We have all faced the experience of writing the same comment on 20 plus books because the students have left the classroom before we had discovered that the students had not understood a crucial point. Far better to identify areas of misunderstanding before the students leave the class and address problems and misconceptions before marking. However, this is only going to happen if we think carefully about the questions we ask in class. Dylan Wiliam talks of the need for questions that provide ‘a window into students’ thinking’ and these need to be planned carefully into lessons and schemes of work. It is important that the ‘hinge questions’ focus on the central points of the lesson, link to the success criteria and address potential misunderstandings that you have identified. These ‘hinge questions’ should take no longer than 2 minutes for the students to respond and it must also be possible for the teacher to interpret a full range of responses quickly. This is where mini-whiteboards can come in very useful.  

When students are working on the task is also the time to make oral feedback really count. It is an opportunity to circulate round the class and provide personalised feedback to students. However, oral feedback can get lost and it is important that students record key pieces of advice in their book. Stickers such the one below focus the student on using the oral feedback.

In addition, stickers such as this also make key pieces of advice stand out in pupils’ books. Teachers can direct students to look back at previous pieces of advice before they begin a new piece of work, thus helping to transfer learning to new contexts.

It is also important that pupils regularly reflect on how responding to feedback and incorporating advice or new learning strategies into their work leads to progress. When pupils hand in their work they can use ‘Responded to oral feedback’ stickers (see below) to highlight where they have used advice from teachers or peers to improve their work. This helps us as teachers check that pupils are responding to oral feedback and that it is having a direct impact on improving the quality of their work. As can be seen in the example below, we also get students to annotate how they have used the oral feedback to improve their work. This encourages pupils to reflect on how responding to feedback leads to progress and it makes them more likely to transfer key tips and strategies to future pieces of work.