At Edutech 2025, we co-presented on emerging technology for writing feedback and assessment. This case study is a condensed transcript of the Q&A Jesse and Lucy had during the session they presented on “Not All That Glitters is Pedagogical: Tech’s Place in The Writing Classroom”

### Background

Jesse is a year 4 classroom teacher, and digital integration leader, searching and trying tools intended to improve pedagogy across the preparatory school. 

Shore Preparatory School is an all-boys school in Sydney, with a strong focus on excellent pedagogy and student empowerment. The school sets high expectations for both students and staff and takes pride in delivering a well-rounded education through core curriculum and a broad range of extracurricular activities. Shore recognises and responds to the unique learning and wellbeing needs of boys, supporting them to become resilient, engaged, and capable members of the community.

### Reflections on the writing classroom

__What were some of the main challenges you were facing when it came to working with all students and giving personalised feedback on their writing?__

As with most professions, the biggest challenge for teachers is of course time, as well as the numerical constraints of a classroom, where you’re outnumbered 30-1. As educators, we’re constantly making decisions on where to put our time to be as efficient as possible. 

Writing feedback, I have always felt could be done better, not just in how long it takes, but in the ineffectiveness of writing feedback after a lesson, often never to be looked at again, before moving on. The high paced climate of classrooms doesn’t support this model and I often found myself staying back for hours after school, marking and giving feedback to students to be left on a page that the student won’t return back to again. I almost feel as though a lot of the time, it’s for the parents to see that something has been written in their child’s book, rather than quality effective feedback.

As we know, for feedback to be effective, it needs to be specific, but also timely. Feedback given after a writing task and read at a later time, loses its power, as the student is no longer focused on that task, is less invested and often, we move on to the next thing anyway. For the feedback to be meaningfully applied, and relevant, best practice should be in the moment. Which is difficult when running lessons with our 30 students.

__Once you realised there was a way to offer students feedback in real time, what were your first impressions? What surprised or challenged your thinking?__

I was tentative initially with what the quality of feedback would look like and whether it would be deficient in terms of what feedback would look like from the teacher. I think most AI is at a level where it can do ‘really good’ lightning quick, but I didn’t want to be shortchanging students when they were working on their Loomi lessons and not with me. However, as I started seeing the feedback that it gave, I understood that not only was it really accurate and specific to each student’s needs, but it scaffolded support students and extended our high potential learners rather than a one size fits all.

The great thing about being able to create your own lessons on Loomi, is that  you have a lot of control on the parameters of the feedback. You can ensure it is tightly coupled with the lesson you’ve taught. This is great because nothing changes in terms of your explicit instruction or what a lesson looks like and you can have the feedback tailored to exactly what you want to focus on.

__If we think about the Science of Learning particularly the principles of explicit instruction, timely feedback, and managing cognitive load have you seen any shifts in your writing block routines? What’s changed in how you structure your lessons, and what’s stayed the same?__

Ostensibly, nothing has changed in terms of the explicit instruction of lessons, where we discuss the learning intention, model a great piece of writing, write an example together as a class and then have students work independently. We have done a lot more writing, as it has been used to get more reps in while writing a particular part of a story. Instead of students writing, putting it on a desk to be marked and moving on from the next day, there is much more editing and enhancing going on each lesson where Loomi is used. Students still receive teacher review and feedback, but what gets brought to me is now much better than a first iteration.

__Was there anything unexpected about how your students responded to this kind of feedback?__

The voice feedback was fantastic as students were dialed in on their own work. They enjoyed the novelty factor and became used to the way the feedback was constructed with the glow, grow and suggestion, and actually became better at giving feedback to each other when working with peers.

__As a result of this shift, have you noticed any changes in mindset. For example, how students feel about feedback or the writing process in general?__

It definitely pushed the idea that a piece of writing is always a work in progress. I think that can feel uncomfortable for students who are always wanting to know if they got the right answer, or if what they have done is ‘good enough’. The culture around bumping up work has shifted in a sense, where the self editing tasks students have completed this term have been much more thorough.

__Have you noticed any other interesting benefits in how you use your time, or how students respond to the volume of feedback provided?__

Yes, it's allowed me to spend more 1-1 time with students and It has been great to know certain students are being given quality feedback while I am wrapped up with a small few. It’s given me scope to venture away from the needier students and work with the core a lot more, which is something I’ve always struggled with.

Often our stronger, more confident writers are happy to work independently and our support students require more one on one time. And the reality is,  the needy students are always going to feel less confident and less prone to going off and doing it themselves. In a way I feel like Loomi overcomes a barrier here, where they know whatever they produce on the first try, they will be given some guidance on how to improve. I think this breeds confidence in their writing as when it is time to see the teacher, they know the quality is higher than it would have been completely independently. As a teacher, it’s also reassuring to know that while you're tied up with a few, others are getting support.

__How does receiving feedback aligned with the learning intention or success criteria, impact students in the moment?__

It’s great to see when students do a good enough job that they are pushed to try and do better. The individualised feedback is clear and because it’s done in the moment, there’s much more buy-in from students because they are in the zone of writing. Our role is to engage and inspire our writers and It’s definitely much harder to do this based on work that they have completed in the past. There’s a reason why watching a replay of a world cup final isn’t as painful as when you’re in the stands.

### Assessment, data visualisation and the ability to act on insights

__Are there any examples of insights or patterns you’ve noticed through the data that have influenced your teaching?__

What is one piece of advice that you would give to them? Yeah, I mean, at the very least, it gives students so much more feedback constantly on their own writing.
At the moment we can visually see which students have met the learning intention in a lesson and who hasn’t, we also track students writing skills and where we see strengths and weaknesses across class cohorts and school cohorts. Through this data we are essentially looking for patterns to make informed decisions about next day instruction as well as planning ahead.

I was relieved, and impressed that the skill capability report aligned with what my teacher's judgement was. Additionally it was able to pinpoint which skills students had consistent deficits in their writing. For example, our students are mostly beyond the state average, for a variety of writing components, however, punctuation was something that as a cohort, we weren't so strong in. This was great as we could step back and dig a little into why that was and give more explicit instruction. On reflection it is definitely something that has been missed this year with a lot of disruptions, so it makes sense that it would be an area of growth.

__Is there any advice you would give to other educators struggling to give feedback that sticks?__

At a minimum, using Loomi, your students will receive an exponential volume of feedback on their writing, so if your goal is just to give more feedback to students, this is the base level of what it can do for you. What I’ve been most impressed with is how students have become more reflective of their own writing. I think that the culture of understanding that writing is always a work in progress that I can always add to / edit. I can always improve. That's where the real strength lies. 


Shore Preparatory School


### School Context

Our school is an inner city location with a strong community connection. We have a transient school population with many families spending time overseas visiting family or travelling for extended periods. We are a high performing school with consistently strong NAPLAN results and high expectations from leadership, parents and teachers.

### What prompted the shift and want to make a change in writing?

Our school has always prioritised the explicit teaching of English fundamentals, with a strong focus on grammar. As part of our AIP goal to maximise student growth in literacy and numeracy, I regularly analyse student data in my role as Literacy Learning Specialist to identify areas for improvement.

Our NAPLAN results revealed opportunities to strengthen sentence fluency, punctuation, and vocabulary. This prompted a more targeted approach to teaching sentence structure explicitly. Research clearly supports this shift, sentence-level instruction is a proven driver of literacy achievement, and we’re confident this focus will lead to measurable gains for our students.

### What impact has Cleverbean had on teacher practice or confidence?

Cleverbean alongside trusted approaches like The Writing Revolution, Jocelyn Seamer, and Alan Peat, has played a key role in building my team’s understanding of sentence structure. Concepts such as how to break up clauses or use adverbial conjunctions are no longer daunting, especially for our graduate teachers.

The platform’s well-designed, clearly sequenced lessons have made it easy for early-career teachers to deliver high-quality instruction with confidence. With Cleverbean, they’ve not only been supported in the ‘how’ of explicit grammar instruction, but have also begun creating their own structured sequences using rich texts.

For example, during a novel study on Runt, Matt a Year 5/6 graduate teacher, identified this sentence: “Near the middle of the fairground, there’s a long row of stalls which fill the air with the most sumptuous and succulent scents.” He used it to teach his students how to construct sentences using prepositional phrases, sensory language, alliteration, and commas to separate clauses. It’s this kind of confident, intentional teaching that’s growing across our team.

### What advice would you give to another school thinking about using Cleverbean to implement evidence-based writing instruction?

If you’re at a crossroads with your literacy approach and looking for a practical, evidence-based way forward, I’d highly recommend Cleverbean. It supports teachers to deepen their pedagogical knowledge and delivers a rich bank of literature-based, research-aligned lessons that are both explicit and engaging.

One of Cleverbean’s strengths is its flexibility, you can implement lessons straight away, or adapt them to suit your school’s context, scope and sequence. What matters most is how you embed the practice: through regular reviews, writing checklists, clear goals, and feedback that’s informed by student needs and school data. Used well, Cleverbean becomes more than just a resource, it becomes a framework for consistent, high-impact writing instruction.

South Yarra Primary School

From lesson planning to automated writing feedback and assessment. Explore and enjoy real stories of schools using Cleverbean's products to teach, assess, and help students grow.

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