Giving feedback on school work

[Pitaramus]

I’m looking for some tips on how to approach feedback for my 8 year old (yr3) on his school work.

I’m finding it really difficult to get the right balance between being too critical and him becoming demoralised and being too positive and him not bothering to try because there are no consequences.

He’s a really bright boy but has no confidence and when he finds something tricky he’d prefer not to try. He interprets all “comments” negatively if he possibly can. Even if I say well done that’s brilliant he’ll say “no, you hate it, you think it’s rubbish”.

Primarily I’m looking to build his confidence by showing him that if he gives something a go he can do it or he can improve. I want to encourage him to take pride in his work and want to do his best job.

So far I’ve been picking out something positive to open with but I’m finding it difficult to present constructive criticism in a way that makes him want to take it on board and improve rather than in a way that makes him want to give up.

If anyone has any tips on how to approach this I’d be grateful.

[NuffSaidSam]

What sort of constructive criticism are you giving him?

I think at this age and in these circumstances I would avoid voicing any criticism. Instead make a note to yourself that he struggled with X and that you will need to work on that with him, then teach it positively. So if he wrote a great story but the ending was rubbish, say nothing, then next English lesson say 'today we're going to work on story endings' and go from there. Don't present it as a problem/criticism of the last piece of work.

[inwood]

I'm follow the mark scheme and if it's wrong I work through with dts, y4. I don't constructively criticise, if it's wrong I just explain why.

[Pitaramus]

I think with maths where a question is clearly wrong or right it’s easy enough to work through it with them. I’m thinking more about messy handwriting and completely neglecting to use capital letters and full stops in English. And things like writing once sentence when he needed to write a paragraph as the answer. If I just don’t comment at all how would he learn?

Before every piece of writing I always say remember capital letters and full stops, and then he forgets half of them!

[Caroian]

I ask my 8 year old to assess his own written work. For each piece of work he must come up with at least 2 things which he thinks he did really well and 2 things he thinks he can improve on. This works well because it takes the parent/teacher (his school use the method too) judgement out of it but even more importantly it builds the skills of self assessment/reflection. Over time, he has learned to anticipate his own feedback as he goes along so remembers to self correct his common errors.

[NuffSaidSam]

Firstly, think of the bigger picture. Is he going to be completely incapable of using full stops and capital letters when he's 30 because you didn't criticise him enough when he was 8? Of course not.

I assume he normally goes to school? You can't take what he's doing now as a measure of his future educational success. It's a weird time, things are different.

Secondly, I agree with pp, get him to edit his own work. We also do this (also 8 yr old, but yr4). The school encourage this and it's often set as a separate task, so Monday write xyz, Tuesday re-draft and edit xyz, Wednesday final draft/neat copy of xyz. So, when he says he's finished, just say 'ok, so now read through and check capital letters and full stops' before you even look at it. With paragraphs, put the task from school in front of him so he remembers it's a paragraph he is supposed to be doing. When he says he's finished, without looking, just say 'great, a whole paragraph?' if he hasn't done a paragraph he hasn't finished yet (which is fine, he just needs more time, be positive about it).

I think motivating a child (or anyone) to really do their best and take pride in something they don't care about is really hard. Basic school tasks are not usually particularly interesting or something they care hugely about. Maybe find something that he cares more about to work these skills, maybe he could get a pen friend or write letters to someone in a care home if he's the caring type or Grandma/a cousin. Or maybe he could write a letter to a magazine he likes or enter a competition that involves some sort of writing. Or write out a recipe for you to cook together. There has to be some sort of intrinsic motivation to get the really good results ime!

[Youngatheart76]

Read this:
jonoxtobywrites.wordpress.com/2020/04/21/7-tips-for-home-schooling-your-children-during-lockdown/

Only give two positive pieces of feedback and one thing to work on per piece of work. Children can't process anymore. Prioritise feedback and build up his learning in small steps.

[ilovesushi]

Mine are a tiny bit older, but I put smiley faces and ticks on the good stuff and maybe flag up one thing to quickly go over there and then without labouring the point. I don't think flagging every single mistake is helpful. It can be demoralising. I do try and make a note of mistakes/ misconceptions/ areas of difficulty so they can work on them at another point.

[SE13Mummy]

With writing tasks I think it's helpful to identify what the purpose of the activity is. If the purpose is to show beautiful handwriting and accurate punctuation then make sure he knows that's the focus before he starts. If the purpose is to demonstrate that he can use metaphors to describe a scene, then he can still be successful even if his handwriting is scrappy. Tie feedback to the purpose e.g. ''I love how you described the clouds by saying blah blah blah' or 'I can see you've made a real effort to keep your writing on the line'.

Specific feedback is more effective than general. If I mark English at school, I tell the children that at the end of each piece of writing I will give them a question to answer or an instruction to follow. The question might be something along the lines of, 'what do you think X was thinking when Y happened?' and the instruction may be 'please edit your work to include capital letters and full stops' or perhaps 'please extend this paragraph by three sentences'.

Another thing worth considering if you're not working whilst he's doing independent writing is for you to do the exact same writing task as him, at the same time, in your nearest, joined-up writing. He'll get to give you feedback on yours which will be good experience for him in terms of assessing whether or not the writing has achieved the aim.

[SE13Mummy]

*neatest, not nearest.