I have haunting memories from my first year of teaching of piles of books waiting to be marked. I would teach an exciting and powerful writing lesson only to be slapped in the face with pages of marking. Perhaps the most deterring part of a teaching career is marking. It is time consuming and can seem inconsequential. However, marking is a critical part of providing students with formative feedback and personally assessing the effectiveness of your lessons. So how can we make this time consuming process more effective and efficient?
Guiding Principles: Here are four guiding principles for effective marking.
1. Timely Feedback: Students need timely feedback. This does not mean marking activities weeks after the task. If feedback is not given within a couple of days the meaning and value is lost.
2. Specific: The commonly used phrase “Great work Jenny” is not particularly powerful in providing constructive and purposeful feedback to students. Try to give feedback that is pointed and personal. For example “Good imagery at the beginning of your story. Try to keep that imagery throughout” or “Remember capital letters for every sentence start.”
3. Positive then constructive: Positive reinforcement is far more motivating for students then a list of errors. Always try to find a point of praise when recording feedback. However, we should also always provide some point of constructive feedback to inform future work.
4. Mark digital work: It is easy to leave digital work samples unmarked as they do not have the same physical presence as a pile of books. If your students have created a screencast using Educreations or a podcast using Garageband provide them with feedback whether it is verbal, emailed or typed and stuck in to their books. Learning management systems such as Canvas and Moodle have tools you can use for providing feedback on digital work samples.
5. Student reflection: Students should always reflect on their work. Intrinsic motivation is far more effective than extrinsic and personal motivation for improvement is vital for student progress. Once you have marked student work provide time in the subsequent lesson for students to look over your feedback and provide their own personal reflection.
Tips: Here are ten tips for effective and efficient marking
1. Open books: Have students open their books before putting them in the marking tray. The minute it takes per student to open to the correct page easily adds hours of marking time throughout the year.
2. Peer feedback: Alternate teacher feedback with peer feedback. Have students mark a friend’s work at the end of a lesson. If they are unsure of a spelling choice they can note it with a question mark or look up the correct spelling themselves. Peer feedback can be as simple as giving two stars and a wish. If this is a new concept at your school print some Office works labels with the following text and place them beside the peer feedback “For this lesson we used peer feedback, this is an incredibly meaningful and effective form of marking and assessing student work.”
3. Use dot points: You do not need to write long flowery sentences when providing feedback. Dot points are more memorable and easy to respond to. Before starting a new writing task I encourage students to look at their previous feedback so that they can make specific improvements. Three dot points are far easier to respond to than lengthy sentences.
4. Mark as you go: I do not advocate a long line of students waiting to have their work marked. This is an incredibly unproductive use of learning time. However, when teaching Infants classes I always wander armed with a pen and stamp to mark work that I can within the lesson. If you mark ten students in the lesson you have ten less to do at the end. If you have Primary students have a fast finishers activity or game prepared and then you can mark a few pieces of work in the lesson.
5. Self marking: I am a big believer in students marking their own work, particularly in Mathematics when the answer is often black and white. I put the answers up on the projector and have students mark at their own pace. This allows students to notice patterns of errors. If students have an incorrect response they must firstly note if it was a silly mistake. If they are unsure why the answer is incorrect then I see them individually when I have time. If students mark their work I always tick at stamp at the end of the lesson to keep informed of student progress.
6. Stamps not stickers: I know stickers are pretty, but they are far more time consuming to place on each piece of work when marking. A stamp is quick and still effective. Save stickers for display or portfolio work and students can even pick their own sticker and add it to their work.
7. Plan for batch marking: I always plan the lessons with heavy marking on days when I know I have release. For example plan weekly creative writing lessons when you know you have an afternoon of release. This allows you to get on top of the marking rather than allowing it to pile up.
8. Time yourself: Time yourself when marking a class set of work. Remember that the time spent on marking is time taken away from planning and preparation for future lessons. You need to have a balance of both, but it is to the detriment of your teaching if marking takes the majority of your time. You might have to train yourself to be less detail orientated to be more efficient.
9. Use apps and websites: For Mathematics and Spelling there are some wonderful online testing tools that mark for you. The results are probably more accurate than if you marked them by hand. For Mathematics a lot of schools do not use Mathletics to its greatest capacity. For Spelling I think Spelling City is an incredible free resource that can be used for weekly spelling tests using class list words. For suggestions for apps to test Mathematics and Spelling go to my app lists on the right hand side menu.
10. Record marks: Whilst it adds a little additional time, recording marks pays dividends in the reporting season. If you do a weekly Mathematics test have a spreadsheet with student marks. Note the topic in the top row so that when you get to report writing you can see student achievement for specific learning outcomes. I keep a record of class work for Mathematics, Spelling, project tasks, speeches and writing activities. For more tips on report writing view my blog post 10 Tips for Report Writing.
Question for you: What tips do you have for effective and efficient marking?
