Build Your Feedback Template

Walkthrough

A feedback template tells the system how feedback should be written — tone, structure, level of detail, and what kind of guidance students receive.

Start with a preset. For a draft students will revise, Growth Draft is a useful starting point. The preset gives you the first version of the structure; nothing is locked in.

Set the key options:

• Audience. Year 7 student vs. IB Diploma student — set the level that matches the readers.
• Tone. Direct, encouraging, direct-but-encouraging, neutral. Choose what sounds natural for the way you usually give feedback.
• Detail level. Brief, moderate, detailed. Substantial pieces of writing usually want more detail; shorter tasks want less.
• Structure. Strengths / areas for growth / next steps is a solid default. The next-steps section is the most important — if a student reads the feedback and doesn't know what to do next, the template needs work.
• Scores. Sometimes students need to see where they stand against the rubric; sometimes the feedback is more useful without the distraction.

Custom instructions matter most. This is where teacher judgment becomes visible. Add the guidance that reflects how you give feedback:

• "Always quote specific evidence from the student's work."
• "Begin each section by acknowledging what the student did well."
• "Use 'you' — address the student directly."
• "If a student's argument is missing a clear thesis, suggest a specific revision — don't just say 'your thesis needs work.'"

Be concrete. Vague instructions produce vague feedback.

Look at the builder's sample before saving. The rendered preview is an illustrative example of the selected feedback structure. Use it to consider the sections and amount of information a student would read. It is not feedback generated from one of your students' submissions, and it does not demonstrate how every custom instruction will be followed.

Check the template's instructions as well as the sample. After using the template on an assignment, review the actual feedback for evidence, voice, and usable next steps before releasing it to students.

Save with a clear name — Feed-Forward — 6–8, for example.

Read your saved template

Open the saved template in My templates. A template with text opens in a formatted Preview; an empty template opens in Edit.

Open the screenshot at full size.

The Preview helps you read the instructions you have saved:

• Black text is the template as you wrote it. Headings and labels normally appear in the feedback, but ordinary sentences can also be instructions. Black text is not a guarantee of the exact words a student will receive.
• Grey text within the structure marks placeholders or instructions for that part of the feedback. For example, the text after Strengths tells TA39 what to write about each student's work. It is guidance for producing the feedback, rather than a completed comment about a student.
• Writing guidance · not printed contains overall instructions on tone, style, and what to include or avoid. These guide the feedback rather than appearing as its text.

The separate guidance area appears when the saved text starts with bracketed guidance blocks. Instructions later in the template stay in their place. A template without leading guidance blocks uses a single column; on a narrower panel, the guidance appears below the structure.

The instructions in the screenshot belong to this particular science template. Its choices about greetings, names, and scoring are examples, not requirements for your own template.

Edit, preview, and save

1. Choose Edit to see the original template text, including its headings and brackets.
2. Change the instruction or section you want to improve. Keep each opening square bracket [ paired with a closing bracket ].
3. Choose Preview to inspect the updated structure and guidance. Switching between Edit and Preview keeps your draft changes; it does not save them.
4. If an Unmatched bracket warning appears, use its line number to find and correct the bracket in Edit. An unmatched bracket may cause an instruction to appear in feedback. The warning identifies bracket problems; it does not check whether the instructions are clear or consistent.
5. Choose Save changes to keep your edits. There is no Save changes button when you are simply viewing an unchanged template in Preview.

The saved-template Preview shows structure and instructions. The builder's sample illustrates a possible presentation. Actual assignment feedback is where you check whether the template produced accurate, appropriate guidance for each student. Use Evaluating AI-Generated Feedback for that review.

What to read or watch next

Templates make a much bigger difference once your voice is on paper. Presenting Your Voice in Feedback walks through the Voice Profile exercise — the most useful 30 minutes of Layer 3 prep.