Marking & Assessment

Here I am, at it again, writing about the same thing. But this time a little different.

I am a forever marking grid convert thanks to Mr.ThorntonTeach on twitter, who introduced these to me back in my ITT year. Since then I have used, forgotten about them at my old job, then come back to them again when I started a new school in my RQT year. I now use them all the time. These help me mark less in books (if we take it at face value) but give more accurate and detailed whole class feedback, and instructions that helps students improve their responses quicker and more efficiently.

My Year 11s are a truly fabulous bunch of funny, interesting students who work really hard in lessons. Looking their books is testament to that. In order for them to improve, they need feedback on certain pieces of work immediately- by this I mean next lesson. Normally it would take hours to mark 30 History students books, purely due to the sheer about of detail they need to write about and the style of writing that they produce. These marking grids enable me to do that in maybe an hour or less (if I am focused), but provide even more detailed feedback than normal.

Overtime I have changed the way I use the grids. I know type them on the computer, allowing for more space to write precise targets to improve, but also for helpful marking schemes and tables. Below I have included pictures from two of my students work, one of whom is PP. They peer marked with codes for context, explanations and consequences in green, my marking is in pink (the numbers mean when they have an explained developed point) and finally a level and mark. On the grid is a praise box, target boxes with precise targets to improve, misconceptions, notes and a grid that correlates to the mark scheme. Now some have a long way to go to make their green pen responses more precise, and linked to their original answer, but that is slowly something I am working on, and might need more direct instruction and modelling to achieve.

This is now something the whole history department is trialing at school and I am hopeful that it will work and help reduce the workload on members of the department. I would highly recommend making one of these and just keep trying it. It might not work well at first, but soon you might find yourself getting out of bad habits with marking.