What is Front-Loaded Feedback?
Front-Loaded Feedback is generally used during a guided practice phase of learner practice so that learners can have more confidence that they are thinking and working in the correct way, without falling into common misconceptions.
There are four main strategies for front-loading feedback (although this is by no means an exhaustive list):
Providing tasks that meet certain conditions
Certain conditions are built into a task that allow a learner to make sure what they are doing is correct. For example, providing an equation or set of equations to solve where the results are integers, and informing learners of this in advance.
Providing tasks that make learner thinking visible
This involves breaking down questions or tasks into stages so that learners can make sure each stage makes sense given the previous stage, and so that teachers can pinpoint exactly where the learner's thinking went awry if the final result is incorrect. For example, if learners are going to measure an angle with a protractor, first asking them to focus on whether the angle is acute, right, obtuse or reflex, and then whether this implies that the size of the angle will be less than 90 degrees, exactly 90 degrees, between 90 and 180 degrees, or over 180 degrees.
Highlighting misconceptions in advance
During the practice phase of a lesson, this usually involves asking learners to find and correct an error that has arisen from a common misconception, and explain where the misconception has arisen from. This means that the learner avoids the misconception when they give their own answer. For example, when studying the hierarchy of operations, asking learners to identify what went wrong in a calculation attempted by someone else, before working out the correct result.
Provide checklists
As it says really, the question or task has a checklist attached to it that learners can check off at each stage to ensure that they have done the right things and not made a common error. For example, when adding two fractions, providing a checklist to make sure learners find a common denominator, correctly scale each fraction, and then add only the numerators.
The goal with front-loading feedback is that learners are getting immediate feedback on where their thinking might be wrong, and so can self-check rather than waiting for teacher feedback or, where teacher feedback is necessary, allowing teachers to get to the heart of where the error has arisen much more quickly.