Aim of session

• To share marking ideas for:

Student progress

Being more time efficient

Raising attainment

Encouraging student ownership of success

criteria

Why have a focus on Marking

Strategies?

• Marking strategies can have a big impact on

learning

• Students can become passive or lazy recipients

of teachers’ marking

• Students sometimes focus too much on the final

grade instead of how to get there

• Marking takes a disproportionate amount of time

compared to planning

Marking strategies

Strategies to make marking and feedback

efficient and effective:

Part A: Bringing marking into the classroom

Part B: Get it right before it’s even marked!

Part C: Strategies to reduce marking time

A. Bringing marking

into the classroom

1. Live marking

2. Dot round

3. Peer marking

1. Live marking

Whilst students are working the teacher circulates and ‘marks’ their work asking questions or giving hints

rather than providing answers.

Advantages:

• Time efficient and has a high impact

• It is to do with the work that students are doing there and then

• Makes students think and respond

• It can be done verbally or written

• 30-second Live Marking, which highlights errors, gives hints, asks questions or summarises can be more

effective than longer feedback that gives students the answers

Advice:

• Give hints

• Pose questions

• Highlight errors

• Give verbal feedback

• Write a question on their work

- Could they annotate their work with a quick arrow and comment to record your feedback?

- Come back 5 minutes later, to see if they have responded or get Learning Partner to check

2. Dot round

• Assign students independent work in class

• Circulate and observe their work

• If any part of their work is wrong, put a dot on

the paper next to it

• Very subtle, not a permanent “wrong” mark

• Just a reminder that something needs

checking

• That’s ALL you do/say

• The dot reminds students, subtly, to find their

own mistakes

• Encourages self-reflection and self-

correction

Extra:

Could have a

dot list on the

board!

3. Peer markingMake sure students use success criteria when peer marking.

Feedback should be:

• Kind (but honest)

• Helpful (focused on improvement)

• Specific (be precise)

Ideas to try:

• To make students aware of different parts of the

mark scheme get them to colour code their

marking

• Model assessment for the students

• Practise peer assessment on anonymous work

• Always check the quality and accuracy of peer

and self assessment and provide feedback

• Use feedback starter sentences for students

Feedback Starter sentences:

• You have met the criteria

here by...

• Your best paragraph is...

• You could improve further

by...

• You have not yet met this

part of the criteria because…

• This is effective because...

• This is a good idea

because…

B. Get it right before it’s even

marked!

1. Post-it note critique

2. Pre-flight checklist

3. Reflecting on double ticks✓✓

Use these

strategies to

help students

develop

expertise

BEFORE you

mark their work

Insist on silence for the critique.

Students spend five minutes at each table; they read just one piece of work and write their feedback on post-its. Final task - read the feedback on their work and highlight the most useful.

1. Post-it note critiqueStudents receive feedback from a range of others.

Students lay their work out at their tables with a pile of post-its.

Remind students: kind, helpful, specific. Give them sentence stems to help to guide their thinking.

Tell students beforehand that this piece of work will be critiqued.

2. Pre-flight checklist

3. Reflecting on ✓✓

If you double-tick excellent passages and sentences, students can

reflect and write analytically about why you have ticked here.

It is a great way not only of helping students to reflect on positives, but

also of reinforcing analytical writing techniques – the analysis, in this

case, is of their own writing.

Compare good / bad sentence Comparative writing techniques can

be worked on through highlighting a good and not-so-good sentence

and asking students to write a comparison of the two, explaining why

one is more sophisticated or accurate than the other.

C. Reducing marking time

strategies

1. Mark with T targets

2. Mark with symbols

3. Focused marking

4. Highlighted marking

1. Mark with Targets

Do not write out comments. Instead,

get the students to write them out.

• Choose a number of targets or

questions before you start

marking, Scan their answer,

choose the best fit between the

student’s work and the group

target, and write T1 / T2 etc.

• One minute per book maximum.

• At the start of the next lesson,

have the targets on the board,

• Students write their targets in their

books.

• The student then REACT to their

target straight away.

2. Mark with SymbolsInstead of writing out praise comments, use symbols where you would normally write

comments.

E.g.

• Stars for ‘good’, ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’

• Symbols for the criterion successfully hit.

When the work is handed back, students copy them from a list on the board, in addition to their

T target.

Again, allow a specific length of time to REACT to the target in the lesson.

*** Excellent (about 9/8 standard)

** Very good (about 7/6 standard)

* Good (about 5/4 standard)

! Use of PEE

% Analysis of the details of language

? Interpretation of Steinbeck’s themes

@ exploration of the context (1930s America)

T1 Analyse the words Steinbeck uses in more detail, looking for alternative

interpretations

T2 Make a link to the question at the end of every paragraph

T3 Improve the depth of your analysis by improving the range of connectives you

use

T4 Find the links between the words Steinbeck uses and the context (1930s

Californian) of the novel

T5 In part b, make reference to events from other parts of the novel

T6 Try to link your analysis of Steinbeck’s words to your explanation of Steinbeck’s

ideas

T7 Improve the vocabulary you use so that your analysis becomes more precise.

This system means that praise and targets are not pre-ordained (as it would be with a generic target list worked out before you

start marking). The targets are instead a direct response to their work – and thus still individualised. It also means that:

• Students have to read their comments as well as their grade.

• Praise is focused on assessment criteria

• It is quick

• It can be used again – modifications necessary of course – next time round. It is also a useful tool for guiding future peer-

and self-assessment.

Examples of the type of comments and their symbols

3. Focused marking

Only mark the sections where

• students are struggling

• they’ve made key errors which will bring them down a grade

or

• where they have really taken a risk

How to find these rare nuggets?

Ask students to highlight those areas where

• they really want feedback,

• they’ve struggled or

• where they’ve taken a risk.

They will generally know right away which parts they’re most anxious about and this means

you can hone in on the most crucial aspects of their work.

You could still read everything - it doesn’t take that long.

4. Highlighted marking

Highlight areas of work that

need to be improved and

areas of strength.

Students create improvement

strategies by analysing

your highlighting.