When presenting Mark Barnes’ SE2R model at the 2025 MTA Summer Conference, there was a comment that not all feedback has to be negative. I mistook this for encouraging praise, but the participant clarified that they don’t always find flaws to correct (i.e., their meaning of “negative”). My response was something like “oh, by all means if a student is meeting expectations definitely tell them that,” then continued my presentation.

It wasn’t until months later that I fully processed that interaction and realized something was missing from my presentation. If teachers should be telling students to continue what they’re doing, the feedback model should account for that. Therefore, I offer a slight tweak to Mark’s model, adding another “R” to represent “reassure.”

SE3R
Mark’s model is Summarize, Explain, Redirect, Resubmit. This works really well when there’s something for the student to work on, but what if they meet expectations? We can’t be using such a deficit mindset—perhaps what the workshop participant was thinking, too—that we leave out students who are doing what we expect (or more). Therefore, after Summarizing and Explaining, there are two paths a teacher can take: Reassuring, or Redirect/Resubmit:

1. Summarize (e.g., “You wrote a one-page summary of the topic.”)
2. Explain (e.g., “You defined the similarities between X and Y.”)
3. Reassure (e.g., “This is really effective; keep doing it!”)
   -or-
   Redirect/Resubmit (e.g., “Add supporting statements, then send it to me in an email.”)

Follow-up (as a Guidance Phase)
One caveat to the added “R” is that students who meet expectations still need a follow-up opportunity to apply feedback. That is, teachers can’t realistically say “keep it up” and then never assign the same task. After all, there’s a non-zero chance that the student might not meet expectations on the follow-up, meaning the first singular datum point was the fluke, and the student needs more instruction, etc. This has been a recent focus of mine, reframing formative assessment as Guidance Phases, which is part of a study I’m conducting at the moment:

Clear Criteria (CC)
-gather evidence-
Feedback & Follow-up (FF)
-reflect/refine-
Adjust & Assess (AA)

The phases should be intuitive, with gathering done by the teacher and reflecting/refining done by the student. What might not be intuitive is what’s omitted, namely grades. As long as grades don’t appear in these phases, this formative process should improve learning. There will be more on this once I analyze data and have findings to share.

References

Barnes, M. (2015). Assessment 3.0. Corwin, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483386904