Alternatives to Whole Class Feedback

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Permalink Reply by Lizzy Adams on February 23, 2011 at 11:25am

Wow! That is a pretty comprehensive list! And they are all good ways to give the learners more control in the classroom and allowing them to check answers at their own pace.
Here are a few more ideas which are fun if a little time consuming!:
Feedback tennis (2 teams. Team A calls out the answer to #1. If they're right it becomes 15-0. They serve it over to the other team and if they're right it becomes 15-15 etc.)
Feedback soccer (draw a soccer field on the board and players (goalie, defenders, midfielders and strikers). use a post it note ball. If a team gets the answer wrong
Who wants to be a millionaire (with ABCD multiple choice activities). Ss vote with ABCD cards and progress up the money levels - with the three lifelines of course (phone a friend = ask the teacher, ask the audience = see the other Ss' answers first, 50-50 = T shows that team two possible options)


I would add, however, that giving students the answers to activities isn't always enough. If the teacher does use one of the answer key based techniques referred to, then the teacher still needs to have a good idea of where the students struggled so that they know what needs to be further clarified. If the activity is a controlled practice exercise, of a grammar point for example, and a number of students struggle with the concepts, form or pronunciation then the teacher needs to be sensitive to that and do additional clarification during the WCFB stage. This clearly means that monitoring is super important while students are doing the activity, the pair check AND the feedback!

In any case, feedback is where a lot of teaching and learning takes place - in fact I'd even venture to say where MOST teaching learning takes place so it's a really important part of our lessons. And of course variety is the spice of life AND ESL.

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Permalink Reply by Julie Sawyer on June 5, 2011 at 3:45pm

This article was great at presenting a range of creative ways for giving feedback to students. I think the key point is that feedback is part of the learning cycle and not something that is just done at the end to say you'e done it. It helps students and teachers monitor students' progress, inform future teaching, provides opportunities for purposeful discussion and opportunities for teachers to clarify or re-teach any content that students may not have previously understood.

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