Rationale

Aim of focus
Make sure teachers are marking for
student progress
Identify effective and efficient marking
strategies which raise the standard of
teaching and learning whilst being time
efficient for teachers
 Why a focus on Marking
Strategies?
Can marking strategies have a bigger impact on
learning?
Have students become lazy recipients of
teachers marking?
Do students focus on formative comments or the
final grade?
Does marking take a disproportionate amount of
time compared to planning?
 Implementation Plan
1. Twilight on marking and use of marking strategies
2. Marking strategies booklet given to staff to discuss in
department meeting.
3. Each member of staff selects 3 strategies to use over
the next three months
4. Staff complete an evaluation of their chosen strategies
5. Students evaluate strategies
6. Person in charge of T & L analyses student/staff
evaluations and presents analysis of successful
strategies
 Marking strategies
Strategies to make marking and feedback
efficient and effective:

A. Bringing marking into the classroom

B. Guided marking practice

C. Reducing marking time strategies

 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.
Advice:
Give hints
Pose questions
Highlight errors
Give verbal feedback
Write a question to improve their work and then tell them to respond
Come back 5 minutes later, to see if they have responded

Advantages:
Really effective form of feedback
Quick and manageable for the teacher
Time efficient and 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
Live Marking prepares students for exam-writing more effectively than Teacher Marking by improving
their real-time self-regulation
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
 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
Thats ALL you do/say
The dot reminds students, subtly, to find their
own mistakes Extra:
Encourages self-reflection and self- Could have
correction on the board
a dot list!
 3. Peer marking
Make sure students use success criteria when peer marking.

Feedback should be:

Kind (but honest)
Helpful (focused on improvement)
Specific (be precise)
Feedback Stems
You have met the criteria
Ideas to try: here by...
To make students aware of different parts of the Your best paragraph is...
mark scheme get them to colour code their You could improve further
marking by...
Model assessment for the students You have not yet met this
part of the criteria because
Practise peer assessment on anonymous work
This is effective because...
Always check the quality and accuracy of peer
This is a good idea
and self assessment and provide feedback because
Use feedback stems for students
 B. Guided Marking Practice

Make the students do it:

Use these
1. Gallery critique strategies to
help students
2. Pre-flight checklist develop
3. Reflecting on
expertise
BEFORE you
mark their work
 1. Gallery critique
Students receive feedback from a range of others.

Tell students beforehand that this

piece of work will be critiqued.
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.
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.
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.

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 icons

2. Mark with symbols

3. Focused marking

4. Highlighted marking
 1. Mark with icons
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 students work and the
group target, and draw an icon.
One minute per book maximum.
At the start of the next lesson, write the
targets on the board,
Students write their targets in their
books.
The student can get instant feedback
and can take action on their target
straight away.
 2. Mark with Symbols
Instead of writing out comments slowly over and over again, type praise comments and targets
on a piece of paper. In their books use symbols where you would normally write comments.
Each time a student requires similar praise comments or targets, repeat the symbol.

If, for instance, a student had shown analysis of language at 6-standard (new GCSE grades),
you could write **%; if they also needed to improve the way they made links to the novels
context, you could write T4.
Stars for good, very good and excellent
symbols for the criterion successfully hit.
As new praise comments and targets become necessary, new symbols are produced and
quickly added to the list.
When the work is handed back, students copy them from a PowerPoint slide.
*** 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 Steinbecks 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 Steinbecks words to your explanation of Steinbecks
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.
 3. Focused marking
Only mark the sections where
students are struggling,
theyve made particularly telling mistakes 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,
theyve struggled or
where theyve taken a risk.
They will generally know right away which parts theyre most anxious about and this
means you can hone in on the most crucial aspects of their work.
You could still read everything - it doesnt 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.