How can I provide useful feedback?

This blog post about feedback comes just as I am in the middle of grading CERC (short constructed response paragraphs) that answer the question: “Why does our heart rate increase when we exercise?” I am working hard to provide feedback to each student about their writing in addition to a grade. Even with the help of Google Classroom’s handy “add to comment bank” feature, so that my most commonly used pieces of feedback (such as “Excellent data! But what are the units?” and “It’s true that our bodies need more oxygen when we exercise - what in our body carries oxygen to our muscles?”), this process takes FOREVER. I am certain that it will take me hours to grade these paragraphs.

Which leads me to my next point… Why am I leaving feedback anyway? My initial thought is this: most students will not read my comments. The only way I could ensure that most students do read my comments would be planning time in class for them to look at their grade and feedback. I could do this, but this activity feels pointless unless I then give them the opportunity to rewrite their paragraphs after looking at my feedback. Asking the students to rewrite their paragraphs feels pointless unless I agree to regrade them, and I don’t know how I would find the time to do that before the end of the semester.

After reading Williams’ “The Secret of Effective Feedback” and reflecting on my current CERC grading predicament, I’ve decided that I’m going to make a new commitment for these sorts of assignments. I’m not going to assign them unless I plan on making time in class to meaningfully review the work. Williams writes, “If our feedback doesn’t change the student in some way, it has probably been a waste of time.” He tells educators that it is not enough to correct a student’s work, but we must make our students actively involved in understanding where improvements can be made. His suggestion for a math teacher would be to tell a student how many problems on a worksheet are incorrect, and challenging the student to find and fix them himself. Adapting this approach for my purposes, I wonder if the following would be valuable: assign the students a score for each section (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, Conclusion), and tell them to rewrite their response, using the rubric, to meet full credit. Maybe it would be beneficial to also allow them to work with a partner or small group on these corrections, so they can brainstorm together if they get stuck.