"Whole Class Feedback" model in primary schools. Does it work?

[namechangetoanewname]

School have recently informed teachers will no longer be marking pupils' work but will be using a 'Whole Class Feedback Model' - giving general feedback after each work is handed in.

Apart from giving teachers less work to do, what are the benefits for our children's education, especially if there are 30 odd kids in the classroom? What if the 'general feedback' doesn't apply to your own DC?

Sorry meant they won't be ticking, correcting or commenting on pupils' work anymore, only will be giving general feedback in class.

I'm not a teacher but am doing some extra learning the now (not sure what else to call it lol) and can see this wouldn't work in this type of setting

Chances are most of the children could do with a reminder to eg : start every sentence with a capital letter or : the correct way to spell dolphin is with a ph not an f . Or that when we are doing maths we put the + or - on the left of the sum. And we add the units first then the tens.

Now imagine how much more time the teacher will have after spending three minutes reminding the class of the three most common errors rather than writing it out 30 times for kids who don't actually look back and check what the teacher has written on their previous page

Whole class feedback doesn't consist of just one best fit thing. It's still for all, but shared. There might be ten common errors or five specific actions to improve the task, and pupils are guided to the ones that suit them. This might be with a code, but they still have access to and reinforcement of the whole set of success criteria. The work is all still reviewed and it's easier to notice gaps that everyone still has or elements which can be built upon further as they're grasped; it makes sense for adaptive teaching and encouraging pupils to take some ownership of their learning and act on feedback.

And while your child might not make one mistake they'll surely make another one.

Oh and teachers having less time sucking corrections to do will directly benefit your child's education as they can spend the reclaimed time doing something useful.

Or do you think they're just lazy layabouts in that school?

But then they would be saying those things when they're teaching as well as when kids are doing their classwork. Those comments might be beneficial for 60% of the class but how about those who haven't even got to that level, or those who's fed up of hearing them for the 700th time?

What's the point of doing classwork if they won't know if what they've written is ok or not? How will they learn from their own mistakes?

Does your child read over every sentence of feedback from the teacher, immediately take it on board and never ever make that mistake again? Unlikely.
Of course teachers are reminding the class constantly of capital letters at the start of a sentence for example. In some cases every day until they leave school. Children forget. So why is it worse for the teacher to say it once more rather than write it 30 times?

I'm sure they'll also say "Stephen you always remember your capital letters, you might concentrate on writing one paragraph for each idea" for example to your child

@Midnightpony so you think this will be a good idea? How about maths, you let the kids mark for themselves, will teachers know if they're being honest or not?

I've asked my kids, one of them said "oh well then I won't have to try my best now. That's fine by me"

Sorry @namechangetoanewname I don't mean to come across as confrontational.

I'm sure each child will still be given individual feedback where necessary. But any initiative that removes a burden of generally useless work for teachers is surely a good thing and should be given a chance. So teacher might now have time to spend 5 mins preparing easier/harder work for the other groups while the 60% have received their feedback as a group

For maths I would move around the room as the children work and catch mistakes/misunderstandings as they happen. So reminding the child one twentieth equals 5% and so 3/20 is 15% rather than letting them do them all wrong and just putting a red X on all the maths later that day. With the ones that can do the maths, check they're finished, scan quickly, let them correct against a friend's work/the answer book and if they get a different answer do that one again and see which person is correct. Then they can move on to an extension activity

Thank you, I understand. I do hope each child will get the attention they need regardless of whether they are average or not.

Good teachers have been doing this for years, and it is the most effective form of feedback, alongside individual oral feedback when they can.

They only mark books because it's on the marking policy.
Every decent teacher knows it's mostly a waste of time, unless done next to the child during the lesson.

As to honesty and diligence... That's each child's personality/ extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. They're not doing school work for the teacher. They're working for themselves

And I should add, this is a deficit of the education system (or modern life), to reward so the child works for external praise rather than private satisfaction

Feedback is going on throughout lessons all the time- it’s this on the spot verbal feedback, teachers assessing how children are doing during the lesson and addressing misconceptions as they come up - individually and as a class- that supports good progress because it’s immediate. This has significantly more impact than marked books that then get looked back on by the kids a day or more later - it’s too late by then, the moment is lost. Sounds like the teachers will be looking at the books after lessons to see what the common misconceptions are, or if any children are struggling and then address it through teaching the following lesson. Sounds like strong pedagogy to me.
Don’t get hung up on marking, it’s really not the most effective way of feeding back to children.

We had this in uni and I was the negative feedback lol. Every negative comment was about my essay, not mentioned of course. But I knew it.

Collective feedback doesn't work. Ok for team analysis, but how will you learn if you don't know.

Uni is different to primary.
Most children in primary are making the same mistakes as their peers and furthermore do not read the comments the teacher has written on previous work. Or if the sum or spelling is marked wrong they see the X. They don't then go back over their mistake and resolve to never make it again. Whereas a reminder on the board - remember "receive" is written with an "ei" will be more effective because they will (hopefully) be looking at the board which they don't do with their previous work

Some negative thoughts

The teacher is in control and decides when to move onto the next question.
The teacher is probably doing most of the talking.
Just because the teacher has heard someone say the answer it doesn’t mean that all the students know what the correct answer is.
This method doesn’t help weaker students – they often get lost during the feedback, especially if they have a lot of incorrect answers

How about maths, you let the kids mark for themselves, will teachers know if they're being honest or not?

I'm a primary teacher. We often have the kids mark their own maths work. It's not about being honest - it's so the child sees for themselves where they have gone wrong. We wouldn't collect "marks" in and it's easy to spot if a child in a book has marked work correct that is wrong.

I do hope each child will get the attention they need regardless of whether they are average or not.

Well that won't be happening, regardless of if this is in place or not, due to the huge numbers of children with really complex and significant needs being crammed into mainstream schools without anywhere near enough support, and most of those support staff that are being employed not having any specific training in the children's needs. Then add in teachers have having to pick up the lack of social work support that is needed, the mental health support that is needed, the parenting support that is needed.

It is a lovely dream though.

It works. I'm a teacher. I spent most of my time writing the EXACT SAME FEEDBACK on kids' work. Then I don't have enough time to plan good lessons to develop their skills. When I use WCF, I can focus on actually improving the kids, rather than just telling them what they did/didn't do well.

My WCF needs to be marked though - are you sure the teachers aren't? What it means is I mark and the put a target code and a positive.
The WCF prevents me from
Writing the whole thing again and again. I make the targets as I am marking

This I feel would benefit kids as well as teachers. Do you look at spelling and grammatical mistakes, depending on the year you teach?

I do get teachers have only limited amount of time but if you look at schools in other countries like Asia they do the planning, teaching, marking, and so much more and they can have more than 40 pupils in a class and they are, on average, way ahead of us. I just find it hard to believe not marking classwork "works well" for every child (I'm sure it works for every teacher)

@namechangetoanewname teachers in Asia are usually much more respected and have more PPA time.
We have to put up with people who have no clue what teachers do questioning that we don't do enough ... like this thread.

And yes I do mark spelling errors

I wonder in Asia are children with SEN in mainstream education? Are the classes streamed?

A colleague last year had a class of 30ish children. Of those, 8 did NOT have some kind of extra need, whether behavioural, emotional, educational etc

I could easily teach 40 children who have no extra needs and are eager to learn and supported at home. Hell, I could teach 60!