When learning new things, students need to understand what they know and they use feedback to adjust their learning. Teachers are busy, but they must provide personalized feedback to the entire class. Additionally, the feedback loop should be continuous for student learning to be most effective.

Below, we’ll explore strategies to streamline the feedback process, ensuring that students receive the guidance they need while helping teachers manage their time effectively.

What is feedback?

Feedback is the information used to achieve a goal. Your students need it to understand where they are in the learning process, and they need actionable insight to do this.

Feedback is not just about receiving praise. It is not always spoken or written, although teachers deliver feedback in that manner in the classroom. For example, if you’re a comedian, it may simply be about noticing your joke's effect by observing the audience's laughter. Students rely on feedback similarly to adjust and refine their work.

We all use feedback every day to understand the world around us.

How to provide meaningful feedback to students

Teachers intuitively know how to give effective feedback. But it can be difficult when you’re overwhelmed by the number of students and the classroom workload.

Here are seven strategies to help you provide personalized, actionable feedback that encourages student growth.

1. Teach feedback in class

Feedback in the classroom should be prioritized from the beginning of the year. When establishing classroom norms, incorporate your beliefs about feedback. This will allow you to talk about feedback as a coaching process rather than a grading process.

You must teach students how to give and receive feedback to do this. Include students in the conversation and discuss what type of feedback they like best. Students are great advocates for themselves and can tell you exactly what they need to grow.

For example, you can explicitly teach giving feedback by doing peer-to-peer feedback. I found it helpful to grade the same anonymous student essay as a class. It was useful for students to see how I graded, but we also discussed ways to word feedback on the sample essay.

Strategy: Conduct activities like grading an anonymous student essay as a class. Discuss how to frame constructive feedback, focusing on specific improvements rather than vague comments.
Why it works: Students gain an understanding of feedback expectations, and the time invested upfront pays off throughout the year.

2. Consider the amount

Your goal shouldn’t be to simply give more feedback. Throughout the school day, students receive a lot of surface-level feedback: "Good job,” “No,” “Stop,” and more. Too much unspecific feedback can make it hard for their brains to focus on growth.

Take the time to give user-friendly feedback. Students will remember targeted and specific feedback more, which will be at the top of their memory when making adjustments in the classroom.

Strategy: Replace “Good job in class today” with “You asked excellent questions during the discussion, especially when you connected the ideas of X and Y.”
Why it works: Targeted, specific feedback is more memorable and actionable, helping students focus on key areas for growth.

3. Be specific

Being specific when giving whole-class feedback can feel challenging, but you can talk with a few students to understand struggles. You can begin to understand common places where students need help with material. Focus on these areas when speaking to the whole class and individual students.

Strategy: Instead of saying, “Add more detail,” try, “Include an example from the text to support your argument.”
Why it works: Specific feedback gives students clear guidance, making it easier for them to improve.

4. Keep it timely, ongoing, and consistent

Many studies show that as students get immediate feedback in the classroom, they see higher achievement gains.

This makes sense on an everyday level because we’ve all gotten behind in our grading and have seen students' reactions when they see graded work once it’s passed back. They don’t even remember the assignment; even worse, they forget what was difficult. Students don’t internalize feedback when it’s not timely.

When students consistently receive timely and ongoing feedback in the classroom, they remember what was difficult about an assignment and can ask follow-up questions.

Strategy: Aim to provide feedback during or immediately after an activity whenever possible. Rubrics, comment banks, or AI tools can help speed up the process.
Why it works: Immediate, consistent feedback helps students remember their challenges and adjust their approach in real-time.

5. Connect feedback to a goal

One way to give students more meaningful feedback is to keep them focused on a single goal. You can explain how the skill you’re teaching leads to understanding a more significant skill.

For example, a teacher may teach students how to count by three so that they eventually learn how to multiply by three.

Teachers and students should focus on just a couple of goals at a time. In a high school English class, a teacher may focus on evidence and structure in a writing assignment and ignore grammar. Telling students that you will focus their feedback on one area encourages them to focus on the same area.

Strategy: Focus feedback on a few key areas so students can also focus on those areas.
Why it works: Goal-oriented feedback focuses students on the bigger picture, reducing overwhelm and promoting steady progress.

6. Use large-scale group feedback tools

When first teaching a major concept, you must start with knowledge acquisition. You will need to check for comprehension at this level, and students will need immediate feedback.

You can facilitate large-scale feedback using quiz tools like Kahoot. Simply program your questions into your student feedback tools and play the game in class.

Almanack generates questions via AI to upload into Google Forms, Kahoot, Quizlet, Quizizz, Blooket, and Gimket.

By automating your student feedback at the knowledge level, you can focus on giving more personalized student feedback on higher-order assignments.

Strategy: Use tools like Almanack to automate quiz generation. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Quizizz and Blooket, freeing up your time for personalized feedback on complex tasks.
Why it works: Automation allows you to focus on higher-order skills while still providing essential feedback for knowledge-building activities.

7. Include students and parents

You give students constant feedback on formative assignments. But many students do not see summative feedback like report cards at the end of the grading period.

Bringing students into the mix for quarterly and semester feedback gives students ownership over their learning progress. Showing both parents and students feedback can do wonders for your classroom. It can:

Give students ownership over their progress and learning.
Communicate to parents about the larger picture.
Facilitate conversations between teachers, students, and parents about future growth.

Almanack’s report card comment feature gives students personalized feedback. Almanack allows teachers to include anecdotes, growth comments, school forms, and more. It’s an intuitive tool that creates personalized and meaningful feedback for students.

Strategy: Use tools like Almanack to generate personalized report card comments, include anecdotes, and highlight growth areas. Share these with students and parents to encourage open communication.
Why it works: Engaging students in their progress fosters ownership, while involving parents creates a support network that reinforces learning.

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7 Ways To Give Students Personalized Feedback (Without Spending Hours!)