I’ve spent the past week marking my year 10 coursework, ready to give them some feedback after Easter. It’s a time consuming task of having to read through each student’s work, match what they’ve done to a mark scheme and then give them marks accordingly.

Some students have done really really well, others couldn’t have done less if they’d tried to fail the course.

In addition to saying “you scored 64%” (which, in today’s world of mediocraty is actually a really good score!) I have to give some feedback that is constructive. Even the kids doing really badly need something positive writing on their sheets. And it’s really hard since you want to write “you scored 10%… and you wasted the entire term messing about. You could have stayed at home for a month, done ten minutes of work and would have got the same mark”, but that’s not a good way of motivating them to try a bit harder.

Feedback is done using the good old “shit sandwich” approach - there’s a layer of “nice” bread - some points you did well at. Then there’s the meaty bit in the middle were you point out their faults, problems or where they didn’t do so well (but in a positive way so they don’t go “aww bugger this, I give up”), then a bit of “nice” again so they don’t walk off looking for the nearest sharp object or bridge.

Last week I was observed teaching a lesson, as is a requirement of being a new teacher. I thought the lesson went OK, with the kids being quiet and occipied and nobody needing to be sent out or told off. I got my feedback today, and had the “shit sandwich” technique applied to my lesson’s feedback.

I did well in a number of points, and then need to improve on a fair few other points and ended up with a grade that, if they were allowed to use the word would be “crap”.  I understand constructive criticism, and can take it and do find it useful, but at the same time my brain is waiting for the point of the feedback to be given. It’s a bit of a rubbish system when the person receiving the shit sandwich knows they’re being given a shit sandwich since it totally devalues all the good points they’re saying - you walk away remembering only your faults.

Lesson observations are totally subjective things; what one person thinks is important, another might not even notice. With one lesson’s feedback you might go away thinking “I need to do x, y and z better next time” but in the next observation they pick up that you didn’t do a, b and c very well, with no mention of the stuff you actually tried to make an improvement on. We, as teachers, are told to give our students specific aims and to then check if they have met those specific aims - no vague things like “get a C in English”, very specific things like “know how to use commas and apostrophes correctly”. So it’s a bit confusing when my feedback is a vague mash of “make the lesson more challenging” and “try different ways of keeping them under control”, combined with being observed by non-IT teachers who really can’t give specific help of the “you want to try teaching spreadsheet formulae by …” kind.

Anyway, I will take this constructive feedback, think about it during Easter and then work out a new plan since the one I’ve got doesn’t work too well. It’d help if I saw my classes more than once a week since if I tell them something one week, chances are they’ll have forgotten it the next.

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