With TA39, feedback templates are your way of guiding the AI to provide thoughtful, specific feedback that helps students develop their writing skills. Let’s explore how to make these templates work effectively for you and your students.
Why Template Formatting Matters
Think of your feedback template as instructions you’d give to a colleague who’s helping you grade papers. The clearer your guidance, the better they can understand and follow your approach. It’s the same with TA39’s AI—clear, well-structured templates lead to more consistent, helpful feedback that aligns with your teaching style.
Key Elements of Effective Templates
1. Start with Clear Instructions
Begin your template by telling the AI exactly how you want it to communicate with your students. For instance:
[Instructions for feedback:
- Use language appropriate for middle school students
- Quote specific examples from student work
- Maintain an encouraging tone while being honest about areas for growth
- Break down complex ideas into manageable steps
- Address students directly using "you" statements
- Avoid academic jargon or complex terminology
- Vary language to avoid repetitive phrases
- Connect feedback directly to rubric expectations]
The feedback generated by the AI should reflect your own communication style. Whether you prefer a more formal tone or a conversational approach, your feedback templates should mirror how you would speak to your students. Design your templates to reflect your voice—whether supportive, constructive, or neutral—tailor the template to match your preferred tone of communication.
For example, if your style is conversational and supportive:
* Argument Development
- Strengths:
You did a great job explaining your main point in a way that’s easy to follow. Keep it up!
- Areas for Growth:
I think you could make your argument even stronger by including some more specific evidence from the text.
- Specific Steps:
Try finding one or two quotes that support your main argument and explain how they back up your point.
This allows the AI to generate feedback that aligns with how you naturally communicate with your students, ensuring consistency between your voice and the AI’s feedback.
2. Use Consistent Formatting
The way you structure your template is crucial for how the AI interprets and organizes feedback. Just like humans, the AI relies on clear formatting to understand different sections and apply them accurately. Without intentional formatting, the AI might blend feedback points or generate disorganized responses.
To maintain clear formatting:
- Use section headers (e.g., “Strengths,” “Areas for Improvement”) to divide feedback logically.
- Separate sections with blank lines and indentation for better readability.
- Use consistent symbols like asterisks (*) or brackets [ ] to help the AI recognize distinct sections.
- Ensure list formatting (e.g., bullet points or numbered lists) remains consistent throughout the template.
This ensures that each rubric criterion is clearly reflected in the corresponding feedback, keeping feedback structured and effective.
For example:
* Argument Development
- Strengths:
[Quote student’s work and explain why it’s effective]
- Areas for Growth:
[Quote areas needing improvement and explain why]
- Specific Steps:
1. [Show exactly how to improve using the student’s own writing]
3. Demonstrate What You Want
Including example comments within your template helps guide the AI in mimicking your style, tone, and level of detail. By providing examples of how you would give feedback, you instruct the AI to generate responses that align with your preferred approach—whether supportive, constructive, or neutral.
Provide sample feedback within your template to show the AI how detailed or specific the feedback should be. This helps set the tone and ensures that the feedback meets your expectations.
Here’s a grade-appropriate example:
* Argument Development
- Strengths:
Your opening statement "Social media should have age limits because it can hurt young people’s mental health" makes your position clear. You’ve helped your readers understand your main point right away.
- Areas for Growth:
When you write "many kids feel bad," you could use more specific details from the article to make your point stronger.
- Specific Steps:
Try adding exact numbers from the study. Instead of "many kids," you could write: "The study found that 7 out of 10 kids who use social media for more than three hours a day feel lonely."
This kind of example shows the AI not only the content of the feedback but also how to deliver it in a way that aligns with your style.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
1. Over-Specificity
✓ DO: Use flexible placeholders that work with any rubric.
* [Criterion Name]
- Strengths:
[Quote and explain strengths]
✗ DON’T: Hard-code specific criteria names.
* Thesis Statement
- Your thesis needs work
2. Inconsistent Formatting
✓ DO: Stick to one clear hierarchy system.
* Main Point
- Sub-point
Details here
✗ DON’T: Mix different symbol styles.
* Main Point
• Sub-point
> Details here
3. Vague Instructions
✓ DO: Give specific guidance.
"Quote specific examples from the text and explain why they are effective."
✗ DON’T: Use general directions.
"Give good feedback about the writing."
4. Complex Language
✓ DO: Match language to student grade level.
"Your evidence helps readers understand your point."
✗ DON’T: Use academic jargon.
"The textual evidence substantiates your thesis statement."
Building Your Template Library
Having a variety of templates in your library allows you to experiment with different feedback styles or approaches. This gives you the flexibility to rerun the same assignment multiple times to see how feedback changes, allowing you to adjust before sending final feedback to students.
Create different templates that offer various types of feedback—some that include grades and others that focus purely on qualitative feedback. For example, you might start with a template that includes grades for initial feedback, then switch to a qualitative template that encourages deeper revisions without the distraction of a grade.
For an essay, you might use a template that includes grades like this:
* Argument Strength (Grade: 8/10)
- Strengths:
Your thesis is clear and presents a well-defined argument.
- Areas for Growth:
Some of your evidence could be more specific. Consider citing direct statistics to support your claims.
Then, switch to a template that removes the grade:
* Argument Strength
- Strengths:
Your thesis is clear and presents a well-defined argument.
- Areas for Growth:
Consider adding specific statistics to support your claims. This will strengthen your argument and make your case more persuasive.
Types of Templates to Build:
- Basic Qualitative Templates
- Focus on strengths and areas for growth.
- No numerical grades.
- Great for early drafts and revisions.
- Detailed Analysis Templates
- Include specific examples.
- Connect to rubric criteria.
- Suitable for final assessments.
- Quick Check Templates
- Brief, focused feedback.
- Target specific skills.
- Ideal for short assignments.
- Grade-Specific Templates
- Adjust language for different levels.
- Age-appropriate examples.
- Aligned with grade-level expectations.
- Subject-Specific Templates
- Customized for different types of writing.
- Focused on subject-specific skills.
- Aligned with content area requirements.
Testing and Refining Your Templates
Follow these steps to optimize your templates:
- Initial Testing
- Try the template with 2-3 sample assignments.
- Review feedback for tone and specificity.
- Check if the language is grade-appropriate.
- Refinement
- Adjust instructions based on initial results.
- Clarify any sections that produced vague feedback.
- Add examples where needed.
- Implementation
- Use with a small group first.
- Gather student feedback.
- Make final adjustments.
- Documentation
- Save successful templates.
- Note which combinations work best.
- Share effective templates with colleagues.
Collaboration and Sharing
Don’t hesitate to share your most successful templates with colleagues or experiment with templates shared by others. By collaborating, you can refine your approach to feedback and grading, saving time and improving consistency across assignments and subjects.
Making Templates Work for Different Situations
The flexibility of TA39 allows you to:
- Switch between templates for different assignments.
- Rerun assignments with adjusted templates.
- Combine elements from successful templates.
- Create variations for different purposes.
Building AI Confidence
By creating and refining feedback templates in TA39, you’re naturally learning to work with AI. Each time you adjust a template, it’s like giving instructions to the AI, guiding it to better reflect your teaching style—much like how you would guide a colleague.
These fine-tuning of instructions is essentially programming the AI in English, helping you shape the feedback process without needing to delve into technical terms like “prompt engineering.”
As AI becomes more integrated into education, and society at large, building this confidence now will make it easier to adapt to future tools, allowing them to become a seamless part of your teaching practice.
Final Thoughts
Well-designed templates help you provide consistent, meaningful feedback that supports student growth. Start with these basic principles, adjust them to fit your teaching style, and refine them based on what works best for your students.
Remember, even the best templates evolve as you test them with different assignments and student groups. The TA39 support team is here to help if you have any questions about optimizing your templates.
We encourage you to explore the few example templates we have — they’re a good starting point for developing your own personalized feedback approach.
Please consider sharing your templates with our community as we build this resource together!
Have suggestions for improving this guide? We’d love to hear from you. Contact our support team to share your experiences and ideas.