Dont tell anyone, but i find marking SO boring.
I think this is often reflected with how my pupils receive their books back. The first thing they want to see is what mark/grade/level/percentage they got. Then the second thing they want to see is what mark/grade/level/percentage their friend got. Maybe they will then look at the comment and target I wrote – maybe. Unless of course I put it on a previous page to where their mark is. There is no way they are going to be bothered to turn back a few pages to look for something they are not interested in and might not even be there.
And so the lesson starts and, without anyone noticing it, we have all silently agreed that there may be a target in their book but we will not bother referring to it again.
How then do my pupils or myself actually know if they are making progress
So this year I thought we could change things a bit. I have 3 aims: 1) Improve the response to the targets I set 2) Improve my monitoring of these responses and 3) Not increase the amount of time I spend marking (see opening sentence)
This year the timetable has given me 4 Year 9 groups. I am in the middle of marking their books for the first time this term. I want to set them some early year targets, so as to focus their minds on making progress. Last year I started to use a target sheet, where they could choose from a list of possible goals to aim for. However, I found that this took up to 15 minutes in lessons; explaining what they had to do and for them to write them down.
So this year I am trying a different version of this. While marking their books I noted the things that overall had gone well and more importantly the aspects of their work that needed improving. I restricted this to a list of 8 targets. I based these around NC level descriptors, but made no mention of levels in the targets as I hadn’t done so when setting the work. These were numbered.
The list is here ……Early Y9 targets
Under the comment I wrote in their books, instead of writing out 2 different targets for about 120 pupils over and over again, I just wrote down 2 numbers instead. In the next lesson I put the list of goals on the board and the pupils write these down in their books themselves. In fact, since it is the beginning of the year I have borrowed a colleague’s idea and have had the pupils write them down on the inside cover of their books. Therefore, if SLT or anyone else, should ever come into my lessons and ask the pupils if they know how they can improve their work…….
I like setting the targets like this because it has the advantages of:
- saving me a LOT of time when marking
- allowing me the chance to explain what some of the targets mean to the whole class, so pupils don’t just ignore them
- Because pupils write them down themselves they have to spend some time reflecting on what they mean
- It is quicker than giving them a choice
- they all start the year with the idea of improving being high in their minds (hopefully)
If anyone has any similar or different methods of target setting and lazy marking I would to hear them. In the meantime, please feel free to use these targets if they are of any use to you.
Its not an original thought I know, but I HATE marking. The only bit all year I enjoy is adding up the scores for my pupils’ mock exam scores and even that isnt really the marking part.
Additionally, the younger the pupils the more I struggle to motivate myself to mark. I think that’s because they are more likely to just regurgitate back what I said in the lesson or they read in the book or from the webpage. So this means I am even more likely to have to write the same things over and over again.
Then there is the question “Do the pupils read what I write?” Even when I remember to set aside some time in class for them to do this I am not sure if they do. Last month I read part of Dylan Wiliam’s “Embedded Formative assessment”
In there he quoted research to say that if you give a grade/mark/level and a comment then the pupils only look at the grade and ignore the comment. I have to say this backs up my personal experience.
So I have developed a plan to get round these two problems of me wasting time marking and pupils not reading what I write. I only use this for the more major assessment pieces where I am likely to give them a level. I dont think for more run of the mill marking it would save me time. Also It would then start to take up too much timje in the mere 90 minutes a week i have with KS3.
While I am marking their work I don’t write down any targets for improvement. Instead I collect these targets and put them on a document. This I then sort into levels and hand out to the students next lesson. All I write on their actual work myself is a NC level and a positive comment on something they have done well.
Then in the lesson, they read their work and look at the level I gave them. Then I hand out the target sheet and ask them to choose targets that they wish to aim for. I don’t limit them to the ‘next level up’ I tell them they can choose any 2 they wish.
I make them write these targets in the middle of a new page and then draw a simple unadorned box around them. nothing else goes on the page. that way it sticks out in their book and can be easily seen by pupil, parent, tutor and of course me. This target can then be referred to any time over the next half term. After that I find it becomes a bit repetitive.
I have attached below the various lists of targets I have set out over the last 18 months. You will notice there is much repetition in them. The trick is to find targets that relate back to what has just been covered AND to the next topic as well. all the below are my own.