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Leave one of the skills blank and students must mark themselves and give themselves a target.

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Highlighting anything that needs improvement in green.
What went well in pink.

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Get students to highlight the best part and explain why they think it's good.

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C = work on your context.
E = reconsider evidence etc...
Could be used to differentiate e.g. higher ability students might just have a dot.

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Write a dot next to the work and students have to work out what needs to be improved.

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I have found that by using structured collaborative marking I have had a significant impact on the quality of my students essays. They really take on board the comments of their peers, and by using this structured method, the comments can be meaningful and inform targets. I can then add to these if necessary and give a final grade which reflects their progress.

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I now ask questions, 'Why have you done..."

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I now ask questions, 'Why have you done..."

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And in return they can ask their own questions back to the teacher.

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 In seeing how another student has answered with reference to a mark scheme – or me giving out the answers verbally – the marker can evaluate their own understanding.

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 In seeing how another student has answered with reference to a mark scheme – or me giving out the answers verbally – the marker can evaluate their own understanding.

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Students peer assess well if they are focusing on one specific piece of work only, with clear criteria, or if they are marking a test. 

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Students peer assess well if they are focusing on one specific piece of work only, with clear criteria, or if they are marking a test. 

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Students should proof read writing before teacher marking.

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Students should proof read writing before teacher marking.

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Ever since the idea of formative assessment was expressed by Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black in 'Inside the Black Box', one of the practical strategies suggested has been the formative use of summative tests. Typically tests are regarded as something given at the end of a unit of work; often they mark the end point of a learning sequence and provide information about how much each student has learned - or not learned. Left as a summative process, the students' test marks merely become a record of their success at a point in time - without directly helping them improve. And obviously some students will actually know more than their test performance indicates.

However, used formatively, tests provide an important source of detailed, individualised feedback identifying where each student needs to deepen their understanding and improve their recall of the knowledge they've covered.

The reason I'm including this here is because, as a science teacher, I've found that I value marking tests more than most other forms of marking. My normal pattern of marking and feedback looks like this:

For me, the immediacy and dialogic nature of classroom question-and-answer has greatest effect; this dominates. When I set homework - as I do religiously - the main feedback mode is to go over the questions in class. Students compare notes and identify areas of common concern; we focus there.

But after that, the most useful element is definitely a formative test. If this is about 4/5 of the way through the topic it has most impact. Routine book marking fills in the gaps, dealing with a range of micro-skills and work-management issues; however, it's not always the place to tackle actual conceptual understanding of science. I find class discussion and tests much more useful for that. The books are a record of sorts in their own right but I try to make students see their books as being for them rather than for me. Also, in evaluating the work, there is always the issue of being blinded or distracted by presentation issues. Tidy work can mask deeper issues. Messy work can be a red herring.

In my experience, whilst marking has real value, it is the test that you can't do without. Logging test scores in a central departmental database is usually the only record I keep. As a 'comments only' devotee, I haven't had a mark book for years. I have no use for it.

The key to making tests working formatively is to build in time to give feedback after tests have been done and to make sure students act on it. It doesn't even matter if you've started another topic.. because as David Didau and others have discussed elsewhere, interleaving - or returning to ideas after a gap - actually helps with memory and recall.

Why do I think tests are so valuable?
1. Exposing each student's learning:
I find that tests are the best way to reveal what each student can really do - without learning aids and without asking a friend. In regular classwork and book work, students have the capacity to mask their real understanding and they often do, deliberately or inadvertently; I find this quite a serious issue. Learning in a class has a healthy and helpful social aspect as ideas are explored but ultimately this can mask the progress of individuals. In a test, you are on your own. There is also the effect that students often commit themselves in a test situation.. they want it to count, so they work harder during the test itself than they might if the same questions were just done as a class exercise. That's not a universal truth, but generally, it's what I find.

Most specifically, a test can tell you how well a student can express an idea in writing - especially if they have plenty of time; time pressure does skew the quality towards the end of a test. Students who appear to have understood a concept in class through discussion sometimes reveal that the depth of their understanding wasn't quite what you thought or that they don't have confidence with the vocabulary. Of course, some students express themselves better orally - so testing isn't the only way to expose learning - but it is rare to be able to hear every student explain something in a lesson. Testing is the only practical way to get to know what every student understands, independent of anyone else.

The formative process should involve students getting their tests back and making appropriate corrections. With that in mind, you can give clues, make annotations with suggestions but you can give students some thinking to do. If an answer scores 1 mark out of 2..what else was needed? The follow-up process should ensure the student works this out and improves their understanding.
2. The range of content:
In a typical science unit, there are a range of specific knowledge elements and skills that you will cover. There isn't quite the same scope for re-drafting and crafting as you have in English, History or MFL, where one big question can we worked on in ever greater depth; in science there are often lots of bits that need to be taught and then somehow brought together. Where marking books is really good for focusing on one specific task or a set of exploratory questions that students have all done, tests are much more useful for covering a range of facts, concepts and problem solving skills that span the whole topic. With a well designed test, I find it much easier to get a sense of that overview of learning.
3. The quality of the questions
For some reason, I find that exam-style questions from any level of learning are often the most well-designed compared to text books and other resources. Exam boards spend a lot of time and money designing questions and they usually require students to apply standard concepts to new situations. The use of structured questions with associated mark schemes is very helpful. For example, giving marks out of 2 or 4 or 6 is a helpful way to explore the issue of depth in giving scientific answers. Happily, using various software packages, it is helpful to be able to generate mark schemes to match the tests - which saves time and helps students when using self or peer assessment.
4. The self-generating improvement agenda
A returned test script is arguably more useful to a student than a marked book. If students have time and space to engage with the answers, errors and omissions, they have a good indicator of where they have really understood things and where they haven't. It's hard to give this much precise feedback when book marking. Also, the test performance factor comes into play. Students can often kid themselves that they've understood in class or when they've had the internet or text-book at hand to help them; the test can show them more clearly how successfully they apply their learning.

I've seen massive divergences amongst students that are only revealed by a test. Two students who express ideas with similar fluency in class and produce similar book work in their own time can perform very differently in a test. For sure some students are good at tests - they have better powers of recall - but usually this divergence is about core understanding and the test is what reveals it; to me and to them.

In Physics at KEGS we have introduced a re-test strategy. Students who under-perform on a test, get full feedback and re-take the same test a couple of weeks later. The idea is to ensure we don't let conceptual misunderstandings slip through; they need to learn how to produce model answers based on the initial feedback.
5. The potential for peer and self assessment
A well structured test with associated mark scheme is a gift for peer assessment. It is much easier for students to mark another student's test than it is for them to peer assess a flow of book work. I've tried this lots of times in my co-construction explorations. Students peer assess well if they are focusing on one specific piece of work only, with clear criteria, or if they are marking a test. The value in doing this is huge. In seeing how another student has answered with reference to a mark scheme - or me giving out the answers verbally - the marker can evaluate their own understanding. It's very useful formative feedback for them too.

Importantly, peer assessment can by-pass the teacher. That's a mistake. You need to take more interest than just knowing the score. I normally ask students to swap papers to mark them for a quick result. However, I collect in the papers to explore the details and to generate my own feedback. For A level, I usually mark them all myself - because the final answers are only half of the story. For any test, I need to know what the common misconceptions are and to identify where students have gone wrong if they've done particularly badly. I'm also always interested to know what the best students get wrong. This always annoys my son. If he gets 32 out of 35, as he did recently on a maths test - I want to know where the three marks went!
Conclusion:
The formative use of summative tests is a great strategy. However, you need to be sure that the formative process is given time. The test is not the end point; it is a key progress indicator on the way. Focusing on marking tests in conjunction with whole-class classroom feedback processes is a strong structure within which book marking can be kept in perspective. It works for me!

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Formative use of Summative Tests: Marking #Blogsync

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Ever since the idea of formative assessment was expressed by Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black in 'Inside the Black Box', one of the practical strategies suggested has been the formative use of summative tests. Typically tests are regarded as something given at the end of a unit of work; often they mark the end point...

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After my last blog on how to get assessment wrong, various readers got in touch to say, OK smart arse, what should we do?

Well, I'm afraid the bad news is that we'll never get assessment right. Or at least, it's impossible for assessment to give us anything like perfect information on student's progress or learning. We can design tests to give us pretty good information of students' mastery of a domain, but as Amanda Spielman, chair of Ofsted said at researchED in September, the best we can ever expect from GCSEs is to narrow student achievement down to + or - one whole grade! We could improve this huge margin of error, but only if we were willing for students to sit 114-hour exams.

As Daniel Koretz makes clear in Measuring Up, a test can only ever sample what a student is able to do. And while metrician's work very hard to design tests which provide as representative a sample as they are able, they are confounded by a seemingly insurmountable confounding factors, particularly the wording of and rubrics and the attitudes of test takes and teachers.

So, we can never design a perfect assessment system. Of course we can (and should) try, but we need to know we're using a metaphor to map a mystery. The mystery is the imponderable complexity of what's going on in students' brains; the metaphor is our feeble attempts to define and describe what learning looks like.

So, with this in mind, can we design assessment systems that are at least useful?

Again, that depends. It mainly depends on what we're intending to use assessment for. For all their faults, national tests, are useful in that they give a broadly understandable and comparable approximation of a student's effort and ability to master a domain of knowledge. This is a necessarily blunt measure, but we all agree to ignore all but the grossest errors because it's the best we can do. We might like 'em, but exams are a pretty reliable proxy of how well a student has done at school. To that end, SATs, GCSEs and A levels are flawed but workable means to compare how schools are performing.

But we also want to use assessment systems for other, more formative purposes. We use them to report progress to parents, share information with students and inform decisions about teaching and curriculum design. Can we design assessment systems that help us do these things?

We can, but they're not going to be very good. The only real choice we get to make is how bad they're likely to be. One way to go is to follow in the footsteps of Trinity Academy's Mastery Pathways. This is a system of assessment inextricably intertwined with curriculum and teaching, where the basic foundational skills and knowledge are taught first and then repeated until students have proved they have mastered them. I can really see how this works in a subject like mathematics: students learn an elementary foundation, take a test then either repeat the stage or progress on to a slightly more advanced content which depends on the mastery of the previous stage.

So, after the first block of content in Year 7 - Elementary 1 - students have to prove they can:

Multiply and divide numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 including decimals.

Recognise and use square and cube notation.

Long multiplication of upto 4 digit numbers by 1 or 2 digit numbers.

Short division, upto 4 digits by 1 digit (including remainders).

Short division, up to 4 digit by 2 digit where appropriate.

Understand different ways to represent remainders.

Recognise mixed numbers and improper fractions.

Convert between mixed numbers and improper fractions.

Read, write, order and compare numbers up to three decimal places.

Read and write decimal numbers as fractions.

Use common factors to simplify fractions; use common multiples to express fractions in the same denomination.

Multiply proper and improper fractions by an integer.

Round a number with two decimal places to a whole number and 1 decimal place.

Work with co-ordinates in all 4 quadrants.

Express one quantity as a fraction of another, where the fraction is less than one or greater than one.

Once they've proved they have mastered this, they move onto Elementary 2. And so on, all the way to to Advanced 3. Each step is a predefined programme of study which tudents either pass or fail. This provides real clarity over what students know and don't know at a given point in time and it can be used to identify students who don't make progress. They've done something similar for science, and, apparently English. I've not been able to look at any of their English resources and can't really understand how it might work for anything other than grammar. Clearly, you wouldn't want students repeating predefined stages if the content is a body of literature. I'd be very interested to see how they get around this.

One way around is to follow Michaela's model where students follow a sequenced curriculum where English and humanities support each other by beginning in the ancient world with each subsequent topic building on the knowledge already gained. In this model students take weekly knowledge tests where the aim is to achieve 100%. Progression is determined on whether or not students have retained lesson content. Take a look at Joe Kirby's blog for more details.

Another way to go, is to use threshold concepts in an attempt to anticipate where students are likely to get stuck and help guide them through liminal space. Here's my example of a Key Stage 4 English curriculum designed along these lines. This is all very well, but how can you ever hope to assess how students are progressing through these thresholds? My current answer is to describe what the journey might look like. This is a path fraught with danger. Daisy Christodoulou makes clear that performance descriptors are, in the main, a nonsense. As she says,

The problem is not a minor technical one that can be solved by better descriptor drafting, or more creative and thoughtful use of a thesaurus. It is a fundamental flaw. I worry when I see people poring over dictionaries trying to find the precise word that denotes performance in between 'effective' and 'original'. You might find the word, but it won't deliver the precision you want from it. Similarly, the words 'emerging', 'expected' and 'exceeding' might seem like they offer clear and precise definitions, but in practice, they won't.

And of course, she's right. You can never hope for precision from performance descriptors, but then precision will always be impossible to achieve. Maybe what you can get from performance descriptors is narrative and meaning. Here's the metaphor I've been using to map the mysteries of learning English as an academic subject:

Of course, this is not precise. Although some care has been put into making the descriptors as meaningful as possible, it gives us only the vaguest hints at what students might be able to do as they 'progress' through the six thresholds, but what it might provide is a means of discussing what it means to be stuck, and describing what students might be able to do in the future. It has been designed with a particular curriculum in mind and so should not be taken as something able to stand alone, but even so, it should be seen as not so much a map as a travel guide - pointing out interesting sights and potential places of interest along the way. My idea is that students can be given a 'performance graph' at various points within the curriculum to provide a snapshot of some of the things they can do now. Maybe over three different assessment points you might get something like this:

If you prefer, we could try to show all this on one table: These graphs might be useful for students and parents as a starting point in a conversation about how the journey seems to be going. As long as you prevent yourself from be fooled into thinking they provide proof of anything or that you can ever be certain about what a students is learning, I think this system 'works'.

To sum up, I think there are three main points I'd like to make about assessment:

1. It will always be imprecise.

2. Assessment should never be a substitute for the actual work students produce.

3. Assessment should never be used to make judgements on anything as complex as learning or progress, and should only be used to make judgements on achievement or attainment when left to the experts at the end of Key Stages.

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After my last blog on how to get assessment wrong, various readers got in touch to say, OK smart arse, what should we do? Well, I'm afraid the bad news is that we'll never get assessment right. Or at least, it's impossible for assessment to give us anything like perfect information on student's progress or learning.

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I like my Facebook stamp, but it's only real impact is a smile!

It's come to that time of year; the time when I train up my A2 students in peer marking... I do a lot of peer marking with all my classes, but until last year, it was my biggest challenge with 6th formers. How do you do something meaningful with a tough to comprehend mark scheme? How can I ensure marking with impact takes place? What kind of marking has the most impact?

Last year I posted a #TeachTweet video on how I started doing it last year:

This gives an overview of what I started to do. Please excuse the video quality and my slightly dull presentation! I've got better at making videos since then...

I realised that at Key Stage 3, criteria can be simplified to enable structured feedback. This doesn't necessarily give an accurate level, but generally speaking it can be a meaningful exercise and easy to help students go beyond,"I like your work".

At Key Stage 4, I work hard at drilling exam technique. The EdExcel GCSE allows for students who have mastered the formulae of questions to use 'S' and 'D' for simple and developed points, and along with the mark scheme accurately mark questions. Tim Shelton, after seeing my video, tried it out with his GCSE class, see < here>.

However Key Stage 5 was the one that escaped me. I wanted to give students an opportunity to master something of the mark scheme so they didn't go back to Y7s... "I like your work!".

By A2, students are able to write something that constitutes a reasonable essay. However, moving to the next level can often be a challenge. What is the area that lets them down? What precise feedback can be given to enable them to work at improving for next time?

The grid was key to me. To break down the criteria into a table form that students could begin by ticking off. This illustrated what would be a limiting factor on their progression and that, for example, not using enough technical vocabulary, could really limit their final mark. This was hard to do, and I'm not sure it is perfect even now. It did give a clear area to base a target around for next time, i.e. structure, knowledge.

I uploaded copies of the grid so you can see what I am talking about; they are uploaded at TES < here>.

As you can see from the video, last year by March, my A2 class were getting the marks very accurate (I think I said 'spot on' about 48 times in the video). This was through perseverance and getting them to do it for every essay they did. They didn't like it at first, but I noticed over the time they were putting better and better feedback, as well as accurately indicating which level the response fell into.

I still marked the essays and added further comments where necessary. I did ask them one day, which comments did they take the most notice of; they all agreed that it was their friends! Yet they only really looked at my mark and not their peers.

To begin this process with Y13 this year, I have produced some essays from last years' Y13. I told them to get in full mindset of the teacher... some of them were cruel! The essays were literally covered in corrections and improvements.

We then had a frank discussion about whether or not we felt we could do this with one another. There was a slight hesitation; it's far easier to do when they are not your friends in the room. However a few started saying that actually it was all for the best interests of the class and they would try to be as thorough with one another. We shall see.

I am going to try and begin this process with Y12 too. The step from GCSE to AS is huge in RS and a real focus of me this year is working on this transition, especially for the less able. Their first essay is a draft and I will be getting them to redraft before handing in (based on this < this> blog post). I will introduce a grid for their second essay and we will work from there.

So to return to the original question (like any good philosophy essay!), I have found that by using structured collaborative marking I have had a significant impact on the quality of my students essays. They really take on board the comments of their peers, and by using this structured method, the comments can be meaningful and inform targets. I can then add to these if necessary and give a final grade which reflects their progress.

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I like my Facebook stamp, but it's only real impact is a smile! It's come to that time of year; the time when I train up my A2 students in peer marking... I do a lot of peer marking with all my classes, but until last year, it was my biggest challenge with 6th formers.

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Many schools, and departments, have been reflecting about their marking policies ever since OFSTED declared more than a healthy interest in scrutinising books.

Progress over time has rightly been identified as more important than single lesson snap shots - of course, that evidence if best found in ongoing student work and the attendant formative assessments. This has combined with greater scrutiny of standards of literacy, particularly writing. I have no problem with this; as you would expect from an English teacher. I think it is of paramount importance to have the highest standards for writing across the curriculum.

Unfortunately, it appears that in many schools OFSTED fear has fuelled a misguided obsessed with marking, resulting in draconian whole-school marking policies that are less about learning and more about monitoring teachers.

Marking and assessment must be the servant, and not the master, of our pedagogy and our profession.

Firstly, I think it is important to understand the OFSTED context, so I can then move beyond it to the more important context: the pedagogy and the learning. In the recent guidance to OFSTED inspectors for judging literacy standards in schools - see here - it relates some specific guidance:

"A basic way of reviewing pupils' work is to select an extended piece of writing from near the beginning of a pupil's book (or folder of work). This can then be compared with a piece from the middle and one nearer the end. Is there a discernible difference in length, presentation, sophistication (e.g. paragraphing or length of paragraphs), common errors, use of vocabulary and variation in style? Look at the teacher's marking. Are the same issues highlighted in the later pieces as in the earlier ones? Has the teacher identified any developing strengths or commented on improvement? When looking at books from other subjects, it is important to form a view of what it is reasonable to expect. If pupils are writing in a form that would be taught in English, it is reasonable to expect that they would draw on what they have learnt already. This is often the case in primary schools. In secondary schools, there is considerably more variety. Do teachers identify important errors (such as some of those contained in questions about literacy in lessons above). Key subject terms should be spelt correctly. Basic sentence punctuation should be accurate. If it is not and is not identified, how will pupils improve?"

This extract outlines that OFSTED inspectors are guided towards a scrutiny that is selective and one that recognises " variety ", whilst maintaining high expectations of formative feedback.

Ultimately, the goal is to successfully recognise written feedback that combines high expectations of literacy and guides students towards making progressive improvement in their writing (reflecting their knowledge and understanding). It is therefore key that we do not overreact with a marking policy that has teachers poring over every written word by students, but instead we need one that recognises the importance of formative written and spoken feedback with a " view to what is reasonable to expect ".

We can still maintain the highest of standards, whilst marking reasonably and not to excess. We will maintain the highest of standards not by doing more and more writing assessments, but by slowing down the whole process and getting students actively engaging in drafting and proof reading their writing. We must avoid the tyranny of content coverage at the expense of in depth, quality learning.

A wealth of great research and evidence has lauded the impact of feedback and of assessment for learning strategies for decades. Luminaries such as Dylan Wiliam have guided the way. We must use this valid focus on literacy and high standards of formative assessment as positive leverage to improve our pedagogy and refine our use of assessment for learning strategies.

Yes, teachers should give written feedback to a high standard, but we must be reasonable regarding what we can expect is realistic and sustainable for teachers. The answer is a balance of quality, selective formative feedback with well trained peer and self-assessment. If we want great lessons planned and executed consistently then marking must be selective; with a process that builds in reflection time for students - not a roller coaster of internal assessment points, arbitrarily set to give the impression of high standards.

This national context has informed, but not misdirected or narrowed, our redesign of the policy for assessment and marking in our English and Media faculty. We have consciously renamed it our 'feedback policy'. The relabelling of our policy from 'marking' to the broader term 'feedback' is more than just window dressing. It is a realignment of priorities currently skewed by a fear of OFSTED.

Marking quite obviously presupposes a 'mark' on the page; whereas much of our daily pedagogy consists of oral formative feedback. Oral feedback has the unassailable strength of being instantaneous in comparison to the delay of written feedback. Regardless of what teaching and learning activity are being undertaken, oral feedback is integral to learning and progression.

We have therefore foregrounded its importance in our feedback policy - placing it on par with written feedback (personally, I think it actually has greater impact on learning). Indeed, our policy is an attempt to unite the two and to enhance our pedagogy, rather than arbitrarily tighten our accountability measures.

We mark students' summative work using a separate portfolio approach, with five major end assessments, each supported by a formative mini-task.

Crucially, we have adapted our feedback policy to serve our students and to help them improve, not to tick the OFSTED box; however, by creating a system that records oral feedback more systematically in the students' books we have managed to meet both requirements. Our approach to feedback is precisely selective and measured. We are also aiming to use assessment and feedback as the servant, not master of our pedagogy.

We are using ' Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time' as a continuous formative process within lesson time to raise standards of literacy through a targeted and smart use of peer and self-assessment, combined with skilled oral feedback.

Teachers take the opportunities during lesson to monitor and formatively guide their writing, using our stamp system and getting students to record our comments to identify issues and to set targets. We are not carting home bags of books on a weekly basis, on top of our already thorough and rigorous marking regime, that see students take a little more than cursory glance at, or struggle to find value in even when given time. The oral feedback becomes the written feedback and students are engaged actively in the process.

Students also undertake the standard proof reading exercises, of their own writing and of their peers, using highlighters, but in a systematic and highly consistent way. We are building good habits for students, whilst maximising lesson time. When students are writing, or undertaking other activities, teachers can be constantly having dialogues about their work and how they can best improve.

Here are some examples of using our stamp system simply and effectively during classwork, whilst the students are completing their writing so they can improve instantaneously (well, we hope they improve!).

We view that dialogue as so important that we now have 'one-to-one weeks' in each term when we undertake ' dedicated improvement and reflection time ' (we must remember that students often struggle with written feedback alone, therefore finding time to discuss their progress is typically more effective - as well as being more effective in terms of teacher workload). They are once more guided through peer proof reading and self-regulating strategies (with some valuable extended reading time), whilst the teacher has a crucial conversation about their progress.

In those often five minute conversations we can identify issues and/or targets, as well as reviewing their preparatory book work and their portfolio of finished work. The most important part of ' dedicated improvement and reflection time' (DIRT) is the time given to students. They need time to reflect on feedback; to analyse and grasp their targets and to ask questions to illuminate how they can progress further. By doing less writing in this manner we will work slower, but ultimately standards will likely be higher.

I would reiterate that OFSTED's focus upon the evidence of written marking has made us reflect upon the efficacy of our practice and attempt to improve it, but we have not forgotten that assessment and marking - rebranded more holistically as feedback - should be the servant of the classroom teacher, not our master. Its very function is to support students - it should not be used as a stick to beat teachers. My key messages about the current 'marking' focus for me are as follows:
- We should remember that oral feedback is as valuable as written feedback and we should shape our pedagogy with that in mind - closing the gap between the two. The gap should also be closed between the teacher giving feedback, both orally and in the written form, and students self-assessing their own writing and peers giving effective feedback;
- We should remember that peer and self-assessment done well takes careful training and scaffolding, but we must not ignore decades of research about the impact of AFL, taking the retrograde step of relying solely on written teacher feedback;
- We should undertake written feedback that is selective, targeted and uses precise language;
- We should dedicate more than adequate time for students to act upon feedback;
- We should devote time to engage in dialogue with students to ensure they understand what they need to do to improve. Useful links:

A great post by Tom Sherrington, with useful strategies to 'close the marking gap': http://headguruteacher.com/2012/06/17/264/

Useful OFSTED case study: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/good-practice-resource-making-marking-matter

The original research about AFL that is still required reading for teachers: Inside the Black Box', by Black and Wiliam - https://www.measuredprogress.org/documents/10157/15653/InsideBlackBox.pdf

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Make your 'Marking Policy' a 'Feedback Policy'

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Marking workload getting on top of you? Many schools, and departments, have been reflecting about their marking policies ever since OFSTED declared more than a healthy interest in scrutinising books. Progress over time has rightly been identified as more important than single lesson snap shots - of course, that evidence if best found in ongoing student work and the attendant formative assessments.

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How can we ensure peer and self assessment has impact in English?

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How can we ensure peer and self assessment has impact in English?

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UPDATE: After a lot of thought and reading, I'm no long convinced that marking is anywhere near as important or useful as it's often claimed. In fact, much of it is a complete waste of time. In this post October 2015 I explore the difference between marking and feedback and here I suggest that less marking might mean more feedback.
Have you ever flicked back through an exercise book and seen the same repeated comments followed with soul numbing certainty by the same repeated mistakes? There are few things more crushing to the spirit of hardworking teachers than this dramatically enacted evidence of the fact that, apparently, 70% of all feedback given by teachers to pupils falls on stony soil. I've seen my fair share of books like these. Heck! I've been responsible for more than my fair share of 'em!

I've always felt guilty about marking. There's always something to mark and when you're tired and stressed it's often the first thing to go. I got involved in a discussion on Twitter over the weekend in which someone suggested that if you've got your planning right, you shouldn't have to mark. Their point was that finding out what they've done wrong merely highlights what you've not taught properly. It's a point of view I suppose, but not one to which I subscribe.

I guess if you're marking like I used to, then it's easy to feel like this. But over the past few years, the thing which has improved most in my teaching is without doubt my marking. What was once an endless, dreaded millstone hanging around my guilty neck has been transformed from chore to, if not a pleasure, certainly a highlight of my working routine. Now, I look forward to seeing their eager little faces reading through my carefully crafted instructions on how to improve. Gone is the meaningless empty praise of 'Well done!" and gone too is the time spent fruitlessly scratching about for some meaningless platitude that I'm pretty sure will never make the slightest dent in pupils' almost wilful determination to misuse apostrophes and omit capital letters.

The big difference is DIRT. The idea that I should dedicate part or all of a lesson to Directed Improvement & Reflection Time in which pupils act on my feedback has been a revelation. All those hours spent marking now have a visible impact. I tell them how to improve and, By God! they do it. There's no trick to it, no gimmick, nothing clever or mysterious; just the embedded routine of high expectations.

At Clevedon School, this has been formalised into Triple Impact Marking:

Here are a few of my thoughts on how to change the way you think about marking and, maybe more importantly, how you go about it.

1. Dialogue - A pupil's exercise book can be an almost sacred space in which a teacher can gently prod their charges from ignorant caterpillars into the iridescence of knowledge and understanding. One of the many changes I've made to my marking practice is to encourage pupils to 'talk' to me via their books. Instead of making comments, I now ask questions: "Why have you done..." How could you improve...? "Is ___ correct?" And in return they can ask their own questions, make points of information or clarify my misunderstandings and assumptions. Some of what they have to say is profound and some is sometime witlessly banal. But I always try to respond. I've experimented with asking them to write these conversational gambits in particular coloured pens or to use designated parts of the page, but have settled on a mostly freestyle dialogue that unfolds when and if pupils feel they need or want it. But because lessons are constructed around giving and responding to feedback, these conversations take place far more than they ever did when left to pupils' ad hoc whimsy. For the record, I'm not a fan of www/ebi - it just doesn't seem to generate a dialogue.

2. Find Faults and Fix - I also give over lessons to making sure that work is well presented. In the past this wasn't something I cared about all that much but reading Ron Berger's An Ethic of Excellence changed all that. I now embrace his maxim that 'if it isn't perfect, it isn't finished'. Of course, the confines of classrooms and curriculums mean that there just isn't enough time to achieve perfection but that doesn't mean we shouldn't aim for it. I often direct pupils to find faults and fix them just before I collect books in. This means that the basics all have to be in place: neatly underlined titles and dates but also there is an expectation that pupils will proofread their work. My rule is that if they fail to proofread it, I won't mark it. Sounds Draconian, but it works. The same is true of sloppy work. In the past I'd often noticed a trend where the quality of presentation sharply deteriorated a few weeks after a new books was issued. Now, when kids hand in work which is clearly below their best levels of presentation I make them write it out again. You rarely have to do this more than once before the message sinks in: you should be proud of your work, and that includes its presentation.

3. Marking is planning - it is an inescapable fact that teachers' time is precious. I just don't have it to waste. If I'm going to commit time to marking a set of books I want that to be time I don't have to spend planning lesson activities. Now, because of DIRT, the marking is the activity. For younger children, 10-15 minutes of a lesson might be usefully spent improving work and acting on feedback, but for older children, I can easily get one or more lessons out of my marking. The more questions I ask and the more tasks I set, the more time they will be expected to spend in response. Dylan Wiliam says that feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor and he's right. If it's taken me a minute to mark a piece of work, that should result in 10 minutes worth of improvement.

4. Marking is differentiation - I've said before that marking is the purest form of differentiation. There can be no better way to respond to the needs of an individual than to read what they have written and give them specific tasks to challenge them to be better than they currently are. This is really the same point as No. 3 but is worth making on its own just so the message sinks home: if you mark well, you really shouldn't have to waste time planning what to do in lessons. And you most certainly shouldn't have to waste time planning separate activities for pupils for different abilities. All most some? Kiss my ass!

5. Time savers - despite all the juice I try to squeeze out of my marking, there's always scope to save more time. I love Lisa Ashes' idea of using + - = to mark. Here's my spin on it:

and Joe Kirby has also written about how using symbols can save precious time. He says,

Don't write out comments. You end up writing such similar comments across the class, and they won't read them anyway.

Instead, get them to write them out. Choose three to five targets or questions before you start marking, then scan their answer, choose the best fit between the student's work and the group target, and draw an icon. One minute per book maximum. At the start of the next lesson, you write the targets on the board, students write their targets in their books. They get instant feedback and can take action on their target straight away.

Another favourite time-saving technique is to focus your marking on what will really make an impact. What if, instead of marking everything, we only marked the bits where pupils are struggling, where they've made particularly telling mistakes and where they really taken a risk? But surely it's impossible to find these rare nuggets without wading through the whole damn thing? The solution is to ask pupils to highlight those areas where they really want feedback. Ask them where they've struggled or where they've taken a risk - they'll 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 without burning out.

And what about this absurdly simple strategy taken from Doug Lemov's blog? The 'Dot Round' is explained thusly:

The idea is that you assign students independent work and, as they are working, circulate to observe their work. If their work is wrong, you put a dot on their paper. Very subtle, not a permanent "wrong" mark, just a reminder that there's something that needs checking. And here's the best part - that's ALL you do/say. The idea is that the dot reminds students, subtly, to find their own mistake and, in time, encourages self-reflect and self-correct. You could even then ask students to discuss: who got a dot and found it? who got a dot and didn't.

One final thought: I'm regularly asked how often teachers should mark books. This depends. As an English teacher, rich in curriculum time and with an admittedly light time-table I try to mark books after every lesson. However, this is unrealistic and unsustainable for main scale teachers. I'd tentatively suggest that making once every four lessons is a reasonable ratio. This would mean that core subjects mark once a week and RE teachers aren't too swamped. Of course this isn't always going to feel possible and there should be some leeway built in. But setting aside an hour a day for marking (which is what I do) is time well spent. And as you get used to it, the more efficient you'll become.

So, that's it: my thoughts on how to make marking matter. Hope they're useful.

Update: Inspired by @shaunallison, here's a first go at creating a Feedback Flowchart:

And for many more excellent posts on marking, please refer to the October blogsync.

Related posts

Work scrutiny: what's the point in marking books?
The joy of marking
Making feedback stick

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UPDATE: After a lot of thought and reading, I'm no long convinced that marking is anywhere near as important or useful as it's often claimed. In fact, much of it is a complete waste of time. In this post October 2015 I explore the difference between marking and feedback and here I suggest that less marking might mean more feedback.