Hi Omar,
You’re correct that feedback is essential for learning. Both corrective feedback (used when students make a mistake) and affirmative feedback (used when students demonstrate the skill accurately) should be brief, in part to avoid making students feel self-conscious. It lets students know if they are completing a skill correctly or not– if they’re learning! When students make an error with a more basic skill (like reading cap as cab), I usually have a pretty specific and obvious teaching point to draw the student’s attention to because I can quickly notice the error occurred at the end of the word. However, I’d like to point out that even with a “simple” skill, there is still a little bit of an art to figuring out why the student made the mistake. Do they not know the sound for the letter <p>? Are they confusing the visually similar letters <p> and <b>? Is this a speech sound problem? Is the student looking all the way to the end of the word? Is the student confused by what a cap is? Your knowledge of the student is irreplaceable in this situation, but a reasonable instructional move would be to respond to the student by saying something like, “Take another look at the last letter in that word [point to the <p>]. What sound does that letter make? (/p/) Yes, /p/. Try that word again. (cap) You got it! A cap is a hat with a visor to shade your eyes.” If you’re interested, our Error Analysis in Action webinar models more examples of this type of thinking for decoding and spelling.
With a more complex skill, you still use the same sort of analysis to provide corrective feedback by figuring out what is confusing and providing immediate support to ensure students arrive at the correct answer. The process might be simplified by thinking about it using these steps:
- Student(s) answer incorrectly
- Teacher kindly tells students they’ve made an error
- Teacher determines likely reasons for the misunderstanding
- Teacher provides targeted supports to address the misunderstanding(s)
- Student(s) make a second attempt
- Teacher provides affirmative feedback OR repeats the cycle with more support
If students struggle with a higher-level question, such as identifying the main idea or making a substantiated inference, I would begin my targeted support by asking a series of lower-level, literal questions to guide students to the correct answer. Another way to say this is that I increase the support I provide to ultimately help them arrive at the correct answer. Consider the following paragraph:
Bees visit many flowers each day while collecting nectar. As they travel, pollen clings to their bodies and is carried from one flower to another. This transfer allows many plants to produce seeds, fruits, and new plants. Crops such as apples, pumpkins, and blueberries depend on pollinators for successful growth. Because of this, the work bees do supports both natural ecosystems and the foods people eat.
If I ask students for the main idea of the paragraph, I would expect an answer similar to: “Bees help plants grow by moving pollen from one flower to another.” Yet, it’s possible students could say something like, “Bees collect nectar from flowers.” This is where I need to make an important decision. Is the student missing important background knowledge on the topic (that pollination is necessary for plant growth)? Do they not understand the vocabulary (e.g., the relationship between nectar and pollen)? Is the last sentence starting with the causal phrase “Because of this…” causing confusion? Again, your knowledge of the student is irreplaceable in this situation, but a reasonable instructional move would be to respond to the student by saying something like, “You identified something the bees do, but that is only a detail. Let’s consider the whole paragraph to determine the main idea.” Then, I can scaffold questions to help students access the literal information in the paragraph that I think they may misunderstand while also helping to connect ideas and transition students to more inferential thinking. I might ask students:
- What sticks to a bee's body?
- Where does the pollen come from?
- What does the bee do after it gets pollen on its body?
- What happens to the pollen when the bee visits another flower?
- What does the pollen help the flower do?
- What do you think could happen if bees did not carry pollen from flower to flower?
Notice that with this support, I stay focused on the correct response and don’t dwell on the original wrong answer. I also don’t simply tell the student the main idea and move on. Instead, the series of questions helps me (and the students) identify where their thinking went off track. As they answer each question, I’m supporting them in building the understanding needed to arrive at the main idea on their own. When I’m finished, I pose the original question again, “Now, what do you think is the main idea of this paragraph?” The hope would be that this level of support is enough for students to successfully answer the question. However, students may still make an error or shrug in response, which are both indicators that the student needs more intensive support. Some reasonable options to consider next would be to do a think-aloud modeling how you identified the main idea and have students restate it. Alternatively, you could provide students with a forced choice (two or more options to choose from), which would reduce the demand of the question while ultimately keeping students engaged and thinking.
In this way, effective feedback for complex skills isn't fundamentally different from feedback for basic skills. In both cases, the goal is to identify the source of the misunderstanding and provide just enough support to help students successfully complete the task.
I hope this helps turn errors into learning!
