Marking
for Impact
There is no
doubt about the importance of marking – it’s at the core of what we do. We need
to assess if students have learnt and empower them to progress. High quality
marking should inform students of what they need to do AND inform the teaching
of subsequent lessons. The issue however is what constitutes good marking
One of the
biggest mistakes over the years has been confusing marking with feedback and I
am guilty of picking up books and looking for proof
that a teacher has had input. This only led to frantic late night marking by
the teacher and box ticking as opposed to really nurturing and promoting
student progress.
There has to
be a shift. We should be looking at how feedback and marking is helping students
improve. There is no one golden method but we should be consistently asking:-
·
Is
the marking or feedback benefitting progress?
·
How
are they going to show me they have understood and taken on board my feedback?
As part of
the staff conference Katie Huttlestone and I worked with
9 different teachers to ask them to pilot a new marking strategy in their
lessons. The aim was to minimise overwhelming repetitive and futile marking and
instead provide a manageable, purposeful and succinct approach to feedback.
Dot Marking – Lindsey Shearn (English) - PowerPoint
Inspired by https://www.trythisteaching.com/2014/06/dot-marking/
Essay Grids – Sonali
Lariko (Psychology)
With an essay heavy subject hours are
taken marking extended writing. I needed
to develop a strategy that ensures my workload is manageable and that marking
is having a direct and measurable impact on pupils
progress.
The first
attachment was my first method of marking which involved a marking grid, which
although quick seemed to be less effective for students as they were unable to
show progress.
The extended
essay marking grid is my revolutionary method which has been trialled and
tested; students have found it works! It takes a little time to write the
bullet points but overall significantly sped up marking time. Students have
been able to use it themselves and self-mark. In addition they have asked for
the template to create their own as it is like an essay plan on a page.
The Box – Danielle Newman (Science)
In your
planning, consider and prepare what question you would like the students to
answer to assess their level of understanding
Make the
criteria.
Students
answer the question and highlight around the question to create a box. This
clearly indicates to you what you will mark. They stick in the criteria.
You then
highlight what the student has NOT done.
Student
makes this correction next lesson.
NTT…Now – Dan O’Neil (Maths)
Using
questions as feedback in the short term (so the pupils have something to
respond to) and focused targets in the long term are some of the best ways to
help pupils progress. Experience has shown that this approach is effective over
time but do you consider exactly “when” you’re feeding back and marking.
Feedback needs to be instant. It
needs to be given and acted upon straight away, or it’s not having the optimum
impact.
The problem
with NTT tasks is that they are currently too delayed. It can be up to 3 weeks
before students act on the feedback from the time the classwork was completed.
Is that pupil in the same
mind-set they were when they were completing that piece of work? Is their
response going to be just an add-on that ticks a box? Additionally a lot of time is page turning in
exercise books for marking, looking for mistakes from the class marking. Can
marking be more targeted?
I decided to
re-plan to include ‘Progress Points’ in the lesson. This is the only class work
marked!
Tick Box marking – Chloe
Anderson-Bush and Rachel Meany (Geography)
Summative
assessments require grading against criteria. Rather than writing out WWW and
EBI comment why not have a pre-prepared tick box which references the criteria
and a bank of common errors?
The teacher
ticks the WWW against criteria and then EBI which would move the students work
up a grade.
Students
read the feedback cover sheet and then take action against the directed
improvement task.
Teacher
re-reads the work and ticks the new grading
Marking Crib Sheet – Katie Huttlestone (English)
Inspired by https://mrthorntonteach.com/2016/04/08/marking-crib-sheet/
The crib
sheet allows the teacher to go through each students’
book/work and make comments on the whole class sheet
The crib
sheet is a way to provide quicker feedback to the whole classroom rather than
writing comments in each book so reducing marking time.
The benefits
are that it gives a snapshot of the whole class’s progress, allows opportunity
to ‘fine tune’ lesson planning and it also gives activities and tasks for
students to complete within DIRT the next lesson.
DIRT activities post crib sheet
DIRT by numbers – Jo Bayley (History)
Inspired by https://www.tes.com/news/blog/dirt-classroom
https://www.trythisteaching.com/2014/01/d-i-r-t/
Directed improvement
reflection time is a great way for students to act upon the feedback that you
have given as their teacher.
DIRT allows
students to reflect/act upon the comments that have been written, as feedback.
Therefore ensuring the feedback is being put to use and is supporting the
progress of our students, not for their next piece of work but NOW – today, in
their lesson.
As you read
through the work, collate the most common errors and assign a number to these.
On the students work you simply write the number of the task the student needs
to do. This save marking time but also ensure the students are guided in the
follow up task.
Gallery Critique – Megan Youell (Art)
Inspired by https://reflectingenglish.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/adventures-with-gallery-critique/
Gallery
critique is when students spend an extended period of time assessing the work
of their peers, giving high quality, specific feedback based on the success
criteria outlined by the teacher.
In Art there
is continuous dialogue between teacher and students but how can we get them
taking more responsibility for responding to feedback?
See outcomes of Galley Critique
Success Criteria – Hayley Derrick
(PE)
A practical
lesson is often rich in verbal feedback but as a teacher it is difficult to
monitor if the WHOLE class have responded to make progress. We can clearly see
through observing a sample but how do we know that all pupils have engaged with
the feedback?
By using
success criteria and peer feedback we can encourage our pupils to coach each
other as every student is accountable for another’s progress.
Students
work in pairs and observe another student’s performance, marking with a tick or
highlighter the skills that are demonstrated. At the end the pupil gives their
partner a target. This is repeated with the assessor now in the ‘performance’
role. Students will then have time to implement their partner’s target which is
reviewed at the end of the lesson by teacher and pupils.
