Teaching Alliance 2016 - Marking and Feedback

1. Marking and Feedback
To share practice of S.I.R marking – Our
journey
To share how my department has adapted its
practice in terms of marking and feedback
To share current thinking on Feedback

2. March 2015
• Ofsted does not expect to see a particular
frequency or quantity of work in pupils’ books or
folders. Ofsted recognises that the amount of
work in books will often depend on the age and
ability of the pupils.
• – Ofsted does not expect to see unnecessary or
extensive written dialogue between teachers
and pupils in exercise books and folders. Ofsted
recognises the importance of different forms of
feedback and inspectors will look at how these
are used to promote learning.

3. Why is bad feedback damaging?
Alex Quigley ‘ The Confident Teacher’
• It leads to professional burnout.
• Often it is a wasted effort; teachers play catch up when
giving written feedback.
• Immediate oral feedback can be the most useful mode of
feedback, whereas the time-lag on written feedback can
too often render it redundant.
• Teachers are in danger of having little time or energy to
concentrate upon the good feedback that really matters for
improving learning.
• There is no getting around the fact that feedback is
necessary and often it can prove very time-consuming.
• Given the effort, it must be for the purpose of improving
students’ learning.

5. Student Responses
Original
Response

6. Use a Marking Criteria
Attach a mark criteria as a
sort of check list enabling
them to respond in greater
depth.

8. Feedback and student responses
• To improve on a specific piece of work
(relatively easy)
• To close the gap on performance (a challenge)
• In 2015 – 2016 our focus has been making
feedback manageable, timely and worth while.

9. How have we tried to improve our
feedback in order to close the gap?
• Starting point was to do LOTS of research….led
to……
• Acknowledgement marking
• Blob/Dot Marking
• 5 Minute Marking Plan
• Feed forward targets
• DIRT

10. Feedback : Some ideas
• “Feedback is the information given to the
learner and/or the teacher about the learner’s
performance relative to learning goals. It
should aim to produce improvement in
student’s learning.” (Education Endowment Foundation)
• Meaningful intervention in the learning
process. (Wiliam)
• Feedback for both students and the teacher.
• To aid future planning.
• ‘Just in time’ and ‘just for me’

12. Teaching Backwards ( Griffiths and Burns)
• Feedback is timely
• Learning adapts as a result of feedback
• Reflecting on feedback is habit

13. Focus
Feedback is timely

14. Timely : Dot marking
• Mark a selection of students work
• Assign a colour for each Strength and Improvement
identified in the sample
• Read the rest and put a coloured Dot on the students
work to indicate a Strength and an Improvement.
• Students write down their individual Strength and
Improvement - respond either to this piece of work or
apply to a later piece.

15. Dot Marking
Why did Henry agree to be whipped? – Teacher Feedback
Strengths Improvements
Green – You are now providing more
detail in your answer.
Pink – You need to focus that back on
the question (Use the sentence starter
– ‘This made Henry agree to be
whipped because…’).
Nude – You are now beginning to
explain why and focus on the question.
Purple – Take your explanation further
– why did this mean Henry had to
agree to be whipped? Why did the
Pope say he had to be whipped? What
did Henry need from the Church?
Orange – You are explaining and
focussing on the question.
Grey – Support your points with more
specific factual evidence.
If you have ‘Exp.’ you need to re-write the sentence. It is poor English.
For every spelling mistake, re-write the spelling correctly 3 times.

16. Timely : Acknowledgement Marking
• Mark a sample of students work – 20% , range of
abilities
• Note general subject related issues as well as
literacy and presentation.
• Use the Five Minute Marking Plan to record
findings
• Give Verbal Feedback. Students respond –
Marked by the teacher and shows improvement.
• This may impact on future planning.
• Allows for immediate feedback

17. The 5 Minute Marking PlanThe big picture?
(The purpose of marking for this
piece of work / project?)
Key marking
points to share
with students?
Common Errors?!
Formative marking:
Re-teach?
Ross McGill 2013 - @TeacherToolkit & Stephen Tierney @LeadingLearner
Summative marking:
….print and scribble your way to focus on student assessment!
Comment
system:
Grading system:
What should/should
not be marked?
Student response to
feedback required?
Peer/Self assessment
opportunities?
to improve student learning
to measure (progress) student learning
What should be changed
in activity / SoW?

18. Completed 5 minute marking plan

19. Acknowledgement Marking

20. Focus
Learning adapts
as a result of
feedback

21. Learning adapts as a result of
feedback
• Common Errors – identifying common errors across a number of
learners’ work – oral feedback
• Re-teach (or tweak) – Spot the “gap” in learning and go back and
address it again if necessary. Plan the re-teach/ tweak: What,
When, How & Why? This is a powerful way to improve the teaching
programme whilst things are still fresh in everyone’s mind.
• Student Response to Feedback Required? – Once you’ve spent time
giving feedback students must go back and either correct errors, redo
areas of their work that needs improvement or apply targets to
future work. ‘Feedback is only successful if students use it to
improve their performance’ Dylan Wiliam

22. DIRT time–Acting upon feedback
What: Give students an allocated period of time to
engage and act upon feedback. Jackie Beere 2014
How: Plan dedicated time within lessons or schemes. This
can come in the form of a starter activity, end of a lesson
task or a dedicated lesson during a scheme.
Why: Feedback can easily be forgotten about or simply not
acted upon. Creating dedicated time means the gap
between where they are and where they should be can be
closed

23. Initial marking feedback

24. DIRT Responses

25. DIRT

26. What: Use previous feedback/feedforward as starting
target for new work.
How: Students write their feedforward targets on new
work / target log. Gap in the last piece of work is visible
and in mind when working on their new piece.
Why: Students easily forget or ignore feedback. Provides
clear criteria for which students work towards in their new
piece.
Feedforward as a starting point–
Using feedback as future learning

27. Target Logs
History Target Log
Date Target Action taken Completed
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

28. Next steps....
DFE March 2016 ‘Eliminating unnecessary
workload around marking’
• Meaningful : what works best for the teacher and
pupil.
• Manageable: marking is proportionate …time-
effective in relation to workload.
• Motivating: motivate pupils to progress – short
challenging comments or oral feedback does not
mean always writing in – depth comments

29. Our challenge
• To adopt an approach that considers exactly
what the marking needs to achieve for pupils
• To take into account the workload for staff
• For the feed forward to be more effective in
the long term

30. • Complete the Feedback checklist
• Get into 3s : share ideas that you have been using in
your departments/ school with regard to feedback or
discuss how you could use one of the ideas from this
session.
• Choose one and deliver the best one back to the
group.
• What have you taken from this session, what will you
be trying/ moving forward with on your return?

31. ‘Teaching Backwards’ Andy Griffiths and Mark Burns
‘The Confident Teacher’ Alex Quigley
‘The Secret Of Effective Feedback’ Dylan Wiliam
www.sandagogy.co.uk
http://headteacherguru.com
@Teacher Toolkit Ltd
UKEdChat
David Didau (@LearningSpy)
DFE website