Marking Policy

Introduction

‘Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement’

“Marking is a central part of a teacher’s role and can be integral to progress and attainment. Written responses offer a key way of providing feedback to pupils and helping teachers assess their pupils’ understanding. Previous research suggests that providing feedback is one of the most effective and cost-effective ways of improving pupils’ learning. The studies of feedback reviewed in the Teaching and Learning Toolkit – an evidence synthesis produced by the EEF, Sutton Trust and Durham University – found that on average the provision of high-quality feedback led to an improvement of eight additional months’ progress over the course of a year.” A marked Improvement?

Oxford University, Department of Education

Education Endowment Foundation

A review of the evidence on written marking, April 2016

This policy sets out how the use of effective marking, feedback and response is consistently utilised across our school to benefit primary aged students.

Effective feedback given to students 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 students to become reflective learners and helping them to close the gap between current and desired performance. At Loydence Academy this is an important stage of the teaching and learning process is also called ‘Developmental Marking’

Aim

The aim of this policy is to ensure clear understanding of the purposes, procedures and processes of effective marking and feedback to students regarding their work in order to maximise progress and support students in becoming effective learners.

Effective marking and feedback is integral to good teaching and learning processes. By empowering students to be actively involved in understanding how they are making progress, it helps to embed learning swiftly and enables accelerated learning.

Effective marking and feedback aims to:

Inform the student what they have done well and what they need to do to improve.
Support student confidence and self-esteem in learning, and contributes to accelerated learning.
Support teachers’ assessment knowledge of each student as part of thorough assessment for learning procedures, in order to plan and refine next steps in learning.
Develop consistent processes across the school to teach students to respond to feedback, self-assess and evaluate their own learning.

Processes

Four types of marking and feedback occur during teaching and learning at Loydence Academy:

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 student or in on a group basis. For younger students this can be noted down to record the feedback and response process.
‘Light’ marking of work, acknowledging and recognising attainment and/or progress, success and/or completion of students’ work.
Developmental Marking in which incisive feedback on attainment and success is given and response from students is required to strengthen the teaching and learning process in order to accelerate and deepen learning.
Self-assessment and peer assessment of the attainment and success of a piece of work.

This policy sets out the procedures agreed by the school to ensure a consistent and impactful approach to Effective Marking and feedback at Loydence Academy.

Non-negotiable Procedures for Marking.

All pupils’ work is to be at least ‘light’ marked by Teacher, self or peer assessed. Teaching assistants are not allowed to mark any child’s work.

1 piece of work per pupil should be developmentally marked in depth per week.

In developmental marking:

When identifying specific success, the respective work in the students’ book will be identified in green highlighter.

When identifying an area for specific improvement the respective work in the students’ book will be identified in pink highlighter.

There will be a maximum of 2 identified specific areas for both pink and green highlighting for each piece of work.

Handwriting and letter formation errors will be highlighted in yellow highlighter for the child to correct their work.

When developmentally marking writing, attention should be given to spelling, grammar and punctuation in line with the stage of development of the individual and strategies used to support their development. If a response is required for spelling no more than 3 spelling corrections for a piece of work will be given.

When a child works with an adult, this must be clearly identified on the respective work (see appendix for abbreviations).

Self-assessment

Students will traffic light their work against their learning objective accordingly –

Pink: I find this difficult

Amber (orange): I can do this but need more help to feel confident

Green: I can understand and do this and this shows in my work

Self Assessment Continued –

(If a Learning Objective refers to Success Criteria – for example key features of a text type or genre in literacy – then it is useful for this to be stuck into the exercise book so the child can self-assess against all aspects)

Peer Assessment

Where peer assessment has been appropriately introduced, students will identify one positive aspect of work and suggest one area for improvement. This can be done in any colour but not black and the peer assessor’s initials must be also left.

Rewards

as Adults in school we want to recognise good work with stickers, house points, smiley faces etc. However, empty praise is as ineffective as empty criticism, therefore specific praise is preferred whenever possible to boost the confidence and self-esteem of our young learners.

In the Foundation Stage, developmental marking process may be exemplified through observational assessment made by adults and then verbal feedback and discussion recorded and noted down. This will be recorded in pupils’ learning journeys, and as the Foundation year progresses directly onto recorded work as appropriate.

Giving effective feedback to students:-

Effective feedback comes under three main headings;

Specific Achievement feedback identifies specific aspects of successful attainment and or progress. This relates directly to the Learning Objective / Student self-assessment made by traffic light.
Specific Improvement feedback identifies where mistakes or misconceptions lie and how work can be improved.
Specific Extension feedback identifies where further understanding can be explored, to deepen learning and further extend higher order thinking.

When feedback is specific and provides opportunity for specific response, it enables effective progress to follow.

Feedback should:

Well-constructed feedback tasks prompt effective response from students so to improve quality of work or reinforce learning. They should maintain challenge for individual students, yet be easily executed and brief in nature, enabling students to move forward, and be aware of how they are improving. For example, the challenge within the task may:

Refine a teaching point to consolidate or reinforce understanding.
Extend understanding to deepen learning or raise to a higher level of thinking
Address/explore misconceptions
Pick up errors if apparent
Address incomplete work and presentation issues
Focus a need for practise – e.g. times tables, attention to place value, spellings, punctuation, grammar

When constructing feedback teachers need to consider:

1. Does feedback inform the students what they have done well and what they need to do to improve?

2.Relate to planned learning objectives and success criteria?

3.Can feedback be read clearly and understood?

4.Does feedback indicate a next step/improvement in learning?

Responsibilities

It is the responsibility of the class teachers to ensure that this policy is consistently carried out, including enabling students to respond to feedback tasks.
It is the responsibility of all staff working with students to ensure the marking code is consistently adhered to across the school
Each Key Stage Coordinator has the responsibility for monitoring that the policy is being consistently carried out in their particular Key Stage.
Likewise the Support Teacher has responsibility to ensure the policy is appropriately adapted and implemented for identified support students. This includes reference in Support Plans and agreements as appropriate.
It is the responsibility of the Key Stage Coordinators to liaise and feed back to the Principal on the implementation of the policy, its consistency across the school and the impact it has upon progress
It is the responsibility of the Principal to ensure that effective marking and feedback is monitored and evaluated as part of the quality assurance of teaching and learning across the school.

Equality of Opportunity

All students are entitled to have their work marked in accordance with this policy.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring of the policy will be done through work scrutiny led by the Key Stage Coordinators as appropriate. It will be monitored for whole school consistency and evaluated for impact on students’ outcomes.

The Key Stage Coordinators and Principal will also monitor the impact of developmental marking through work scrutiny in both maths and literacy as part of lesson observations to monitor the quality of teaching and learning in the school. In the Foundation Stage this will also include scrutiny of observational assessment and content of Learning Journeys. This will be in conjunction with student interviews to ascertain how developmental marking supports them in understanding what they need to do to improve their learning and to make progress.

FOLLOW

ADMISSION FORM