MAKING IT EASIER TO BE A BETTER TEACHER

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

• The death of the novel is here - why students just can’t read big books anymore.

• Primary teachers like where they are - why most would rather quit than move to secondary.

• Students not doing their homework? This state is considering paying students to study.

TECH TALK

My students don’t read my feedback

Many teachers struggle with our students not reading (or applying) any written feedback that we leave on their assignments. Long comments often go unread or misunderstood.

This can leave students without a clear understanding of how to improve, leading to repeated mistakes, slower progress, and frustration for both teachers and students.

The Solution: Mote

Mote is a Chrome extension voice note tool that allows teachers to leave audio feedback directly on student submissions from Google Classroom.

Verbal feedback tends to be more personal, easier to digest, and faster for us to provide (see the Brainy Bit below for proof of that!). Here’s how Mote accomplishes this:

• Voice Feedback 🦜 With Mote, teachers can leave audio comments instead of lengthy written ones, making feedback clearer and more engaging for students. They can hear your tone and emphasis, ensuring they understand your comments.

• Time Efficient ⏲️ Teachers save time by recording quick voice notes instead of typing out detailed comments, speeding up the feedback process while still giving personalized responses.

• Student Accessibility 🦻 Students can replay the voice feedback as many times as needed, making it easier to grasp your advice at their own pace.

• Integration 🔗 Mote integrates as an extension to Google Chrome & Classroom.

How About YOUR Classroom?

It’s not that students don’t care about feedback—it’s often that they struggle with understanding the point of it. Voice feedback can feel more personal and less intimidating than written comments, making students more likely to listen and act on it.

Plus, voice comments are faster to give, saving you time as well.

Strategies:

• Start small and introduce Mote by using it on one or two assignments and see how your students respond. Over time, you can integrate it more fully into your feedback routine.

• Model effective feedback by playing one or two of your recorded notes, showing students how to approach listening and improving their work based on your comments.

• If your lessons include some peer review (and they should!), allow students to use voice memos to give vocal feedback to each other, helping them practice giving constructive, verbal help.

Mote’s free version is enough for most, but the premium version ($49 USD/year) unlocks even more features, such as transcription services, longer voice notes, and analytics on how often students replay feedback.

So what do you say (get it? 😜 )? Not fully convinced of the verbal feedback case yet? Peek below for more.

BRAINY BITS

Verbal feedback for mental health

The benefits of verbal feedback don’t stop at academics and time saving - it can also reduce student anxiety.

This week’s study, published in 2022, aims to see how verbal corrective feedback can offer mental health benefits as well.

The Study: The Effectiveness of Verbal Corrective Feedback in Reducing Academic Anxiety 

This week’s study explores how verbal corrective feedback during formative assessments impacts K-12 language learners. Researchers compared the impact of verbal and written feedback on students’ academic anxiety, performance, and attitudes toward learning.

Using a quasi-experimental design, 60 language students were divided into two groups. One group received only verbal feedback, while the other received only written feedback for a variety of assessments.

To evaluate the impact, researchers conducted pre-and post-tests to measure academic performance, alongside surveys that looked at anxiety levels and student attitudes. The results were then compared.

The Results:

The findings clearly favored verbal feedback over written feedback.

Verbal feedback led to a noticeable reduction in academic anxiety. When students were corrected through conversational, on-the-spot verbal feedback, their stress levels decreased significantly compared to written feedback, where corrections came later and were seen as more critical.

In terms of academic performance, students who received verbal feedback were more likely to retain larger concepts and correct language mistakes faster.

What was really interesting though was the impact on student attitudes. Those receiving verbal feedback reported feeling more confident, more engaged in the classroom, and less afraid of making mistakes compared to the written feedback group.

In Your Classroom:

Verbal feedback might be something you already do, but there’s a case for making it more intentional; focusing on direct, verbal interactions with students in the moment could be key.

Think of verbal feedback not just as a tool for correcting mistakes but as a method for building stronger teacher-student relationships and improving classroom culture.

Here’s how:

Strategies

• Timing is Everything: Make verbal feedback immediate. For example, when students are engaged in group work or discussions, listen in and offer quick, gentle corrections that help them stay on track.

• Focus on Growth: Keep verbal feedback targeted on just a few key areas where improvement is needed. Verbal feedback works best when it’s short and specific.

• Integrate it Into Class Culture: Incorporate it during activities like reading aloud, problem-solving sessions, or group presentations. This will normalize the process and make students more open to receiving it.

By embedding verbal feedback more intentionally into your classroom, you can create a learning environment where students not only improve their performance, but also feel more at ease and ready to learn.

REFERENCES

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

mote. (2024). Speak to every learner. Retrieved from https://www.mote.com/?page=home

Brainy Bits:

Patra, I., Alazemi, A., Al-Jamal, D., & Gheisair, A. (2022). The effectiveness of teachers’ written and verbal corrective feedback (CF) during formative assessment (FA) on male language learners’ academic anxiety (AA), academic performance (AP), and attitude toward learning (ATL). Lang Test Asia 12, 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40468-022-00169-2