Too Much, Too Little, Just Right

I started reading How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students by Susan M. Brookhart, and I am already feeling exceedingly challenged.   The first section was about timing: feedback needs to be timely.  Yep, got it.  I am 100 percent there.  Kids, and adults for that matter, don't care any more if they have moved on from the subject under consideration.  Therefore, the feedback has to be given while it is still on the mind and while there is still something the student can do about it.

The second section was on amount. Screeching halt- perhaps accompanied by audible groaning on my part.  Here is an area that I need a lot of help with.  And Brookhart gets to the heart of the matter by conceding that 

Probably the hardest decision to make about feedback is the amount to provide.  A natural inclination is to want to "fix" everything you see.

Oh, so true.  It is the hardest decision when it comes to feedback because there is so much to write sometimes and not enough time to write it.  Plus, I can easily fall into the trap of copy-editing, which often just overwhelms the students and doesn't really give the student specific ways to approach their next learning steps, if I am not careful.  However, writing "Good" or some other such nebulous comment is also unhelpful it would seem.  To make it even more challenging,

For real learning, what makes the difference is a usable amount of information that connects with something the students already knows and takes them from that point to the next level. 

The words that I fixate on in this sentence are the words usable and connects.  For feedback to be usable, it has to meet the student where he or she is at developmentally. Right now, at the beginning of the year, it is difficult to keep all of my students' names straight- let alone understand where they are at developmentally.  Furthermore, for feedback to connect, students have to hear it in such a way that they can see how it relates to their current performance and gives them a direction for improvement.  This means that it needs to not be too little or too much because both create confusion for the student. Which leaves one question: What is just right?   

Judging the right amount of feedback to give--how much, on how many points--requires deep knowledge and consideration of the following:

• The topic in general and your learning target or targets in particular 
• Typical developmental learning progressions for those topics or targets
• Your individual students

This is difficult, and I can honestly say that I struggle with giving feedback that I can truly say advances the learning of my students.  I give feedback, but I do not know to what extent is has been usable or has connected to the students- to what extent it is just right.   However, it is an important part of the formative assessment process and I am not going to get better without practicing and going through the process.  Just like in the story of Goldilocks, just right always came after too much and too little.  Right?

Photo by sidknee23