Build In Time to Act

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Feedback That Moves Learning Forward in 02 Formative Assessment, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Feedback given at the end of a unit, with nothing left to apply it to, is a record rather than an intervention. The card's fix is structural: the next lesson begins with pupils reading and responding to their feedback before anything new arrives.

Those first minutes are what make the marking you have already done worth the hours it took.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

Books go back at the start of the lesson. Pupils spend the opening ten minutes on their responses: answering the questions left in the margins, redrafting one sentence, correcting a method. New content waits until the responses are done.

Try it

A way to begin

Protect the first ten minutes of one lesson this week for acting on feedback. Nothing else changes; the feedback you were going to give anyway now has somewhere to land.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• What pupils do unprompted with the time, which tells you how actionable the feedback actually was.
• Whether responses engage with the gap you identified. A tick and 'done' next to an unchanged answer is a response in name only.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• Sharing feedback in advance, where your school's systems allow it, means the lesson time starts at the responding rather than the reading.
• If there is never time to act on it, the honest question is whether the feedback needed writing at all. The card puts it more bluntly: feedback with no time to act on it has no value.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• ⏱️ Build In Time to Act Feedback with no time to act on it is wasted. Begin the next lesson with students reading and responding to comments before anything new. The response is the learning event. 03 Feedback · Closing the Gap
• 🧠 Feedback Must Cause Thinking Feedback must be more work for the recipient than the donor. Pose questions rather than writing corrections. If feedback requires no response from the learner, it is not feedback; it is merely information. 02 Formative Assessment · Feedback That Moves Learning Forward
• ❓ 3 Questions, Not Corrections Return work with three questions rather than corrections. Students must respond before moving on. Cognitive effort belongs with the learner. Feedback that corrects for them removes the struggle. 02 Formative Assessment · Feedback That Moves Learning Forward
• 🌧️ The Muddiest Point At lesson close, each student anonymously writes the one thing they are least clear about. The teacher addresses the most common muddy points publicly at the start of the next lesson. Two minutes; high value. 02 Formative Assessment · Students as Owners of Their Learning

Inclusive practice

The lens this connects with

Through the inclusive practice lens, this is one of the approaches that may reduce barriers around:

• Feedback and next steps

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Wiliam and Leahy treat time to act as part of the feedback itself rather than an optional follow-up: feedback moves learning forward only while the work can still change. The card’s attribution stands as published: Wiliam & Leahy.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Formative Assessment.