In a lot of ways, it’s much easier for me to come up with helpful feedback to give on rich, juicy problems (see here) than it is for your typical quiz or test. I find it much harder to think about how to give feedback that helps a kid’s learning when (a) the quiz is full of non-open questions and (b) the kid’s solutions don’t show a lot of thinking. But a lot of classroom assessments end up like that, and it’s important to figure out how to deal with those tough situations effectively.
So: What would you write as feedback on this quiz?
Some constraints/notes, that you should feel free to reject or challenge:
- Assume that we’re dealing with written feedback here. Not a conversation.
- Assume that we don’t have to write a grade on this piece of work. (If we wrote a grade on here, some research indicates that would ruin any feedback we gave.)
- You might decide to give feedback on every question of this quiz, you might not.
I’ll jump in with my thoughts in the comments. Here are some questions about your choices that I’m wondering about:
- Would you choose to mark the questions as right/wrong?
- Would you try to find something to value about this kid’s work in your comments, or will you be all hardass instead?
- Would you ask questions or give suggestions?
- Would you write one, several, or many comments?
- Would you reject the constraints in some way?
- Would you ask the kid to explain himself?
Excited to read your thoughts!
