By Kasey Short
Feedback has the power to transform student learning. While grades provide a snapshot of performance, they don’t provide the detailed information students need to understand exactly what aspects of the curriculum they have mastered and where they have opportunities for growth.
Thoughtful, timely, and consistent feedback helps students understand that learning is an ongoing process rather than a series of endpoints. When feedback is consistently part of a classroom culture, students gain a clear understanding of how to improve while building their confidence and taking ownership of their progress.
Too often students view grades as the only indication of their success. This mindset limits academic risk-taking and decreases motivation to revise and revisit concepts that need more practice. By making feedback a priority and giving feedback in a variety of meaningful ways, teachers show students that they want them all to experience progress and improvement and that they believe in each student’s ability to grow.
For students to get the most out of feedback, they need to know that the teacher is giving them the feedback because they believe in their potential and want to help them continue to grow and improve. This requires time to develop relationships and intentional communication.
Tips for Building Trust Through Feedback
● Balance positive and constructive feedback so that students are encouraged and challenged. It is essential to show them you notice all the things they are doing well and not just areas for improvement.
● Celebrate their successes by sharing positive feedback with their parents/guardians, other teachers and coaches.
● Frame constructive feedback as an opportunity for improvement by giving specific opportunities to demonstrate their continued learning through revision.
● Model the importance of feedback by asking students to give you feedback about lessons, class activities, and how you can help them learn more effectively in your class.
8 Strategies for Giving Feedback
Once trust is established, feedback becomes even more powerful. The following strategies can help make feedback more meaningful, timely, and effective in guiding student growth.
►Provide Written Feedback Before Grades: When students receive written feedback at the same time they are given a grade for an assignment, they almost always focus on the grade and at best skim over the written feedback. To shift to importance away from grades and towards feedback, give students written feedback first before sharing their grade.
This will encourage students to reflect on the written comments. When possible, also allow them to revise and improve based on the comments before a final grade is given. This allows them to gain meaningful feedback, extend their learning, and demonstrate their learning after getting feedback.
►Create a Culture of Immediate Verbal Feedback: Feedback doesn’t need to be lengthy or formal to be effective. Quick, specific comments during a class can immediately impact learning in real time. Consistently giving all students verbal feedback while they are working and during discussions shows that feedback is for everyone and helps keep students on the right track.
It isn’t always possible, but I try to check in with every student about at least one thing and give them feedback on that at least once per class period. For example, if they are working independently, I will walk around and give individual students affirmation they are on the right path and help those who need redirection. If they are working in groups, I can listen in a bit on their conversation and jump in to affirm, connect or redirect them.
►Be Specific: When giving feedback, be as specific as possible about what is going well or what needs to be improved. For example, during a class discussion, instead of saying “Great Idea”, I may say, “I like who you connected your idea back to the text and used a quote.”
►Provide Exemplars: Sharing models of strong work helps students have a realistic idea of the expectations and gives context to some of my feedback. As much as possible I try to use student work as exemplars. Using exemplars for larger assignments was a practice I developed earlier in my career, but I have learned the value of combining immediate feedback with exemplars for everyday classwork.
When my students are working on something in class, I walk around and when I see that a student has a great answer or example, I ask them to share it with the class. This gives them affirmation and positive feedback while also providing their peers with an exemplar.
►Use Technology to Save Time and Enhance Feedback: Digital tools can help streamline grading so that more time is available for meaningful feedback. Features such as comment banks, voice notes, or video feedback provide personal, efficient ways to provide detailed feedback. For example, recording a one-minute audio clip can often provide more details for students than a paragraph of written comments.
To quickly check and provide feedback for knowledge level questions that are multiple choice, true/false, or fill in blank, choose from a variety of online tools that will do the grading automatically and allow you to save your time for providing feedback on other assignments.
►Narrow the Focus: Instead of correcting every mistake on an assignment, choose one or two areas to highlight. Communicate the focus to students and then provide specific, actionable feedback on those areas. This prevents the teacher and the student from being overwhelmed by feedback and guides students where they need to focus their effort.
►Encourage Student Reflection: Show students that feedback is important by building time into class for students to read and process feedback. Journals, reflection charts, or class discussions can all help students internalize feedback and set goals for improvement.
►Ask Questions: When feedback takes the form of questions, students remain active participants in improving their work and are required to think through the next steps instead of simply following whatever directive they were given. My feedback for writing assignments is often a list of questions on the side that challenge students to think deeply about their writing and then make their own choices about how to address my questions and improve their work.
Framing Feedback as an Opportunity
When we celebrate success, highlight progress, and help students understand that learning is a process that is different for everyone, students begin to see feedback as a meaningful opportunity. As you think about your own classroom, choose one new way to give feedback this week and see how your students respond. Even a small shift can begin to change how they view learning and growth.
Kasey Short is the Middle School Director of Studies and an 8th Grade English Teacher and Advisor at Charlotte (NC) Country Day School. She loves to share ideas from her classroom and her leadership roles. Kasey attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned a bachelor of arts in middle school education with a concentration in English and history. She went on to earn a master’s in curriculum and instruction from Winthrop University.
Browse all of Kasey’s MiddleWeb articles here and follow her at Bluesky. Curious to see Kasey’s 2025 recommendations for new middle grades and young adult fiction? Go here.
