- Ask students to make an animal of their choice from PlayDoh and when finished, to give feedback to each other in pairs.
- Discuss the nature and quality of the feedback that was given. Without making too many assumptions about teenagers (especially boys) it is likely that the feedback was either destructive or ambivalent. Ask if there were any differences between the feedback the girls gave and the boys gave. Any reason for this?
What does bad feedback look like?
- Play clips of feedback for Sister Act from the X Factor. Ask the students what they think about the feedback these two groups were given and how they dealt with it. Perhaps compare by playing the Danyl clip Is the feedback/way of dealing with it different? Is one form of feedback more valuable than the other? Why?
- Ask the students what they think helpful feedback is/does and what unhelpful feedback is/does and ask them what areas of their lives they experience it in.
- Have a look at the notes on feedback and ask students to find evidence of the 4 categories (accurate+constructive, destructive, over the top, ambivalent) in the X Factor clips. Do the judges differ in the way they give feedback?
The effect of critical feedback.
- Look at the description of the compass of shame on the notes. Did the students notice any shame reactions in any of the X-Factor auditions that they saw?
- Ask students to think about and describe their own experiences of receiving critical feedback. What does it feel like to be told that what you have done isn’t good enough?
- The 4 questions: could the 4 questions for dealing with critical feedback on the sheet help them?
Giving and receiving feedback well
- Play Austin’s Butterfly
- What do the students notice about the way that Austin was given feedback? What do they notice about how he responded to it (bearing in mind that all the feedback was critical)? What did they notice about the children in the clip as they gave feedback? Do they think Austin experienced any shame as he was given his feedback? Why? What has to happen in a school community to enable people to receive critical feedback well?
- Ask students to give feedback on the Play-Doh animals again. The feedback giver should use accurate and constructive feedback and the receiver should think through the 4 questions.
Prep: Ask students to reflect on and write about the way that they give and receive feedback in the two weeks between lessons. In particular ask them to use the 4 questions to help them sift helpful feedback from unhelpful feedback. They should write about their experiences.