How a Feedback Loop kit runs: the progress check, whole-class feedback in one lesson, and the improvement tasks at three levels.
Chapters
Transcript
Introduction
We all know feedback matters. We also know that thirty essays, each with written comments, can take an evening that most teachers don't have. Feedback Loop kits are our answer to that. They sit at fixed points in every scheme, four in each set-text scheme, and each one gives you a short assessment, a way to mark it quickly, and a whole-class feedback lesson ready to teach. Here's what's inside one, using Macbeth Kit 1. Kit 1 in Macbeth comes at Lesson 6, after the class has studied Act 1. The question is: how does Shakespeare present Lady Macbeth in Act 1 Scene 5? The assessment takes twenty-five minutes, so it fits inside a lesson. The teacher page starts with the misconceptions students are likely to bring. For this kit, for instance, saying that Lady Macbeth puts the idea of murder into Macbeth's head, when he has already thought of it himself in Act 1 Scene 3. Knowing these before you mark makes them easy to spot. There's also a tip for students, and the key vocabulary for the task. Students answer three short questions, one each for what, how and why, and then write one paragraph in response to the question. The short questions have a mark scheme with the acceptable answers, so they're quick to mark. The paragraph is marked against the level descriptors, with notes on what each level looks like for this particular task. This is the part that saves the evening. You read the paragraphs, note the patterns, and fill in one whole-class feedback sheet, so the same comment never has to be written thirty times. It has examples of what went well and what would be even better when, written in the way students need to hear them. For example: link context to purpose, explaining why a Jacobean audience would find Lady Macbeth's words shocking. Then students act on the feedback. The kit includes an improvement task for each level of the mark scheme, from writing one sentence about what Lady Macbeth wants, up to zooming in on a single word like gall in take my milk for gall. Every student improves their own paragraph, starting from the level they reached, in the same lesson. In our play and novel schemes there's a feedback lesson after each kit, so the time to act on feedback is already in the scheme of work. You don't have to find it. Across a unit, students go round the loop four times: assess, feed back, improve. By the end-of-unit essay, they've practised the skills it needs. Feedback Loop kits come inside every scheme of learning, and you can also buy them on their own for ten pounds each. The free Lesson 3 sampler for each scheme shows the same lesson design. It's all at btl.education.
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