In a socially distanced classroom, personalised feedback is tricky. It’s not just that the increased physical space required between teacher and pupil makes it difficult to assess work on the go and to offer feedback in real time to the individual - the lack of proximity also affects the relational aspects of individualised feedback: personalised feedback feels less personal.

So, should everyone be shifting to whole-class feedback instead? Many teachers were already using it pre Covid-19 as a workload solution and because they believed whole-class feedback made for better feedback. It now seems clear that more and more teachers will look at it as a solution in the era of coronavirus restrictions.

What, then, do you need to know about whole-class feedback if you are making the switch or are considering it? We caught up with Rebecca Brett Harris, who is researching and trialling it in her school.

Tes: Feedback is a tricky area for teachers. What are the key challenges?

Rebecca Brett Harris: One of the main challenges when providing feedback is ensuring that pupils use it to help them improve. This could be down to how the feedback is delivered; the time given to respond; and, essentially, what you are asking pupils to do with that feedback. For example, just writing down long comments in pupils’ books is not the best way to provide feedback. Teachers need to make it efficient, timely and meaningful.

Is ‘meaningful’ feedback necessarily personalised?

Most pupils make similar errors in their work and teachers can usually foresee what misconceptions might arise. For example, if asking pupils to write an argument piece, a teacher might predict errors with a type of punctuation, the use of statistics and the tone chosen by pupils. There are limited ways that a teacher can write these misconceptions down in books, so there is a need to weigh up whether time is better spent creating an activity that would help them address the mistakes.

Is this where whole-class feedback comes in?

Partly, yes. Whole-class feedback is essentially tackling the common issues pupils have with the work collectively, rather than feeding back individually on every piece of work. Professor Dylan Wiliam points out that marking and feedback are separate, and I do think we still conflate the two in our classrooms too frequently. When we think we are feeding back, we are often simply marking.

The writer and educationalist, Daisy Christodoulou, also points out that “written comments are way more work for the donors than for the recipients”. So there are workload benefits to whole-class feedback and it also helpfully separates marking from feedback.

A big factor in whole-class feedback, though, is that it gives the teacher the gift of time to make the feedback better. When you are trying to create personal feedback for 30 children, your time is very limited. If you can pinpoint the key issues almost every child is facing, you can deliver that to the whole class and take your time doing it. Whole-class feedback not only highlights the error, but also allows the teacher the chance to model, reteach and allow children time to address it in their work. This can then lead to opportunities to self- and peer assess.

So, how did you approach the switch to whole-class feedback?

I am at the start of implementing whole-class feedback through a small pilot. A CPD session, highlighting the research and techniques to support giving feedback, has been provided to the faculty. The focus has been on improving the pupil and not the work. Using examples of whole-class feedback from a number of teacher blogs from prominent teachers on Twitter, five feedback strategies were selected:

• Reteaching the concept: an opportunity to rectify misconceptions and develop pupils’ understanding.
• Setting an improvement task: this can be more individualised as pupils apply the feedback directly to their work.
• Coded marking: instead of writing feedback in full, students receive a short code. They look that code up on a reference sheet to find out the feedback; for example, a need to improve capital letters may be denoted as a square or a capital C. The aim here is to save time.
• Modelling: this can be more effective than success criteria. Modelling allows pupils to process the learning and demonstrates what you want to see.
• Verbal feedback: instead of penning an essay in response to work, you give feedback verbally to individuals or small groups instead.

The teachers in the pilot have been given support in how to use the strategies. However, the ones they select and for which tasks has been left to them.

What were the key challenges?

One was confidence. Some teachers felt that whole-class marking was too good to be true; others feared that it would not work for them. For the latter, the most important factor was getting them to consider how much time was currently spent on marking and how much of that time was spent giving feedback. Asking teachers to consider how many times they write the same misconceptions or provide feedback on summative tasks is a good starting point. It illustrates the ineffective use of teacher time that does not help the pupil to improve.

What has the impact been?

The process of gathering and assessing results is ongoing, but I have seen improvements in pupil learning. Providing more timely feedback has meant that I can intervene with the learning and prevent pupils from embedding misconceptions. Modelling is one of the most impactful tools I use, especially if I can use work from a pupil in my class. And, as an added bonus, there has been a significant reduction in my marking time.

Did that impact surprise you and other people you spoke to about it?

My Year 11 class were quick to point out that my “detailed presence” in their book was missing. Thankfully, they trusted me to demonstrate how, in fact, I had read all their work and was able to produce meaningful feedback through the opening 20 minutes of my lesson.

Personally, I found the impact reassuring rather than surprising. As a teacher who prided myself on how frequently books were marked in detail (at the cost of most evenings and weekends), being able to provide more meaningful feedback and save time has been game changing. There is still scepticism among some teachers that this approach cannot be applied fully and we will still need to mark some work in depth. But I think that is about finding the right balance between whole-class feedback and individual feedback, as and when it is required.

What practical conclusions did you make? Is this something anyone can do and, if so, how?

Planning is key: identify which tasks will be beneficial for you to feed back on and ensure time is given in the next lesson for pupils to respond. Ask pupils to hand in books, open on the page or activity that needs marking - this saves time and hassle. Identify up to four misconceptions that are being made by at least 50 per cent of the class. Use one or more of the five strategies to approach these misconceptions. For example, you might reteach how to use a comma; model how a technique has been used effectively in descriptive writing; and set an improvement task for pupils to address these while you circulate and provide verbal feedback to individual pupils.

What do you want to look at next?

I am interested to see how this works across a whole faculty with teachers of varying experience. I’d like to see if the strategies are effective and which other forms of feedback we could use to move away from the written comments in books.

Rebecca Brett Harris is researcher and teacher of English at Olchfa Comprehensive School, Swansea

This article originally appeared in the 16 October 2020 issue under the headline “How I... trialled whole-class feedback”