Essential concepts, tools, and practices

Responses 1, 2, and 3 from above are more valuable to you as a Learner than the "good", "nice" or "bad" comments of ineffectivefeedback because you are receiving specific information about content - how something in your story affected that particular reader at that particulartime (Note: not all readers for all eternity, simply that reader at that time). As the writer, you can then choose to re-write or keep those sectionsthe reader pointed to. That's up to you as the writer (the Learner). You listen to the feedback and then you have control over what you change or don'tchange.

Elements 3 and 4

A natural extension of Elbow's "Giving Movies of the Mind" - Pointing and Summarizing - are the third and fourth Elements of Effective Feedback:

Element #3 of Effective Feedback

Posing 1 question for your Learner to consider

Tell your Learner what philosophical question his/her writing generates for you. What does their completed assignmentmake you wonder about on a larger level? (Here, we are not looking for rhetorical questions, rather questions that spark your curiosity aboutteaching and learning.) You might even start your question with the words "I wonder..."

An example might be: "I wonder... How do children know when they are learning?" or "I wonder...What is the balance between guidinga student and letting him/her figure it out on their own?"

Element #4 of Effective Feedback

Offering 1 or 2 things for improvement

The reason we say to give your Learner one (maybe two) things is this: If you highlight one thing for improvement, then, theLearner can take that one thing, remember it, and incorporate it for the future. In our experience, highlighting 3, 4, or more things to improve uponcan get overwhelming.

If there are more than 1 or 2 things that you think need improvement in content, keep a written record for yourself of those thingsthat need work and as future assignments come in, check to see if those issues come up again. Chances are that the issue will come up again and you'll have anopportunity to address it at that time. Also, hopefully, you'll see that the 1 or 2 issues you highlighted for improvement have been taken care of.Highlighting 1 or 2 issues keeps things manageable for the Learner.

For example, if your Learner stays general in his/her descriptions when answering a question, your "1 idea for improvement"might be:

"When you talk about your classroom, give me a specific example to support your idea - to make your thought come alive for me," or youmight point to a specific part of the writing and say "You wrote in your assignment, 'The children seemed curious.' What did that look like, feellike, sound like, taste like, smell like? Filter your description through the five senses."

Pointing to things that are effective in yourLearner's completed assignment is another way to guide him or her to give you more of that kind of writing where it is lacking. For example, you could say:"When you wrote that 'Najib's hands were shaking and his voice cracked when he read his paper to the class,' I felt like I was right there with you. Do thissame kind of descriptive writing - filtering through the senses - when you simply wrote, 'the children seemed curious.'"