When delivering verbal feedback, learners normally respond in the moment, directly after we have spoken to them.

This might be with questions or comments of their own. Or it might be by making changes to what they are doing.

Written feedback differs for two reasons.

First, it tends to be more complex and more detailed.

This is because we have spent longer thinking about learner work and synthesising our understanding of it to create relevant feedback giving useful access to our expertise.

Second, learners need more time to decode, interpret and make sense of the feedback we provide.

When we give verbal feedback, we accompany it with gestures, intonation and other non-verbal cues.

This is supplementary information learners can use to understand what is going on.

When we give written feedback, none of this is present – just the words on the page. So, learners tend to need that bit more time in which to make sense of it.

Planning for learners to respond and reflect is like using wait time when posing questions.

This is where we pose a question to an individual learner, a group, or the whole class, and then wait … before taking any answers.

The purpose of the wait time is to let learners think about the question so they can give a more thoughtful answer.

This is different to posing a question and expecting an immediate response, which often leads to lower quality answers, ‘I don’t know’, a shrug of the shoulders, or a refusal to engage.

Planning time in which learners can respond to and reflect on our feedback means making sure there is time in which they can think about what we have written.

The principle is the same as wait time.

Learners need space so they can make sense of what is going on – of the information contained in our feedback.

If we don’t provide this space, they may forget about our feedback or fail to tell us if they don’t understand it or don’t know how they are meant to act on it.

Seven Examples of how to Plan for Learner Responses and Reflection

• Turn your starter activity into a period of reflection during which learners review your feedback and think about how they can use it to improve their work.
• Plan a mid-lesson review in which you lead learners in a reflection on their most recent piece of written feedback. Encourage them to think about this in light of what they are doing in the current lesson.
• Create a timetable for marking learner books. Use this to build time into your lessons where responding to and reflecting on feedback is the focus. By planning ahead, you can see when you will be returning learner books and therefore when it will be most appropriate to include this time.
• Use a plenary to help learners reflect on their most recent piece of written feedback. Focus their attention on how the feedback connects to the lesson just gone. For example, can they see evidence in the work they’ve been doing of the strengths you identified?
• Create a system for responding to and reflecting on feedback. For example, you might explain to learners that whenever they get their work back after you’ve marked it, there will automatically be a ten-minute hiatus during which everybody reflects and responds. Scaffold this with questions learners can use to structure their thinking.
• Identify specific learners who will benefit from one-to-one support. After you hand back work containing written feedback, either call these learners to the front or visit them at their desks during the lesson. Use this as an opportunity to talk to them about their feedback. Use questioning, suggestions and prompts to scaffold their responses and reflections.
• Create a space in which learners can respond to your feedback. For example, you might draw a box underneath your written comments and invite learners to fill this in. Or you might create a pro-forma containing space for your feedback and space in which learners can write their responses and reflections. While this method can be effective, it does mean you need to read and review what learners have written when you next take in their books.