Pedagogy First. Technology Second.

Build In Time to Act

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Closing the Gap in 03 Feedback, 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

Time to act is the part most often squeezed out, and the strand is blunt about the cost: feedback with no time to act on it is wasted. Every hour of marking is spent or lost in the ten minutes after work is returned.

Beginning the next lesson with pupils reading and responding to comments before anything new makes the priority structural rather than aspirational. The response is the learning event; the comments were only ever preparation for it.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

Work goes back at the start of the lesson, not the end. Pupils read their comments, rewrite one section in response, and only then does new content begin. Nothing about the routine is complicated; its value is that it happens every time work is returned.

Try it

A way to begin

Protect the first ten minutes after any returned work for responding to it. Put it in your planning as a fixed cost of setting the work in the first place.

What to notice

Reading what happens

  • What pupils produce in the response window. The redrafts are better evidence of your feedback's quality than the comments themselves.
  • Whether pupils begin expecting the routine and arrive ready to respond. Expectation is the habit forming.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

  • If there is genuinely no time for pupils to act, the honest options are to mark less or reclaim the time. Writing comments that will never be used is the one option the evidence rules out.

Inclusive practice

The lens this connects with

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

Technology second

Where technology fits

Sharing feedback through the approved platform in your setting the evening before, as the card suggests, moves the reading out of the lesson so that lesson time goes entirely on the response. The strand's closing line is the test to hold onto: the win is not faster feedback, the win is better work because pupils had time to use it.

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Wiliam and Leahy's practical work on embedding formative assessment treats the response to feedback as a planned classroom routine, not a hope; this card is that principle in its simplest form. The card’s attribution stands as published: Wiliam & Leahy.

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

Keep exploring

Where next?

Back to this strategy in 03 Feedback, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.

Want to take this further?

Support is available

Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.

Work with Mark