Directing Attention: the first characteristic of effective feedback

Chappius offers a key question in this section: "Can this student take action on the basis of this comment?" (pg.60).  Inherent in this question is differentiation.  Some students in the class may be able to take action, but can this, individual, student on whose paper the comment is written take action.  By "this comment" Chappius is pointing back to her earlier statement that effective feedback should point to success, which is genuine and specifically linked to intended learning, and/or point to intervention, which should "identify a correction, describe a specific feature or quality that needs work, or point out an ineffective or incorrect use of strategy or process."  Does the feedback I wrote on the paper do this for my students?  Does it provide each with information about what he/she did well and what he/she needs to do next?  Or do I just try to give them enough information to justify the grade that they were given?

This last question gets to the heart of the verb of Chappius' key question: "take action."  Students need to be given opportunities to take action- what formative assessment is all about.  If the feedback does not create opportunities to take action, the feedback is worse than worthless- it is a waste of time.