Four Swannes Marking Policy and feed-back policy.
Aims:
• To promote high quality marking throughout the school
• To standardise the school’s approach to marking
• To increase children’s awareness of the significance of marking
• To positively reinforce children’s achievement
• To guide children towards future learning goals
• To provide an approach that is both manageable and effective
Approach to Marking:
General
The school’s system of marking is tied to our approach to teaching, in that weplan and deliver lessons designed to meet specific learning intentions.
Learning intentions
This should be shared with the childrenat some point during the introduction of the lesson.
Success criteria or steps to success
Theseshould also be shared with the children during the introduction of the lesson. Upper school year groups could be involved in ascertaining the success criteria. This will inform each child as to how their work will bejudged and is a useful lead towards self assessment.
Marking should also be used to guide children towards further learningbeyond the specific learning intention of the lesson, for example spellings, grammar,handwriting or concepts.
Time should be built into lessons to allow children to look at, and respond to, marked work.
Effective feedback given to pupils through marking and reviewing work will provide constructive steps for every pupil to ensure progress. It will focus on success and improvement needs against learning intentions and success criteria; enabling pupils to become reflective learners and helping them to close the gap between current and desired performance
Effective marking and feedback aims to:
1. Inform the pupil what they have done well and what they need to do to improve.
2. Support pupil confidence and self-esteem in learning, and contributes to accelerated learning.
3. Support teachers’ assessment knowledge of each pupil as part of thorough assessment for learning procedures, in order to plan and refine next steps in learning.
4. Develop consistent processes across the school to teach pupils to respond to feedback, self-assess and evaluate their own learning.
We impose four types of marking and feedback occurs during teaching and learning at Four Swannes:
i).Teachers’ well considered intervention to prompt deeper thinking, and swiftly address misconceptions during lessons. This takes the form of verbal feedback and occurs through effective questioning to clarify or refocus tasks and enquiry, mini plenaries and mid-lesson adjustments. It may also be verbal feedback given during a 1:1 learning conference with a pupil or in on a group basis. For younger pupils this can be noted down to record the feedback and response process (see below for EYFS).
ii) ‘Light’ marking of work, acknowledging and recognising attainment and/or progress, success and/or completion of pupils’ work.
iii) Developmental Marking in which incisive feedback on attainment and success is given and response from pupils is required to strengthen the teaching and learning process in order to accelerate and deepen learning.
iv) Self-assessment and peer assessment of the attainment and success of a piece of work.
What do we mark and how?
- Staff mark all subjects in green ink.
- Teaching Assistants and teachers on short-term supply to the school are to initial their marking to distinguishthem from the class teacher. Teaching Assistants should mark the work with the letters “TA”. Supply teachers should use the letters “ST”.
- Marking must be grammatically correct.
Written work
We will always share the objectives for the lessonwith the children. The green and orange highlighters will be used to mark all written work.
Highlight in green any evidence of examples of where the child has met the learning objective, or significant illustrations of good writing. A brief comment for the child should be noted in the margin to indicate the reason for the highlight.
Highlight in orange any misconceptions the child may have made.In the margin a short comment is made relating to what the child has misunderstood. Next steps(N/S) in learning should be given at the bottom of the page. Praise and encouragement must be given at every opportunity. These next steps will be visited.
Spelling
It is not possible or effective to correct every word or sentence. We try to correctcommon spelling mistakesand high frequency words.
When we choose to recognise an error we will highlight the misspelt word in pink and write the correction above. The child will then write the correction at the end of the work three times.
Mathematics.
All work is to be marked in green ink and any misconceptions or incorrect perceptions highlighted in orange. Next steps (N/S) are to be given at the end of the piece of work by either asking for mistakes to be corrected or for the child to realise they must ask for further advice by seeing the class teacher by CT writing “see me”. If all the work is correct then N/ S would be a more complexquestion for them to undertake. Children must be given time to complete corrections and any new questions given in N/S. These MUST in turn, be marked for children to have feedback.
Oral responses to children’s work
We should always be aware that our spoken response to children’s work is a powerful
form of feedback and ‘marking’. Where oral feedback has been given relating to a specific piece of work the letter ‘O’ and a tick should be marked at the bottom of the page.
EYFS and Year 1
A “Key to marking” sheet should be glued on the inside front cover of relevant books. All work should be marked with the children whenever possible. The learning objectives should be shared verbally with the children at the beginning of activities/lessons. A typical example of EYFS/Y1 marking should be:-
CT i n/s capital letters
The following codes for marking should be used.
CT – class teacher
TA – teaching assistant
LSA – learning support assistant
ST – supply teacher
V – Volunteer
i – child worked independently
s – child was supported to complete the activity
n/s – next steps, what they need to do next (this can be more of a prompt for the marking adult rather than the child).
Policy date: March 2016.
Review date: March 2018.