Turn a stack of drafts into whole-class feedback

Turn a stack of drafts into whole-class feedback

The single biggest lie of marking is the assumption that individual comments improve individual students. Twenty years of feedback research (Wiliam, the EEF's Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning, Ron Berger's work on models) all point the same way. Most of what you write in the margins does not get read. What does move the needle is a small number of very specific patterns, named to the whole class, with an exemplar of the fix, followed by ten minutes of act-on-feedback time. That move has always been possible. It has always been slow, because reading twenty-seven drafts and pulling the three actual patterns out (as opposed to the twenty things you think you saw) is real work. AI is genuinely good at this specific job. Here is the prompt.

The prompt

You are helping me do a whole-class feedback pass on a stack of student drafts. The goal is NOT to mark each piece. The goal is to find the three or four highest-value patterns across the whole class, so I can write one feedback sheet that goes to every student, followed by ten minutes of act-on-feedback time in the next lesson.

You are working in the tradition of Dylan Wiliam and the EEF Teacher Feedback to Improve Pupil Learning guidance. That means:
- Fewer, sharper patterns beat exhaustive individual comments.
- Each pattern must be teachable in under three minutes.
- Each pattern needs a "before / after" so students can see the fix.
- Distinguish surface errors (spelling, format) from substance errors (reasoning, structure, evidence).

CONTEXT
- Year level: [YEAR LEVEL, e.g. Year 9]
- Subject and unit: [SUBJECT AND UNIT, e.g. English, persuasive writing on a chosen contention]
- Task: [ONE OR TWO SENTENCES DESCRIBING THE TASK]
- Rubric criteria I care most about for this feedback pass: [LIST 2 OR 3, e.g. "line of argument", "use of evidence", "signposting between paragraphs"]
- What I already taught them on this: [ONE OR TWO SENTENCES on the specific moves you have already modelled]

THE DRAFTS
Below are [N] student drafts, anonymised. Read all of them before you answer.
"""
[PASTE 6 to 12 DRAFTS. Anonymise names. Separate each with a line of dashes.]
"""

OUTPUT, IN THIS ORDER:

1. THE PATTERNS
Three or four patterns, no more. For each:
- A one-line name for the pattern (this is what I will write on the board).
- The one-sentence diagnosis of what the students are actually doing.
- A short (2 to 4 line) BEFORE excerpt, drawn or closely paraphrased from the drafts.
- A short AFTER excerpt showing the fix, in the same register.
- The specific reteach move I should run in the next lesson, in under three minutes.

2. THE WHOLE-CLASS FEEDBACK SHEET
A single A4 page, written directly to students, in the voice of a warm but exacting teacher. Structure it as:
- One sentence naming what the class did well overall.
- Each pattern, with its BEFORE and AFTER excerpt and one specific "your turn" instruction.
- A ten-minute act-on-feedback task at the bottom: "Take one paragraph of your draft. Pick the pattern that most applies to you. Rewrite that paragraph using the AFTER as your model. Underline the change." 

3. THE THREE OR FOUR STUDENTS I SHOULD STILL SEE INDIVIDUALLY
Name them and say why in one line each. These are the ones where the class-wide feedback will NOT be enough.

RULES
- Do not invent quotes. Every BEFORE excerpt must be traceable to a draft I gave you.
- Do not soften. If the whole class is missing something, say so.
- Australian English (realise, colour, analyse). No em-dashes or en-dashes anywhere.

What it does well

It forces you to say the pattern out loud, in student-facing language, with an exemplar of the fix. Which is the actual teaching move. And because it reads all drafts before answering, it catches the patterns you would have missed reading them one at a time with fatigue setting in around draft eleven.

Where it falls over

It will not replace the deep conference you owe two or three students in every class. It also will not reliably diagnose substance-level thinking errors in a subject it does not know (a mediocre chemistry answer looks fine to a general model). Read the patterns critically before you print the sheet. If it has surfaced a "pattern" that is really one kid, kill it.

Try it like this

• For a Year 10 English persuasive task, name patterns like "arguments that describe rather than argue" or "evidence dropped without linking back to the contention".
• For Year 8 Maths word problems, patterns will more often be "shows the answer but not the reasoning" or "correct method, unit missing".
• If you only have five minutes on a Friday, skip the drafts and paste in the task plus the rubric plus the ONE draft you have already read. Ask the model to predict the three patterns you are about to see across the stack. Then check your prediction on Monday.

Do this once and it changes how you mark. The next time you go to write "vague" in the margin of a fourth essay, you will feel it.