Having Students Read and Apply Essay Feedback

By Andrew Burton, Marianopolis College

At a Glance

Discipline

Languages and Literature

Instructional Level

College & CEGEP

Course

English Literature

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Individual

Type of Tasks

Analyzing
Reading

Technical Details

Time

Single class period (< 90 mins)

Instructional Purpose

Consolidation & metacognition

Overview

In this activity, students spend a class using the Feedback Review & Body Paragraph Revision Template (see attached materials) to read, understand, and apply the feedback they are given by the instructor on their essay assignments.

This activity aims to help students produce improved future assignments. In class, students receive their essays with feedback but without a grade. Students fill out the template and identify any questions they may have about the instructor’s feedback, as well as, areas for improvement with an example of each, and articulate how they will do better in the future. Finally, students rewrite what they think is their most problematic body paragraph.

This activity occurs during one class session and makes use of the following strategies: Just in Time Teaching and Reflective Writing.

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to:

Identify areas of improvement and questions based on filling out a feedback template
Implement changes in their essay based on feedback

Workflow & Materials

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow

Document

Student Instructions

Andrew Burton

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

This activity gives students the time to carefully read the feedback given by the instructor and incorporate in their work. The Feedback Review & Body Paragraph Revision Template provides students with a structured, step-by-step method of effectively reviewing and incorporating instructor feedback, so that these students may improve their future writing assignments.

Challenges

Reviewing students’ work is often a time-consuming task. Instructors who want to implement this activity and ensure its effectiveness would have to dedicate time to providing fairly extensive feedback for the original essay and at least skim the completed templates.

Tips

It is better not to give students their grades at the beginning of class so that they stay focused on the content of the instructor’s feedback.
Using a speech-recognition software (such as Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking program) might save time and avoid ergonomic problems when generating extensive prose comments.

Applied Strategies

Reflective Writing

Formal preparatory reflection

Just in Time Teaching (JiTT)

Feedback based instruction

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Published: 16/10/2018

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