The end of a school year is often treated as closure. Yet for learners, it is also a transfer point. Students leave carrying far more than content knowledge and grades. They carry beliefs about themselves as learners, strategies that helped them succeed, habits they developed, and questions they still hold about their abilities.

During the past year, I worked with a group of K–12 teachers exploring feedback practices that positively impact student learning. As we held our last session, we examined how feedback at the end of the school year could function as feedforward. What did students learn about themselves and about how they learn this year that they can use to increase their success next year? What kind of information can teachers provide next year’s teachers that will support teaching and learning? PLC facilitators, instructional coaches, and principals might use some of the following prompts as teachers explore the end of the school year.

“As the year closes, what have students discovered about how they learn best that they can intentionally carry into next year?”

Students may carry forward:

• Beliefs about themselves as learners
• Confidence
• Motivation
• Learning strategies
• Habits of work and thinking
• Learner identity (the stories students tell themselves about who they are as learners)

Reflection helps students recognize that successful learning is not accidental. It grows from strategies, habits, persistence, and self-awareness that they can continue strengthening. Teachers might engage students in reflecting on the past year with these sentence stems:

• I learn best when…
• A learning or work strategy that works especially well for me is…
• A strength that I developed this year that will help me next year is…
• A learning habit I need to continue developing is…
• I want to find a way to get better at…

Teachers can also consider giving students individual feedforward using some of these sentence stems:

• A strength I see you bringing into next year is…
• A strategy that works well for you is…
• A learning habit to continue developing is…
• One area for continued growth is…

Teachers can also provide feedforward that supports continuity of learning for colleagues receiving students next year. What feedforward can teachers make available to next year’s teachers in addition to content skills and knowledge that may empower future teaching and learning?

I have always been a strong advocate for teachers communicating and supporting teachers who will guide their students’ learning during the next school year. It’s part of my strong belief that teaching truly is a team sport. I’ve suggested that peer coaching should occur in classrooms of teachers with students you will likely work with next year and in classrooms of your students from last year. I have encouraged end of the year goal setting where PLCs meet across grade levels and teachers who had students this year work with next year’s teachers to set learning goals to work from as the new year begins. (Vertical End of the Year Goal Setting, blog) Whenever possible these exchanges should be conversational, which generates much clearer communication and sets the stage for continuing conversation in the next year.

I have had some teachers tell me that they would rather not have input from previous teachers. Why do you think that might be? My guess is that they have received negative descriptions that interfered with beginning positively with a new student. End-of-year feedback can unintentionally become a label students carry forward rather than an invitation toward future growth. Often that type of input has little to no value in a teacher’s planning. It might sound like this:

• Low ability
• Weak writer
• Struggles with math
• Unmotivated
• Behavior issue
• Parents were difficult

Descriptions that label students rarely help future teaching and learning. Descriptions of how students learn often do. More helpful feedforward might sound like this:

• Learns best when modeling is visible
• Benefits from wait time before responding
• Thrives when given choice
• Benefits from visual supports
• Takes leadership in group work
• Avoids risk until confidence develops
• Persists through challenges
• Benefits from structured entry routines
Here is a feedforward organizer that we explored.
• This student brings… (strength)

Jason brings strong conceptual understanding to discussions and participates actively with partners. He shares thoughtful ideas orally and has grown in confidence contributing in small-group academic conversations.

• This helps them succeed… (strategy)

Previewing vocabulary before new units, providing visual organizers, and giving opportunities to rehearse ideas orally before writing help Jason participate more fully and transfer his thinking into written work.

• They’re continuing to work on… (growth edge)

Jason is continuing to develop confidence initiating writing independently and expanding written responses with supporting details as he transfers his strong oral language into written expression.

• Something that motivates them is… (engagement insight)

Collaboration and clearly modeled expectations increase his willingness to take risks with new language and participate more confidently in academic tasks.

As another school year closes, students will leave our classrooms carrying more than grades, completed assignments, and report cards. They will carry beliefs about themselves as learners.

• Some will carry confidence.
• Some will carry uncertainty.
• Some will carry strategies that helped them succeed.
• Some will carry hesitations about risks still not taken.
Our feedback contributes to all of these.

Perhaps that is why end-of-year feedback deserves to become feedforward.

When students reflect on how they learn best, where they have grown, and what they are still developing, they build ownership for the learning ahead. They begin the next year with greater metacognition and a stronger sense of agency.

When teachers share strengths, successful supports, and growth edges with next year’s teachers, transitions become smoother and more instructionally responsive. Learning continuity replaces learning restart.

Feedback, then, is no longer confined to a lesson, a unit, or even a school year.

It travels with learners.

“Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning.”

(Grant Wiggins)

However, feedback doesn’t create learning by itself. Learning happens when students reflect on, act upon, and integrate feedback into their actions. That matches the message that I frequently share, “teachers don’t cause student achievement, students do.” Our role as educators is to design environments, tasks, and relationships that enable students to produce learning behaviors that generate achievement. Knowing how and being willing to use feedback are critical student learning production behaviors.

Following a backwards planning process, the teacher, knowing the desired goal or outcome and being aware of a student’s current progress toward that goal, identifies the needed student learning production behaviors most like to generate progress. The teacher then can design and deliver feedback, most likely to generate the learners needed actions.Tom Schimmer identifies the complexity of giving feedback and the need for the provider to know the receiver.

“When we provide feedback to students, there are some fundamentals that we can follow but one of the most important things you can do is watch how your students respond to your feedback routine. Rather than chasing the perfect strategy, the goal would be to chase the perfect response, because feedback can only be called effective if it elicits a productive response from the recipient.”    

In classrooms and in professional learning, growth emerges when feedback reaches learners on three levels: emotional, behavioral, and cognitive.

Emotional Feedback

Supports the learner’s feelings, confidence, and mindset—how they feel about learning, themselves, and the task. It can target:

• Confidence and risk-taking
• Mindset (growth vs. fixed)
• Motivation and resilience
• Sense of belonging and being valued

Behavioral Feedback

Supports actions and habits, addressing effort, participation, and behaviors related to learning. It can target:

• Work habits (focus, effort, persistence)
• Collaboration and communication
• Help-seeking or task-avoidance behavior
• Time management or self-monitoring

Cognitive Feedback

Supports thinking and understanding addressing the accuracy, depth, or process of the student’s response or learning. It can target:

• Accuracy of content
• Quality of reasoning
• Application of strategies
• Misconceptions or knowledge gaps

Together, they help learners grow in knowledge, confidence, and independence.

In this first of three blogs examining feedback, I’ll look at emotional feedback which I think is especially important to explore consciously early in the year or at the start of a new course with new students. Emotional feedback is a great topic for PLCs to explore as they consider the learning environments that are necessary to gain needed student learning behaviors. Teachers can seek peer or instructional coaches’ observation and feedback as they identify students who are reluctant to engage in learning actions or activities.

Creating a culture where emotional feedback thrives begins with understanding how student beliefs shape their openness to feedback.  Students must believe:

…that they are capable of improvement,

…their teacher and classmates care about their progress, and

…feedback is guidance, not judgment.

These beliefs, when explicitly cultivated, reduce fear and defensiveness and lay the groundwork for risk-taking and academic persistence.

Researcher Carol Dweck reminds us that student mindsets—the beliefs they hold about their abilities—deeply influence their response to feedback. A fixed mindset sees feedback as a judgment of intelligence, while a growth mindset sees it as a tool for improvement. Teachers who consistently affirm the value of effort, strategy, and learning from mistakes help students develop what Dweck calls “gritty” learning dispositions. Feedback that reinforces these messages, such as “You haven’t mastered this yet,” or “Let’s figure out what worked here and where we can grow,” supports students emotionally and cognitively.

Joe Hirsch, in “The Feedback Fix,” urges us to see feedback as a conversation, not a conclusion. Emotional feedback becomes most effective when it’s grounded in relationships, care, and trust. When students believe that their teacher sees them as learners who are capable, curious, and courageous, they’re more likely to internalize and act upon feedback. Hirsch emphasizes the power of “feedforward”—shifting from backward-looking evaluations to forward-facing guidance. This framing supports students emotionally by focusing on potential rather than shortcomings.

Here are some questions for teacher reflection that might be explored in a PLC or with an instructional coach.

• Do my responses to errors invite students to try again, or shut them down?
• Do I consistently communicate that mistakes are part of the learning process?
• How often do I acknowledge effort and risk-taking, not just correctness?
• When do I give emotional feedback most naturally?
• Are there students who may not perceive my feedback as caring or motivating?

As educators prepare learning environments early in the year, emotional feedback lays the groundwork for deeper cognitive and behavioral growth. In the next parts of this series, I’ll explore how teachers approach behavioral and cognitive feedback.