Effective Marking & Feedback in Writing

1. Effective Marking & Feedback in Writing Moving from a Focus on the Process of Marking to the Evaluation of its Impact on Learning Andy Hawes Senior Learning & Teaching Adviser

2. Aims of the Workshop • To explore ways in which leaders can enable teachers to mark writing more effectively by focusing on the guidance that they give to pupils to help them to make improvements • To help leaders to consider how to evaluate the impact of marking on improving pupils’ learning.

3. Marking & Feedback in School Inspections “Inspectors must consider whether: pupils understand well how to improve their work, which goes beyond whether they know their current ‘target grade’ or equivalent…” (School Inspection Handbook December 2014: Ofsted) “Outstanding (1) …Consistently high quality marking and constructive feedback from teachers ensure that pupils make significant and sustained gains in their learning. Good (2) …Teachers assess pupils’ learning and progress regularly and accurately at all key stages. They ensure that pupils know how well they have done and what they need to do to improve.” (School Inspection Handbook December 2014: Ofsted)

4. Common Features of Local Marking Policies • Focus on manageability – reducing the amount teachers physically write, while retaining the diagnostic and learning-focused approach; • Appropriately prompt & regular feedback; • Primary focus on marking to learning objectives and/or success-criteria that are fully understood by learners – moving away from a model that feeds back on anything and everything; • Appropriate focus on spelling, grammar, etc, in addition to the learning objective; • Often very ‘visual’ (e.g. highlighter pens; marking codes); • Ensuring that children are given time to reflect upon and respond appropriately to the marking; • Pupils making improvements in a different colour pen/pencil so that the response is clearly visible; • Focus on consistency of approach across the school.

5. Common Issues with Marking in Local Schools • Lack of clarity in the intended learning outcome (e.g. weak objective; poor or missing success-criteria, etc,) leading to teachers not being sure about what the focus of the marking should be. This often leads to low-level improvement suggestions with little impact on learning; • Poor teacher subject knowledge leading to weak improvement suggestions – often leads to ‘general editing’ rather than powerful and effective improvement; • Teachers tend to be better at identifying what pupils can do, rather than being sharply focused on what needs to be done to improve further; • Poorly worded improvement suggestions that do not facilitate effective pupil response; • Pupils’ response to marking not being given a high enough profile within daily classroom organisation.

6. Developing the Quality of Improvement Suggestions • Improvement suggestions should focus on what will make the most difference to the pupil as a writer; • Improvement suggestions will very often be linked to the learning objective/key aspects of the success-criteria but equally may focus on developing specific aspects of generic literacy skills, (e.g. specific aspects of sentence structure, etc), that impact on the overall effect of the writing on the reader; • Ensuring that wording enables pupils to respond effectively; • Using a variety of strategies to engage the learner in the process of responding effectively.

7. Aide-Memoires for Improvement • ‘Reminder’: Remind the pupils of the learning objective or success-criteria statement that they need to revisit: “Choose effective adjectives to describe your character;” • ‘Scaffold’: Prompt the pupils to tackle the improvement: “Please replace these adjectives with stronger ones so the reader knows exactly what the character is like.” • ‘Example’: Show the pupils what improvement might actually look like: • you might give them a choice of two alternatives which will be discussed with them: “The wizard’s long, flowing beard was as white as snow… The wizard’s long beard went down to his tummy.’ Which one do you think is the best and why?” • You might give them an example then ask them to try a similar idea in another sentence, etc.

8. Example 1: What are your overall comments about this marking? • The LO and the task do not really match – the pupil has just retold part of the story • The first sentence does include some good description but the teacher does not highlight or acknowledge this • The comment does not tell the pupil how or why this is “a good start to the description” (is this even an accurate statement?) • There is no guidance here to help the pupil to build on the good first sentence and develop the writing further What could the teacher have asked the pupil to do to improve this piece of writing?

9. Example 2: • How well does this marking inform the pupil of what they have done well? • How well does it move them on in their learning? • The marking informs the pupil of what they have done well related to the intended learning (persuasion) • The teacher rightly identifies an issue with the text-structure • The teacher then asks the pupil to do something completely different to improve the work. A missed opportunity given what she has just identified as an issue with paragraph 2. “* Please redraft this section as 2 separate paragraphs.”

10. Example 3: • How well does this marking: • Identify what the pupil has done well? • Identify what the pupil needs to do to improve? • It focuses on the objective and success-criteria • It shows the pupil which parts of the writing are successful • The improvement suggestion draws the pupil’s attention to the aspect of the success-criteria that is missing, but would including a simile really move the learning on enough? Can you think of a better improvement suggestion to move this writing on?

11. Example 4: • Acknowledgement of the overall quality of the ideas • Challenge to the pupil regarding the actual structure of the sentences (and reference to prior learning) – this is good because the imagery will only work to best effect within a variety of sentence structures • Clear evidence of the pupil not only responding directly to the suggestion, but also going back into the work to revise the content.

12. Example 5: • Engaging task that enables the pupils to practise/apply the specific aspect of sentence structure • Link between peer/self-assessment and teacher’s marking • The improvement suggestion is pertinent and, if the pupil applies it to subsequent writing, sentence structure and its impact on the reader will be enhanced. The pupil’s response is not great, but it does show basic understanding and gives the teacher an idea of potential.

13. Marking Activity

14. Evaluating the quality of marking and its impact on learning • Does the monitoring process enable leaders to: • Evaluate the effectiveness of teachers’ identification of what pupils are doing well? • Evaluate the effectiveness of teachers’ guidance for pupils regarding areas to improve and/or next steps in learning? • Is the monitoring focused enough on the content of the marking, rather than the process? E.g: • Do teachers’ improvement suggestions facilitate long-term improvement, or are they simply ‘short-term edits’? How do you know? • Does your evaluation of the quality/impact of marking match with the amount of progress being made by the pupils? • What are the pupils’ views about how marking helps them to become better writers?

15. Marking Within the Work Scrutiny Process • How well established is the process for effective marking? • If the process is well established, what about the content? • Suggested headings for marking on work scrutiny forms: • How well do teachers identify what pupils have done successfully? • How well do teachers identify what pupils need to do to improve? • How well do teachers exemplify to the pupils what to improve and how to do it? • Do pupils respond to the marking? If so, is there evidence of the response moving them on? • Is there evidence in subsequent pieces of work to show the improvement being made/consolidated/applied?