I’m an English teacher. I grade A LOT of student writing. When I was in brick and mortar classrooms, writing assignments, process pieces and projects had rubrics with lots of comments written in cursive (it was much faster than writing in print). Unfortunately, I can’t necessarily do this quickly in the virtual classroom.

As teachers, time is precious, and grading is one aspect of our lives that takes the most time.

Today, I want to share how I provide quality feedback to my online Edmentum students in grades 6-12 .

1. Start with a quick message. Being virtual, it’s imperative that we do our best to create relationships with students. This can even be done while grading. When a student submits an assignment to me, I always start with a quick message. For a discussion response, I say, “Thank you for your response. Please check your email for the rubric.” For activities (projects/essays/presentations), I say, “Thank you for submitting this assignment to me.” I like to set a nice tone before I dive into their performance on the task .
2. Tell them the score. For all graded activities, I include a short line about the points they earned out of the possible points. For discussions, I say, “You have earned a ____ out of 12, which is a _____%.” For unit activities, I say for each task,” Score: __ out of 4″. This is really what students want to know and it provides for a smooth transition into the next few steps.
3. Provide a scored rubric. To me, this has been a game changer for my students. For discussion responses, I highlight the rubric based on the response, and save it as a PDF. I email the discussion rubrics and feedback to my kids because there’s no way to attach it to the discussion in the module. For activities, in the feedback text box I copy and paste the score a student earned on the rubric and place it right under where I say the score. Doing this helps my kiddos understand why they earned the score they got and it also backs up the next step.
4. Write a specific Oreo statement. This is by far the most effective way I have learned to provide my students with feedback. I like to think of an Oreo when writing to my kids- compliment, suggestions, end on a positive note. I start by always find something to praise the student for (word choice, answering all parts of the prompt, liking their idea, they made a good point, etc.). Then I dive into my specific reasons why they lost points and how they can improve. Just by adding these few sentences has saved me time with back and forth messages/calls/emails with students and parents, and has increased the amount re-submissions I receive. Finally, I end by saying nice, good, great or fabulous job based on the score the student earned. By doing the Oreo, I’m praising my student, providing constructive feedback and ending with a smile.

How to word constructive criticism

It’s all about the wording.

I have a tendency to repeat myself when I grade, which also helps make the process go faster. I focus on three categories (which happen to be the ones on the discussion rubric) answering all parts of the prompt, providing textual evidence/examples and explanations, and spelling and grammar.

If a student gives me a sentence or two and only focuses on the first part of a prompt with some spelling and grammar mistakes, this is what I normally write:

In the future, make sure you answer all parts of the prompt, elaborate on your ideas with specific examples and explanations and proofread your work for spelling and grammatical errors.

Then, I get down to the nitty gritty in the next few sentences.

For instance, you did not discuss what qualities the character has that you would like to have as well. Also, what did this character do in the book that showed she was brave? How does she support her friends?

I really try to be as specific with my questions to my students as possible, because I know this is how they will go back and revise their work. By asking questions, I’m giving students guidance in the direction I want them to tweak their work while also getting them to think about adding specific details to their writing.

Providing quality feedback does take time, but getting into a routine and having some solid wording, can make a big difference.

Little Reading Coach is a certified Teacher of English (K-12) and Reading Specialist (P-12) offering online reading,  writing and home-based learning support tutoring services for students in grades 6-12. For more information click here.