Feedback for Extension History – Process and Value

David Woodgate History and Legal Studies Teacher

One of the problems that faces teachers of Senior History is that the students who enter their classrooms in Year 11 to commence the Preliminary Course will have mixed abilities when it comes to the art of writing a well-structured, well-argued, comprehensive, and sophisticated historical essay. Irrespective of the foundational work done in Years 7-10 History, this will always be the case, and of all the skills that need to be mastered for success for HSC History, none is arguably more important than this one.

The need to be able to write well is especially true for Extension History, where all school-based assessments require students to write essays. This situation is complicated by the fact that it requires a totally different approach to writing essays from that required for the two-unit courses of Modern and Ancient History; the Extension Course being imbued with philosophy and complex historiography. Therefore, the importance of providing sustained and consistent feedback is critical to ensuring long-term success, such that when students write the essay for their research project, sit for their Trial HSC (two essays) and the actual HSC examination (two essays), they are properly positioned to write well-structured, wellargued, comprehensive, and sophisticated responses. Providing feedback in Extension History, involves students participating in a rigorous program of writing practice essays from the commencement of the course in Term 4 through to the week before the Trial and post-trial in Term 3. Students are given comprehensive feedback to ensure there is a visible and demonstrable development and growth of their essay writing skills. The specific approach to providing feedback for all essays, both practice (formative) and formal assessment tasks (summative) involves:

a) A general marker’s report to all students using the following headings:

• What the marker was looking for to achieve an “A” range in terms of evidence, content, and structure?

• What was done well across the responses? • What was done poorly or needed more attention across the responses?

b) Very specific individual comments for all responses. The comments are typed and follow the chronological progression of the essay. They target the following:

• Response to the question (judgement), thesis statement, and signposting of key historiographical issues to be talked about.

• Key structural issues for responding to the question properly. • Use of evidence and sources – comprehensiveness and relevance of, or otherwise.

• Integration of, and sustained and explicit reference to, the mandated sources associated with the question. • Is the question being answered? • Specific overall comment about what was done especially well. • Specific overall comment about what was not done well or needs more attention. Having received the feedback, the students must do the following. This is where the value of the feedback becomes critical:

a) Highlight in one colour those comments on the general report that they believe they have either done well, or at least attended to.

b) Highlight in one colour, those comments on the general report that they believe they have not done well, or at least not attended to.

c) Prioritise the specific comments made that need, in their opinion, the most urgent attention by numbering from 1 (the most important) to whatever number there are.

d) Have a conversation with me after the above has been done, to ensure there is agreement about their judgements.

Invariably, I find that they get this completely correct and this is 90% of the battle won–they have come to an understanding on how to improve based on the feedback even before they see me.

e) The option, or at key moments, no option, to electronically re-write the essay and have it re-marked based on the feedback and the process of points a, b, c, and d. Anything that students change, amend, add, or even eliminate, must be submitted in the re-write in bold and red, so that it is clearly observable. The re-submitted essay will be returned with comments that specifically target how the essay has in fact paid attention to the general and specific feedback. My experience is that, when the rewrite follows this process, there is always a demonstrable improvement in the marks.

Using the above process from when the first essay is written through to the Trial HSC and post-trial period, the students end up writing somewhere in the order of 10-12 responses for the two areas of study for Extension History. Almost without exception, there is a proven and demonstrable improvement of the students’ marks and the progression of the comprehensiveness and sophistication of their responses.