Explain Everything to mark children's writing


We started today's lesson looking at feedback from the previous writing session. I decided to do a little experiment and mark half the children's work using written feedback with my green pen and highlighters but then used Explain Everything with the other half to record myself annotating and giving verbal feedback. I then asked the group to use the feedback to correct their writing.

I often question the impact of written feedback with particular children and wanted to see whether watching and listening back to my feedback would have more of an impact? From this session, it certainly seemed to. Comparing the corrections children made, there was significantly more with those who had iPads. After a discussion with the children, they seem to prefer it too, it was clearer, easier to understand and made them realise where they could improve.


Obviously, I am not saying that from this one session, we should get rid of written feedback but it was certainly eye opening. This is definitely something I will be looking at more intently over the coming weeks and keep you updated. In the meantime, give it a go yourself! Take a picture of the children's writing, add it into a Explain Everything project and then record yourself reading through, highlighting and discussing their work. Allow the children to then watch it back, pausing at appropriate points to then edit and improve their work. Let me know your thoughts!

Comments

  1. Anonymous24 April 2015 at 19:19

    I read this a while back and thought it was a great idea. However, like many teachers there is so little time to try out everything we see and like. I am now involved in a practitioner enquiry course and would very much like to use this as a basis of my research.
    This is a very small scale study set in my own classroom and is not set out to prove anything, just look further into my own practices. My question is; what would happen (start to everyone's research) when feedback is provided orally.
    I just wanted to let you know that your blog inspired this. I can't wait to get started my small scale study and see the results.
    Debbie

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