Feedback that leads to change
Most feedback is read, nodded at, and filed away. Feedback that changes what a student does next looks different — and often takes less time to give.
Ravi MenonAug 11, 20261 min readTeachers spend enormous amounts of time writing comments that students glance at and forget. The problem is rarely the quality of the comment. It is that the feedback arrives with nothing for the student to do.
Feedback needs a next action
A comment like "explain your reasoning more fully" is accurate and useless. Compare: "Pick the second paragraph and add one sentence that says why this evidence supports your point." The second one is a task.
Whole-class feedback
Reading a set of books and writing one page of notes — common errors, strong examples, three things to fix — then teaching from those notes is faster than individual marking and often more useful. Students act on it in the same lesson.
Close the loop
Feedback that is never revisited trains students to ignore it. Build in five minutes to respond, and check that the response happened.
