase model of the creative process:-Inspiration, Clarification, Distillation, Incubation, Perspiration and Evaluation. With these it is easy to see that you could indeed have critiques around most of these as they would match the different stages of any project. The least obvious is possibly Incubation, where you are "to leave your ideas alone", but what better way to do this than spend some time reflecting on the learning of others, which could lead to a new insight for your own learning. The notion of incubation challenges the need for "pace" within a lesson, our brains need time process and organise information. Project Based Learning does this.

Back at school, without the luxury of large projects, I have taken the chance during "create a presentation" tasks to utilise Critiques. I would normally rely on my circulation to provide feedback during these sessions, thereby taking the responsibility away from my students. I have therefore built in a mini presentation into these tasks, timed just before the half way point. These are timed, short (around 2 minutes) and focused not on the content but where they are in the development of the presentations. They also allow for discussions on improvement (or learning as you will) in subsequent presentations. I have also requested that each group has questions that they would like to ask, although this is something that they have found difficult so far. 

I have supported these by ensuring I have clear learning outcomes, so that they can assess coverage, and then questions about the content so that they can begin to assess understanding. Although this lengthens these activity substantially, I have so far been impressed by the depth of the knowledge that this time(incubation?) has allowed my students to acquire.

A great thing that High Tech High did that I am yet to emulate is having students work on similar yet distinct projects ( although one is in the pipeline!) This allows them to approach the content from different perspective and contexts. So during the Critique the students will "hit" the same information four or five times in different contexts. This would be music to Graham Nuthalls ears. Then factor in again that over a prolonged period of time you would have several critiques it is no wonder that the students at HTH learn so deeply.

Undoubtedly the high stakes nature of the projects at HTH is a huge motivational factor in offering and being willing to receive critical feedback with their peers. Although I was surprised that this did not dominate these discussions, as the content and learning of the content was central to the conversations I bore witness too. This excellent article on the Unboxed journal written by staff and students at HTH explains in more detail.

The Benefits of Teachers as Designers- Thoughts on High Tech High

This is the first post attempting to summarise the observations and thoughts from my trip to High Tech High in San Diego. I must admit to retaining very clear memories of this trip, and still have some unresolved thoughts. Obviously a powerful and motivating experience! I must take this opportunity to publicly thank the staff at HTH, but in particular, Jay Vavra, Jeff Robin, Laura McBain, Rob Riordan and Larry Rosenstock whose passion and knowledge I have found inspiring.



One of the first things to be made clear was the role of the teacher at HTH, that of designer, a notion which on the surface seems fairly familiar. But consider that the management structure is fairly non hierarchical, and therefore the trust and responsibility for a high quality experience lies at the feet of the teacher. This is a positive thing, empowering them to teach to and with their passions. Passion is word used purposefully in these parts, driving the cross curricular and real world connections of the projects that the students do. Bringing a bit of yourself is actively encouraged.

The projects are genuine Project Based not Project Orientated, as the mercurial Jeff Robin points out. So the students don't learn some stuff and then make a project, they make a project and learn deeply as they go. A key feature of the projects is how connected there are to the real world either through the audience or by the recipients of the projects. For example students who designed and built toys in an engineering project had local toy manufacturers visit their exhibition and the toys were built after interviewing students in the elementary school who were also the recipients of the toys. A biotechnology project outcome was a group of students travelling to Mozambique to train game wardens how to DNA profile bush meat samples, thereby having an impact on the conservation of endangered anaimals. A cross species learning outcome- amazing!


It wasn't just the audience that made for an authentic learning experience, it was the collaboration on the project. There was lots of outside experts involved, for example the aforementioned toy manufacturers, but it was the internal collaboration between the students that gave the learning a real world feel and context. In four days I didn't meet a single student who did not know what every other student in the class was doing and how they were doing it. This level of collaboration was awe inspiring, and I believe it has come from two sources. For me this summarises what Learning Futures mean by School as Base Camp, a wonderful notion.



Firstly, through the "Critiques" that happen through each project, where the students refine their projects through feedback from the teacher and the class. I will write a separate post on these as they are a key way that I observed where learning took place, not just about the project but the "content" too. The second was the sense of community that was made manifest in quote from a teacher, "The students understand that when they exhibit their work, that one amazing project will look poorer if displayed with many mediocre ones". I think this sums up the collaborative learning experience they receive at High Tech High, that is both within the class but greatly influenced by what is beyond it.

My favourite anecdote from my trip defines this responsibility. A student on an exhibition night was there without a finished project, amongst a whole class of projects . This void, really stood out, I asked her where her project was and was confidently told that she had been let down by her partner, but that she had everything in hand to meet the deadline later in the week to hand over the project to the recipient. As we spoke a colleague came by and interjected, " I'm sorry" he said "but where's your project" , this was followed by another colleague three minutes later asking the exact same thing. So in about 10 minutes three strangers had asked this student why she had not finished her project, this is real assessment, with real feedback, leading to real responsibility. Which prompts the question why can't our exam system embrace such approaches where the examination is actually part of the learning process. Two things struck me about this student was how confident she was in failure and how much she had learned about the content and process of completing this project, in reality she had been really rather successful.


As a side note her partner was conspicuous by his absence! One of the few restraints placed on the teachers in designing the learning experience was that they do group the students by ability and insist on mixed ability groupings. We were told that ability groups in a class "would be frowned upon". It is this conviction that allows this community to flourish and that students enjoy a rich and realistic learning experience.


These Exhibitions happen regularly throughout the year, for each of the courses that the students take. This regularity and repeat immersion in this assessment is demanding and is used to assess the students learning, determining grades and whether they graduate or not.

Ultimately it is these reasons that the students at HTH demonstrated tremendous responsibility, not only for the project but for their wider education and school community. It is completely apparent that this is why they have such a high University qualification rate ( 100%) and why their students have such positive experiences when at University. For example there students are renowned for being able to communicate confidently with adults. such as college professors.


So how do the teachers go about designing this kind of learning experience. Jeff Robin makes it clear in these two videos that teachers need to do the project first. This makes the project viable as it is assessed for feasibility, whether it is a reasonable demand and identifies the pitfalls be to aid differentiation and support of the students during the project. It turns the teacher into what seems the novel role of project manager and "sets a minimum standard for the students to better, unlike a rubric which set the ceiling, a project sets the floor!"


The teachers do not plan in isolation and are in cross curricular teams, allowing them to operate outside their comfort zones, again I consider this significant in adding to the breadth of the students learning experience, they are not just taught how their teachers were taught, it allows for teachers to take risks as they have the support of a colleague. Furthermore each project goes through a Project Tuning Protocol so that many hearts and minds get to influence the project. This is very much part of the ethos of High Tech High. It is such an important one that a post will follow dedicated to this most valuable process. As a result the quality of student projects improves greatly from middle school through to high school, where it can only be described as stunning. Examples can be found here


One of the key and most consistent cross curricular approaches which is evident throughout the school is the infusion of art. The idea that "Art communicates" is every where and is used to great effect by students to show what they have learned, another factor factor in building student responsibility. I have found it difficult to reconcile the mantra of the UK education system of "pace" with this, it is almost contest between depth and breadth of knowledge. it seems much more realistic to deal with a few concepts in great depth (as preferred at HTH) than to learn lots of surface items as we must to deal with the relentless cycle of learn and regurgitate in preparation for an one hour odd exam.


So, where is the rigour? Is it in the UK exam system or is it in learning experiences designed by educators with the real world, not in mind, but in situ?