Feedback on assessments can be a tricky time – students are both apprehensive and eager about receiving their grades. As a result, I find this an excellent time to work with my students to build their confidence but that may be difficult, especially when they may not have achieved as well as they would have liked or expected.

Awareness

The key thing I am trying to work with my students on at the moment is to have them identify their current perceptions about an assessment along with any emotions, behaviours or thoughts. I hope that by having students become consciously aware of their present state during this time and activity, it can help them work through this and move forward at a much quicker pace so that the feedback becomes most effective. This is one activity that I tried out with my classes this week and students were quick to comment the following:

“”

“” (see post-it note feedback!)

Activity 1:

Close your eyes – I will be giving you your ERQ feedback and mark after we have done this activity

Spend 1 minute considering how receiving this feedback makes you feel – this could be emotionally (e.g. happy/sad), physically (bodily sensations) or thoughts
Spend 5 minutes writing down full sentences that describe what you felt in the last minute. You may wish to use the table to help you with some prompts to help verbalise your feelings.

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

Why?

How?

Activity 2:

Spend 5 minutes identifying which feelings may be helpful or unhelpful during this feedback activity

For any feelings, thoughts or sensations that might be unhelpful. What might an alternate response be?

What might help you challenge the helpful ones?

Activity 3:

Look at the table on the right, and identify how many times you may have used one of the following “to be” verbs.

Change a Word, Change a Life @psychologytoday

“The to be verbs block new possibilities. They block movement.”

“To be verbs keeps us stuck in victimhood”