- When teachers hear the word feedback, they often think of three things. First of all, they wonder, "What type of feedback should I give, or what type does my admin want me to give? And once I figure that out, how often should I give my feedback?" But by far, the most popular question seems to be, "How do I know that my feedback is going to be effective and meaningful for my students?" Now feedback, by definition, is a teacher's way of informing their students as to how well they met the learning goals of a lesson, and if they achieved the success criteria that had been co-created or set up by the teacher ahead of time. Without it, you will not have meaningful learning. You cannot go forward, and the students will not be empowered to continue along their learning trajectory. There's actually three types of feedback that I like to use, and that I'm just going to describe here very quickly. The first type, of course, is good old-fashioned written feedback, which can occur on a child's assignment, in a notebook, on a post-it note. I know some teachers will actually make a little box at the bottom of the test, and that's the area where the feedback can be written in. Some people feel that's time consuming, so, of course, you have option number two, which would be oral feedback in the form of a one-on-one conference session, which of course would be very, very brief so as not to tire out the child or overwhelm him or her with all this information. Third type, of course, given the virtual learning situation we've recently come out of is to provide virtual feedback, which, of course, can be typed or written in a box, a text box, or recorded via audio. Some people use screencasts as an AQ facilitator. I know some people who will make little videos to kind of make it more meaningful and for the information to resonate with candidates. Feedback can be a slippery slope where teachers feel, "Oh, I'll just give feedback for every single lesson I teach." Now doing that is not only a lot of work for you, but will also, again, overwhelm the student and possibly cause them to shut down, because there's so many expectations, they feel they can't meet it. It's just a recipe for failure. So my suggestion is start off with one particular assignment, one subject, one strand, be very, very specific. Inform the students about learning goals. Co-create the success criteria. Let them know what you're looking for and then tell them what type of feedback response you will be providing. Okay, so if kids see you walking around jotting down notes on an iPad, or you have a post-it notepad around and you're jotting things down, they will know that you are just collecting anecdotal messages about them to be discussed later on.