As I’ve mentioned previously, I don’t blog very often (BIG understatement there). I know I should, and it’s always on my list of things to do more of. But I haven’t got there yet! However, this post is different. This is the one that has the possibility of causing a big, no huge, nay seismic, change. And that’s why I’m writing this now.
Marking. Most probably the one thing that teachers say takes up the most amount of time. If you add up the hours spent marking books there’s no way that amount of time has the impact for the time taken. And I dare say there won’t be many teachers who would give up the chance at not having to do any marking ever again. That’s a big ask though isn’t it, never having to mark again? And it’s entrenched in the whole education system that children’s books are marked…
So, how do we go about changing that then? I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about just that. Marking is feedback, and feedback has a big impact on learning. Massive. It tops the table at the Education Endowment Foundation research toolkit website. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to write it all over kids’ books at the end of every day. There has to be a more effective way. And I believe, I really do genuinely believe, that what we are currently trialing at school is that more effective way.
How’s it working then, and how did we get to this point?
We have been looking at ways of reducing teacher workload in school, and the marking policy was one that we had revised, and revised again over the past couple of years. But I still wasn’t happy with it. After having a discussion with our KS1 leader, an idea began to form in my head (to be fair there’s lots of space in my head most of the time for that sort of thing) about how feedback was the answer – verbal feedback being the priority. Children in Early Years and KS1 who can’t read, or not very well, HAVE to have feedback given verbally as anything written is just a waste of time. So if those children make progress, then surely, the same approach should work for all children? Simplistic? Maybe. Worth looking at? Absolutely. So off I went.
We’re now at a point, after lots of thinking, discussing, arguing (!) and being challenged (see here) to go forward. And going forward we are. Just in a couple of classes at the moment so we can review, evaluate, tweak or revise the practice. And the practice is where we’re focusing. This is how it’s working at the moment:
Each lesson (Maths and English at the moment) is structured in such a way that there are two specific times for focused feedback to groups/individuals, and two specific times for what we are calling ‘understanding sweeps’. These are undertaken by both the class teacher and the LSA that we have in each class. A total of four focused opportunities in each lesson to pick up on misconceptions/give specific feedback/challenge children. Using more tightly- focused learning objectives and success criteria the opportunity to further embed self and peer assessment is also becoming more important and valuable. Mini plenaries are also being used to focus learning and understanding. Set groupings have gone out of the window and children are now grouped each lesson based on previous assessment or an knowledge gained through the lesson introduction, through questioning and self assessment etc. Again this gives us opportunity to further focus the feedback during the lesson.
How’s it going then? What’s the feedback from staff and children?
So far, overwhelmingly positive. Maths is proving to be easier to work in this way in than English, and the practice will have to be refined and tweaked to deal with this. But so far, the pros far, far outweigh the cons. Staff trialing it are very excited about the possibilities and children are loving the fact that they ‘get more time with the teacher’.
Early days so far, but everything looking positive. I’m convinced we are on the right road with this and while it’s more demanding on staff during the lesson, they don’t have piles of books to mark at the end of the day!
So nothing particularly revolutionary about anything, but I believe that they way the lesson is structured, with many opportunities planned in for specific feedback during each one, is what is making the difference. And we are seeing progress in children’s work – so obviously the fact we are not marking in the traditional way certainly doesn’t seem to be having a negative impact.
If anyone is interested in more detail of how we are structuring the lessons, or wants to know how things develop over the next term or so, then I’m more than happy to share our journey here in the form of more blog posts.
Let me know what you think below.
And if you’ve got this far…thanks for reading 🙂
Sounds exciting. Please keep us informed on the progress. Maybe we can come and see it in action
I will. And if it works you are more than welcome!
Thank you for sharing. It’s refreshing to see SLT challenging the norm and making teacher wellbeing a priority. I would love to find out more. Have you thought about getting the local uni involved to support as an action research project?
These could be exciting times! We have been having very similar conversations and have revised our Marking & Feedback Policy several times over the past 2 years. I am very interested in hearing more about the structure of the lessons because I feel this is where teachers come up against difficulties particularly the less experienced ones. We too have ditched maths marking for daily assessment which informs which level of work the children do the next day & agree maths is easier to implement this way of feedback. I would be very interested to hear the staff’s findings – what are the challenges and how they have overcome them. I felt for years that my marking was not the thing that led to the good progress of my children and as a new HT now feel the fear of following my instinct and telling staff that we can find a better way. Staff well-being is my number one priority and as a very recent Y6 teacher I remember very clearly how the hours of marking are the draining factor. How have parents taken to it or is it too early to tell? I know I will have parents who will be shocked when they see their children’s books and that not every piece of work is marked. So yes please – more blogging on this game-changing area!! Thanks!
Thanks for your comment. I’m convinced this is a better way. Will update with part 2 soon!
Thanks for sharing…interested to know more. Not sure I completely understand the structure of the lesson and how it is different.
@DeputyJones
I’ll share more on lesson structure next time.
This just so makes obvious sense. I too am trialling this approach, albeit in maths in one class. We are already totally away from the whole set groupings business…this has to be the way forward. The challenge will be in supporting our teachers to be effective in this practice, and I am all up for that!
Me too!
I found this interesting and as I am keen to reduce teachers workload, worth pursuing. We are doing some of what you are doing but I would like to know how long your Maths and English lessons are and whether in each lesson you give verbal feedback to each pupil.
Each lesson one hour, at the moment. Verbal feedback given to, on average, 3/4 of the class each lesson. This is from teacher and LSA.
Having taught year 1 and still had the expectation to quality mark all pieces of work, this sounds very interesting. I’m sure we are all trying to give feedback throughout each lesson and finding ways to structure and monitor how effective that is sounds great.
Not trying to cause offence to anyone…but do your Year 1 children read/understand each quality marked piece of work? Do they know what the comments mean? No ambiguity? If not, then there’s no point. then it becomes marking for someone else to see.
I completely agree and the first half of the year we were told to read through the feedback with each pupil to make sure that they understood this took a lot.of time that should have been spent teaching). Towards the end of the year they could read most and we have recently started looking into using images to represent common pieces of feedback – full stops, capital letters etc. Love the idea of finding new ways and methods like your idea.
This sounds brilliant and as a KS1 practitioner it sounds like the sort of thing that I do already but I’d be really interested in seeing how you have ‘officially’ structured this so I can discuss the concept at my school.
Next post I’ll share more on how we are structuring each lesson.
Thanks for posting this. We have been moving towards this in our vocational teaching with formative assessment verbal feedback and summarise assessment taking place in lessons. I’m very interested in how you are moving this in to other areas as we are being moved towards creating a trail that shows development based on teacher marking/feedback generating extra work for pupils and staff for the sake of a trail that replaces verbal feedback and might even be slowing progress.
The other areas, for the time being, are on the back burner as Maths and English are our main focus.
Thanks, I’m looking forwards to reading about your methods so I can see how we can apply them for KS3 and 4 computing and my wife’s KS3 science. In the vocational work I use dynamic seating to group pupils so that I can focus support but this is based on summative assessment from previous lessons.
David, please can you blog on lesson structure?
I find changing groupings based on prior assessment or assessment at start of lesson crucial to Ss making the most progress in that lesson.
In yr2 lesson yday, aim was for all Ss to use empty number line to show their processes when adding/subtracting 2 2-digit numbers.
I pre-assessed in Thursday’s plenary, taught/modelled again in start of Fridays lesson. Quick assessment led to who was doing what in that lesson-
4 Ss needed to go over using actual number lines. 1 quickly got it and joined group 2.
Group 2 couldn’t quite do tens and units and were practising adding units or adding 10. Once solid, it was showing them how to do both steps together. Again 2 quickly got it and moved to group 3.
Group 3 were pretty secure so it was problem solving in a shop. Adding items, change etc.
Group 4 were the S’s who can see a sum and just do it mentally (even with regrouping) but can’t always explain how they got there. I set some reasoning questions for them –
True or false – 77 + 22 = 100 can you prove it in 3 different ways? Some did empty number line, explained about 7+2 being 9. Just expecting them to explain why as much as possible.
Pre-asessment gives you rough ideas of what activities to plan, initial assessment helps you identity which work really will move them on in that lesson and then further assessment and changing work ensures that kids can make progress at the speed they can in that lesson – this feedback is just good AfL/practice in my mind. Fluidity and reactive not rigid grouping! Anyway I’m telling you this because I wondered if your lesson structure is the same?
In terms of marking? This is the promised land. Children guided to relevant work and making good progress because adults lead them down the right and relevant path for that lesson. Learning has moved on and loads of feedback happened – what will an hour of marking achieve at this point?
This is something that I’m trying to improve in our school at the moment too using some different options so I’ll be interested to see how yours evolves.
We have been using a ‘no written feedback’ approach to marking and feedback since before September. The head who originally developed it has worked with us, and other schools, to reduce workload without reducing impact. She and staff in her school have changed it since its initial introduction and it is well worth considering. We have reviewed it as a school and, although it has signalled a really positive shift in practice, we (both staff AND children) now feel that it is important to provide written feedback to children’s written work , particularly in years 5 and 6. The feedback can be short but we feel that it is a way of respectfully acknowledging the effort the children have made in the same form (writing). Thank you so much for opening up the conversation.
Hello, really interested in structure and looking forward to next blog hopefully soon!
This is really interesting and, I think, crucial. Please keep us informed of the progress you make and the details. Thank you for sharing.