How to Provide Feedback
There are multiple ways of assessing a student’s skills, and it can be easy to skip these assessments. They often are not the first thing we think of while teaching people English, but assessments are not there just to mark someone's answer as right or wrong. It is there to look at a student’s skills, assess their needs, and show you what areas of language you need to focus on.
Assessments should not be a scary thing for the students. They should be fun, open, and give a variety of language. In other words, an assessment should not feel like an assessment (palms sweaty, heart pounding, etc). You should be engaging with them, interacting with them, and testing their skills through repetition, and allowing them the proper wait time.
After the assessment is finished, we should hand a report to the student or their parents. This allows them to see which English skills they rock at, which skills they need to focus on.
In this article, I am going to give you an example of a feedback form that I designed for a student and their lesson plan/syllabus. The links to the related articles are below:
Lesson plan design (4 - 7 years old/beginner level):
Lesson creation (4 - 7 years old/beginner level):
This was created for this student’s needs, so please try to create or come up with your own! 😊
What should I include in feedback?
This all depends on what you are working on with the student. For this student, the parent said that they wanted to work on more conversational English and vocabulary development.
So I included the following sections:
Phonics:
This student had a goal to learn the phonics A – I. This included vocabulary words and being able to identify them based on listening. The student also learned the difference between capital and lower-case letters. In this section, I mention how the student is handling the materials and what we should continue to work on, if this is needed.
Vocabulary:
Vocabulary development is done, even if it is not explicit. You do not have to show a picture and the word for it to be vocabulary practice. They learn while you speak; when you show them an object, when you ask questions and use full sentences. Let the parent know their overall understanding of all vocabulary.
Sentence Building:
Building sentences can be tricky for beginner students. It is faster and easier to use one-word answers, but we need to expand so they can learn the spoken grammar by instinct. Then when they try to create new sentences or answer new questions, they can attempt them by using the old sentence frames that they have learned.
Speaking:
Most times I have private students who come to me asking only for conversational English. This can be difficult especially when the students are complete beginners or have a fear of speaking. That being said, I usually judge this based on how often they speak, accuracy of spoken grammar, and ability to pronounce the words.
Behavior:
This is usually only used for younger children. I want to provide information on whether they were able to listen, participate, follow directions, repeat after me, etc. If the student is very young, I often start with half an hour lessons, but like I found out with some of my younger students, this was not enough for them. So we switched to longer lessons. I noticed a little more fatigue from the student towards the end of the lesson, and they typically have had enough of me at that point. 😊 Marking this down gives the parent your concerns and suggestions to make the lesson more optimal for student growth.
*We want our students to enjoy learning, not to force feed them information until their brain is oatmeal.*
Teacher Suggestions:
This section is great because it is not centered around any one topic. It is to congratulate the student on their successes and to encourage them to keep going. If I have suggestions for changes in the classroom environment or activities for them to do at home, I will put it in this section. You can also include books, games, or activities that the parents can do to work on the language with the students.
Overall, I want the feedback to be useful for the parents to see their children’s progress. I want to state weaknesses and how I am going to solve them. How I will scaffold and work with them. My goal is to build up a good foundation for the students, so they have an easier time in lessons in the future.
Bonus!
I am including a sample of a feedback that I would give a parent. This is related to the lesson and syllabus for the younger children (4 – 6 years old).
In this, I include a way to market for more students. I offer discounts on classes, as long as I have a referral and lesson from someone they know. They get 5 euro off of each student they refer. This is a great way to market yourself, and still earn money. You get your name out there and who better to advocate for you mad teaching skills than your own students?! 😊
That is all for now! Please like and subscribe for more content. Have a wonderful week. Bye!