How Feedback Works
A Playbook
- John Almarode - James Madison University, USA
- Douglas Fisher - San Diego State University, USA
- Nancy Frey - San Diego State University, USA
Feedback keeps learning moving forward.
You have the power to improve everything about teaching and learning—through excellent feedback. Make it precise. Timely. Actionable. Feedback is absolutely necessary for learning, and is the one ingredient that, if missing, will hinder the learning process. In this Playbook, you will not only learn how to give effective feedback—but have abundant opportunities to practice this skill (and get feedback) as you learn.
Bestselling authors John Almarode, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey brilliantly organize this resource into 16 modules on the 4 C’s of Feedback:
Care — create a culture in which teachers, students and leaders embrace feedback as a continuous loop of giving, receiving, and integrating suggestions
Credibility — know how to stoke relatability, dynamism, and trust—and avoid the three most common barriers to students’ acting on feedback
Clarity — align your learning goals, success criteria, and strategies so you gain the most useful evidence during learning from which to generate feedback.
Communication — give feedback with intention, by speaking to the task; or to the learner’s process, or to the learner’s ability to monitor their own progress.
Feedback is futile unless it motivates students to change their approach the next time, and still love learning. With the How Feedback Works: A Playbook you have the essential guide to ensuring students go-get their highest potential.
Free resources
How Feedback Works Webinar
This webinar will explore best practices around feedback and how it can best be utilized to impact student learning. Participants will learns do's and don'ts of effective feedback; how feedback can develop assessment capable learners; and tools for using feedback as part of teaching and learning.
What Does the Latest Research Say About Feedback?
Use module 2 from How Feedback Works to unpack the current research on feedback and identify the major takeaways applicable to teaching and learning.
What Is Feedback?
This module from How Feedback Works helps you develop the definition of feedback in our your words, connect this definition to your schools and classrooms, and identify examples of when feedback works in your schools and classrooms.
Introduction: How Feedback Works
The introduction to How Feedback Works introduces the four Cs of Feedback, explores how to use this playbook, and details how this playbook supports the work of PLC+.
Feedback is complicated, complex, and layered. How Feedback Works made it feel possible and easy! As someone who is familiar with formative assessment practices, which include feedback and peer feedback, I saw the through line immediately. Each module addresses a different type of feedback but also adds a deeper understanding of feedback as new ideas are discussed in various ways. This book added to my own knowledge and pushed me to think a little differently.
The contents of this book are accurate, coherent, consistent in theme, and backed up with references and plausible examples. This playbook provides appropriate and relevant guidance for teachers, including learning outcomes and information on misconceptions. It is relevant for all levels of learners in this field—from the lead to the highly accomplished to the proficient and provisional educators.
Feedback is the missing link. As educators, we know the important role that feedback plays not just for our students, but for our teaching as well. And yet if we do not understand what that feedback looks like and sounds like, we can never truly know the depth of our impact. How Feedback Works gives the teacher the tools they need to know exactly when to use feedback and the kind of feedback that should be given.
Feedback is one of education’s most powerful assets in moving learning forward, yet it’s often the most misunderstood. How Feedback Works ties in pedagogical principles with cognitive science and educational psychology to explain not only how to give effective feedback, but also how to create the structures and conditions necessary for feedback to maximize its potential on student learning. Through explanation, models, and guided practice, this playbook capitalizes on the research to help educators better understand and implement feedback that moves students to and through their next levels of learning. As an educator who coaches teachers, prekindergarten through twelfth grade, I’m excited to have this gem in my back pocket as a relevant reference to share with my colleagues and for developing my own knowledge and skill set around all things feedback.
The methods to support feedback are easily able to be adopted and utilised by practitioners- taking the elements from the text as worksheets for the classroom and then as practical tools for their own placements and future work. Excellent text