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Google Classroom + Meaningful Feedback = Winning Combination!

In this post, we will explore ways to give meaningful feedback in Google Classroom.

Feedback is an essential piece of the learning process that often gets overlooked or watered down.

As teachers, it can be difficult to find ways to not only give feedback to every student, but to make it meaningful to students and something that is actionable.

Susan M. Brookhart, author of How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students, says, "Good feedback contains information a student can use. That means, first, that the student has to be able to hear and understand it. A student can't hear something that's beyond his comprehension, nor can a student hear something if she's not listening or if she feels like it's useless to listen.

The most useful feedback focuses on the qualities of student work or the processes or strategies used to do the work. Feedback that draws students' attention to their self-regulation strategies or their abilities as learners is potent if students hear it in a way that makes them realize they will get results by expending effort and attention."

Let that sink in for a moment.

This is not just about finding errors for students but using feedback as a strategy for learning.

Feedback should be a loop, not a one-and-done task. It's a conversation between you and your students.

QUICK TIP: Getting students to read and take action on feedback can be a challenge. Try this, delay the final grade until they have responded or made revisions based on feedback.

Get the details on this, "Delay the Grade," strategy in this post from Cult of Pedagogy.

G Suite tools give us many opportunities to communicate with students, guide them toward the learning targets, and give meaningful feedback.

Google Classroom in particular offers many ways for teachers and students to continue the feedback loop.

I asked members of the Shake Up Learning Community to share their favorite ways to use Google Classroom for meaningful feedback and here's what they shared.

Below are some ideas to help you learn how to take advantage of the functionality of Google Classroom to give meaningful feedback to your students.

4 Ways to Give Meaningful Feedback in Google Classroom

To be clear, for the purposes of this post, we are going to focus on the Google Classroom application and not on other G Suite tools that also offer ways to leave feedback and comments.

1. Private Comments

Private comments is one of the best features of Google Classroom.

Since these are private, they are only viewable by you and the individual student. Consider this a private conversation between you and your students.

To learn more about the different types of comments in Classroom, see this previous post: Google Classroom Comments: All You Need to Know!

To add a private comment from the Student Work page:

1. From the Classwork tab, click on the assignment for which you would like to give feedback.

2. Click on "View Assignment."

3. Select the Student from the roster on the left.

4. Toward the bottom of the right-hand panel, you will see "Add Private Comment."

5. Click to type and add your private comment for your student.

Note: you can also leave private comments in the grading workflow which is covered in number two.

2. The Google Classroom Grading Tool

The Google Classroom Grading Tool gives teachers a workflow for evaluating student work, leaving feedback, grading, and returning student work.

To access the grading tool,

1. From the Classwork page, select the assignment and click on "View Assignment."

2. Click on the student's name in the left-hand roster.

3. Click on the file a student submitted and you should see the grading tool similar to what you see in the image below.

Here you can toggle through multiple student's work, leave frequently used comments from your comment bank, as well as leave private comments.

To learn more about the grading tool and other features, watch the FREE webinar: 5 Things to Know About the New Google Classroom, where I go into depth with the newer features of Google Classroom.

3. Canned Comments from Your Personal Comment Bank

Another great feature of the grading tool mentioned above is the ability to create your own comment bank of frequently used comments and feedback for students.

1. Click on "Comment Bank," from the right-hand sidebar.

2. Enter the comment you wish to save and click, "Add."

The comments you save will be saved to your account and accessible through the Google Classroom grading tool to use with any assignment.

4. Annotate Using Google Classroom on Mobile (iOS or Android)

Many users don't know that there are some additional Google Classroom features that only work on mobile (for now at least).

One such feature is the ability to draw and annotate on documents.

In the mobile version of Google Classroom, you can annotate on assignments, meaning you can draw, markup, create, etc.

That annotation is then saved and can be turned in, or sent to the student as feedback. Of course, now add the power of the stylus to this application and you've got yourself a winning combination.

Click here to learn how this works in the mobile app.

This is a great way to give students feedback on all kinds of assignments!

How do you give meaningful feedback for your students? Please share in the comments below!

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© Shake Up Learning 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog's author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kasey Bell and Shake Up Learning with appropriate and specific direction to the original content on ShakeUpLearning.com. See: Copyright Policy.

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4 Ways to Give Meaningful Feedback with Google Classroom

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Google Classroom + Meaningful Feedback = Winning Combination! In this post, we will explore ways to give meaningful feedback in Google Classroom. Feedback is an essential piece of the learning process that often gets overlooked or watered down.

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Please add other resources that you may have that are connected to the topic of formative assessment & feedback.

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Cult of Pedagogy: Episode 87

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Listen to my interview with Joe Hirsch (transcript):
Sponsored by Kiddom and Pear Deck

As teachers, we pretty much give feedback all day long. We tell students how they can improve on assignments, we praise them for things they're doing well, we correct their incorrect responses, and we redirect them when they behave in ways that aren't helpful to learning.

And that's just the students. We also give feedback to our colleagues, although in most cases, these exchanges don't happen as often or as freely as they probably should. We receive plenty of feedback as well, from our students, their parents, our administrators, and our peers. And we encourage our students to give feedback to each other, albeit with pretty uneven results. Really, the experience of school could be described as one long feedback session, where every day, people show up with the goal of improving, while other people tell them how to do it.

And it doesn't always go well. As we give and receive feedback, people get defensive. Feelings get hurt. Too often, the improvements we're going for don't happen, because the feedback isn't given in a way that the receiver can embrace.

It turns out there's a different way to give feedback that works a lot better, a way of flipping its focus from the past to the future. It's a concept called "feedforward," which was originally developed by a management expert named Marshall Goldsmith. As far as I can tell, not a lot of educators are familiar with the practice of feedforward, and I really think if we learned how to do it and started using it more consistently, it could make a huge difference in how our students grow and how we grow as professionals.

In this week's podcast, I interview Joe Hirsch, author of The Feedback Fix: Dump the Past, Embrace the Future, and Lead the Way to Change. ( Bookshop.org | Amazon). In the book, Joe digs deep into the practice of feedforward and shows us how and why it works. You can listen to our full conversation in the player above, read the full transcript, or stay right here-I'll give you a quick overview.

What's Wrong with the Way We Give Feedback?

When we give feedback to our students, or when our co-workers or administrators give feedback to us, the focus is on the past. "People can't control what they can't change, and we can't change the past," says Hirsch. "And that happens to be the focus of most of the feedback that we give or receive."

More specifically, backward-looking feedback doesn't often get good results for three reasons:

It shuts down our mental dashboards. "When we get negative feedback about something that we can't change or control," Hirsch says, "our brains flood with stress-inducing hormones, cortisol, that trigger our threat awareness and put us on the defensive. The parts that are responsible for executive function, for creativity, the parts that allow us to sort of set our agendas and make rational decisions, essentially we are in a state of mental paralysis."

It focuses primarily on ratings, not on development. Most of feedback's time and energy is spent on looking back and rating (or grading) performance that's already over, rather than focusing on what can be done from now on. "When feedback consists of an impersonal set of performance standards, we're overlooking the essential goal of feedback, and that's to create positive and lasting improvement."

It reinforces negative behaviors. "When we hear about flaws that we can't fix anymore-because they're in a past that we can't change-it creates a feeling of learned helplessness, the feeling that we are unable to do anything about our future. Instead of committing ourselves to improvement, which is what we would hope would happen, we hold onto this debilitating view of who we are instead of focusing on who we are becoming."

What is Feedforward?

When we give feedforward, instead of rating and judging a person's performance in the past, we focus on their development in the future.

Suppose my student is writing an essay. Instead of waiting until she is finished, then marking up all the errors and giving it a grade, I would read parts of the essay while she is writing it, point out things I'm noticing, and ask her questions to get her thinking about how she might improve it.

In his book, Hirsch takes this broad concept of feedforward and defines six components of it, six specific characteristics of feedforward that make it so effective. He refers to these by the acronym REPAIR (regenerates, expands, particular, authentic, impact, refines).

So let's take a look at each of these. If you want to implement feedforward well, it should have these attributes:

It REGENERATES talent.

The most effective kind of feedforward helps people see opportunities for growth-ways they could take on new opportunities and roles. "At the simplest level," Hirsch writes in his book, "it leads to the unmistakable feeling that we're moving forward in our professional and personal lives. Getting positive feedback about our performance may feel good, but it doesn't break new ground. It merely confirms what we already know about ourselves and our talents, essentially holding our growth in check. But when feedback gets us thinking about how to spread that talent to others, it has a multiplying effect."

So when we notice that a student is developing a strength or an interest in an area, instead of just pointing that out, we might give the student an opportunity to enter their work in some kind of competition, publish it in some way, or share it with others in a presentation, rather than simply keeping it to themselves. This helps students see themselves in a new light and gets them thinking about ways they could grow.

It EXPANDS possibilities.

Effective feedback starts with what is and helps add to it, expanding what's possible, rather than simply pointing out problems. In his book, Hirsch describes a concept used by Pixar studios called "plussing." When Pixar's creators get together to review a day's work, they are expected to give each other feedback to improve the work. What makes these sessions so effective is one important rule: Participants can't point out a problem without proposing an alternative, saying "What if?" to a problem.

This concept of "plussing" could work wonders in staff or committee meetings: When we are discussing possible solutions to an issue, rather than shooting down ideas that might not work, we could add to them by making small tweaks. "That's an interesting idea. What if we made this small change and tried that?" This technique would also work beautifully with project-based learning tasks, when students may need to come up with several ideas for solving a problem before arriving at the best solution.

It is PARTICULAR.

Far too often, feedback is given in an "information dump," with lots of criteria being measured and reported on at the same time. This can be a pretty ineffective way to help people grow. "There's a limit to how much we can absorb and operationalize in any given time," Hirsch says. "Feedforward is really about picking your battlegrounds strategically and selectively." He advises us to make feedback an ongoing process that is embedded in the day-to-day work, and to only focus on a few things at a time.

So rather than wait until an assignment is done to point out all the ways a student can improve, find ways to give them specific pointers while they work, and only one thing at a time, so students can process and act on it right away.

It is AUTHENTIC.

No one particularly likes giving criticism. "We see problems, we see pitfalls in other people, and we know it's a problem," Hirsch says, "but we don't want to be mean, right? We don't want to crush them. So the tendency is to either avoid giving feedback altogether or to disguise it as a praise sandwich, where we basically slip one piece of criticism in between two very, very surface level gauzy praises."

The problem with that approach, Hirsch explains, is what's called the recency effect: People remember most the thing they heard last. So when you tack on some praise after delivering constructive feedback, the person doesn't really absorb the critical part as well as they would if you'd just given it to them more directly.

Hirsch recommends a more direct approach: Describe what's happening, explain why it's a problem, then prompt the person for a solution. "When delivered this way," Hirsch explains, "it puts people at ease, it takes them off the defensive. It is clear, it is concise, it's locating the problem, it's looking for solutions together. People don't want a praise sandwich. People want the truth."

This approach could work with academic situations or classroom management problems: If you're dealing with a student who is disrupting class, describe the behavior you're seeing, explain why it's a problem, then ask the student for ideas on how to solve it. It sounds really simple, but if what you're doing right now isn't giving you the results you want, it's worth a try.

It has IMPACT.

One of the reasons people don't make progress after receiving feedback is that they don't necessarily know what to do with it. "If you want feedback to make an impact," Hirsch notes, "you have to put it in terms that people can operationalize." In his book, he cites studies showing that regular feedback doesn't typically result in a transfer of new skills or habits, but when that feedback is combined with coaching, the transfer skyrockets to 95 percent.

So if a student regularly forgets to bring materials to class, rather than simply telling him to change, help him make a specific plan for improvement. Ideally, that plan should have lots of small steps to make it achievable, and the student should take the lead in developing that plan.

It REFINES group dynamics.

"Feedback is a team sport," Hirsch says. "It is not just something that happens one to one. It happens in groups and across and within organizations. And when we dump that command and control nature of traditional feedback, we make room for something much more collaborative and shared."

So rather than give feedback in a top-down, hierarchical model, open up more pathways for people to get feedback from their peers, even those whose jobs might on the surface have little in common with our own. In his book, Hirsch borrows a term from management circles known as "creative abrasion," which is what happens when people with opposing views work on the same task together. Although it can result in more conflict, the contributions from different points of view usually produce a higher-quality product in the end.

This idea can play out in a lot of educational settings: Instead of just having our department head observe our teaching, why not get feedback from someone who teaches a completely different subject? When students go to the same peers for feedback on their work, have them seek out the opinion of someone new, or consider getting the input of a group of students from a different class or grade level entirely.

There's nothing simple or straightforward about telling people how to improve. So it's no surprise that we're still figuring it out and finding new ways to refine it. If the feedback you're giving to your students, your coworkers, and even the people at home isn't having quite the effect you intend, try shifting to a feedforward approach. Doing so can help us, as Hirsch says, stop seeing ourselves just as who we are, but who we are becoming. ♦

Learn more about Joe Hirsch on his website or visit his LinkedIn page. Teachers who read The Feedback Fix should also grab this free Discussion Guide for Teachers to help apply the book's principles to your own work.

Come back for more.
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Instead of rating and judging a person's performance in the past, feedforward focuses on their development in the future.

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I used the private comment tool with my second graders last year and it worked well.

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I wonder if parents can see the feedback as well.

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I had no idea that there was a comment bank I could build and then use!

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I had no idea that there was a comment bank I could build and then use!

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I wonder if students get email notifications when a comment is left for them.

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I wonder if students get email notifications when a comment is left for them.

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I love the comment bank! Just tried it out on an assignment from last year. I agree with holding off the grade but trying to figure out how I would manage all the assignments virtually.

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I love the comment bank! Just tried it out on an assignment from last year. I agree with holding off the grade but trying to figure out how I would manage all the assignments virtually.

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How much feedback is too much and how can I meet with students quickly during a virtually conference?

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How much feedback is too much and how can I meet with students quickly during a virtually conference?

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I can see it really working for in-person instruction if we can sit together. Last school year, a lot of my one-on-one meetings came from feedback I left that turned into mini lessons.

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I can see it really working for in-person instruction if we can sit together. Last school year, a lot of my one-on-one meetings came from feedback I left that turned into mini lessons.

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I used the personal comment option frequently but was not sure if my k parents viewed them.

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I used the personal comment option frequently but was not sure if my k parents viewed them.

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Last year, I wasn't informed when a student/parent sent me a comment or responded to one of my comments, in google classroom.  Is there a way to be notified so I can respond promptly? 

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Last year, I wasn't informed when a student/parent sent me a comment or responded to one of my comments, in google classroom.  Is there a way to be notified so I can respond promptly? 

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Can teacher's see if students have reviewed the comments? 

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Can teacher's see if students have reviewed the comments? 

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I wonder if students are reading the comments, particularly the younger students.

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I wonder if students are reading the comments, particularly the younger students.

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Feedback is so important for the students to learn and grow, but I wonder how effective it is virtually with younger students. 

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Feedback is so important for the students to learn and grow, but I wonder how effective it is virtually with younger students. 

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I wonder if the feedback can be read aloud to the students through an audio feature. 

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I wonder if the feedback can be read aloud to the students through an audio feature. 

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I think it would be useful to provide feedback on writing assignments/ Google docs for my students.   

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I think it would be useful to provide feedback on writing assignments/ Google docs for my students.   

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I was always giving my students feedback on the work that they had turned in while we were doing remote learning, but I felt as though only a few of them were responding to it.  I will continue to use this comment spot to communicate with my students.  In the classroom, I am always walking around to give students feedback on the work that they are doing.  It is usually just verbal feedback.

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I was always giving my students feedback on the work that they had turned in while we were doing remote learning, but I felt as though only a few of them were responding to it.  I will continue to use this comment spot to communicate with my students.  In the classroom, I am always walking around to give students feedback on the work that they are doing.  It is usually just verbal feedback.

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I always gave feedback to my students whether it was something to work on, or what they did well on.  I didn't know about the comment bank.  I will definitely use this because I found myself typing the same comments when the students were making a common mistake in their math work.

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I always gave feedback to my students whether it was something to work on, or what they did well on.  I didn't know about the comment bank.  I will definitely use this because I found myself typing the same comments when the students were making a common mistake in their math work.

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I also like the idea of not grading it until they have responded to my feedback, but I am also not sure how I would manage staying on top of all the students and making sure they redid the assignment to get a grade.

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I wonder how many students are actually reading my comments.  So many students could have worked on assignments to show their understanding of an assignment and improve their grade, but so many of them didn't take the opportunity to do this.  How can I make this a priority especially since we will continue to be distant learning.

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I wonder how many students are actually reading my comments.  So many students could have worked on assignments to show their understanding of an assignment and improve their grade, but so many of them didn't take the opportunity to do this.  How can I make this a priority especially since we will continue to be distant learning.

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How can I use breakout rooms to check on understanding because I have almost 100 students. I would love to do something like flipgrid, but I found it was too time consuming with so many students.

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I like the idea of delaying the grade until a student responds to the comments. I feel like this would be a great strategy to increase engagement. I also like the idea of using a bank of comments. I would use them to save time, but still personalize the comment to be more helpful to students.

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I think the hold the grade till they revised it is a good idea. Letting them know how you are going to go about giving them feedback is also valuable.

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I think the hold the grade till they revised it is a good idea. Letting them know how you are going to go about giving them feedback is also valuable.

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I wonder if they will actually put in the effort to revising their work.

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I wonder if they will actually put in the effort to revising their work.

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I used this tool last year and the students responded well to it. I can see it being used for Lit. study, writing, science investigations, etc.

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I used this tool last year and the students responded well to it. I can see it being used for Lit. study, writing, science investigations, etc.

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other ways I used feedback was through screencastify if I wanted to get a message out to all the students.

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I wonder if the students/parents see the comments, and how much the comments mean to them.

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I wonder if the students/parents see the comments, and how much the comments mean to them.

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I think that the idea of waiting is a great idea, especially if you are able to speak with/work with the student individually. 

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I think that the idea of waiting is a great idea, especially if you are able to speak with/work with the student individually. 

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I wonder if there is an easy way to keep track of making comments and keeping track of who responds to it.  

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I wonder if there is an easy way to keep track of making comments and keeping track of who responds to it.  

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It can get overwhelming keeping tabs on it all when teaching all subjects.

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I wonder how to make the feedback meaningful for first graders- can I voice record comments? I left comments all the time in GC for my 5th grade students and I feel like most of them read them- I want to do the same for first grade. 

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I wonder how to make the feedback meaningful for first graders- can I voice record comments? I left comments all the time in GC for my 5th grade students and I feel like most of them read them- I want to do the same for first grade. 

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I used delaying the grade last year until revisions/ improvements had been made and it worked really well! 

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I used delaying the grade last year until revisions/ improvements had been made and it worked really well! 

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Digital Learning can make plagiarism more accessible. When something was plagiarized, I would highlight it, leave a comment and include the website where it was plagiarized from. This worked in three ways. It opened a private conversation between the student and me about plagiarism, it showed that it was difficult to get away with and lastly, it gave the child the opportunity for a "do-over". 

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Digital Learning can make plagiarism more accessible. When something was plagiarized, I would highlight it, leave a comment and include the website where it was plagiarized from. This worked in three ways. It opened a private conversation between the student and me about plagiarism, it showed that it was difficult to get away with and lastly, it gave the child the opportunity for a "do-over". 

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"Delay the Grade": I like this ideas because it encourages kids to read the comments and not dismiss because it's "done".

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"Delay the Grade": I like this ideas because it encourages kids to read the comments and not dismiss because it's "done".

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Feedback for first graders would be great but we will see how it will work out for them. Not sure how that would work.

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I also love the feedback bank part! That I think would be very useful!

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I can see myself using delayed grading for writing. Last year, I would grade a writing assignment through Google Classroom, and if it could use improvement I would give feedback through private comments and encourage the student to revise for an improved grade. I was met with mixed results, and many kids often just took the low grade instead of revising. If I actually had the kids in front of me, I would individually conference and give them class time to revise/edit. 

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I can see myself using delayed grading for writing. Last year, I would grade a writing assignment through Google Classroom, and if it could use improvement I would give feedback through private comments and encourage the student to revise for an improved grade. I was met with mixed results, and many kids often just took the low grade instead of revising. If I actually had the kids in front of me, I would individually conference and give them class time to revise/edit. 

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Feedback will be very important in helping to assess understanding but also to help our students with their accountability. Knowing that their teacher is looking into the work and giving feedback will make submitting their work more about showing their understanding and not just submitting "busy work".

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Feedback will be very important in helping to assess understanding but also to help our students with their accountability. Knowing that their teacher is looking into the work and giving feedback will make submitting their work more about showing their understanding and not just submitting "busy work".

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I wonder if google has an option to see if comment has  been opened and/or read by the student. I know the assignment can be sent back to be resubmitted but what if you just wanted the student to see positive feedback?

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I wonder if google has an option to see if comment has  been opened and/or read by the student. I know the assignment can be sent back to be resubmitted but what if you just wanted the student to see positive feedback?