Marked work - NO positive/encouraging comments - normal?

[EarthboundMisfit]

Hello. Feeling a bit sad for Y1 DS today. He brought all his school exercise books home tonight. I've enjoyed looking at his work, but am a bit upset by the marking.

He's doing well at school... lots of 'mastery' on his report. But on every piece of work all that's been written by his teacher is what to improve. 'Watch this' 'Slow down' 'Try to do x' etc.

I nearly fainted when I saw a smiley face next to one piece. It was an evaluation of a junk model he made at home and spent hours on. The comment was - 'you have done well at evaluating how you could improve your model'.

There's one piece of work marked by a Y2 teacher who covered their class. It's nice...it has a 'well done, you've done a great job of x', followed by a suggestion for how to improve.

All I can think is that if I'd received that marking for a year I'd feel like shit about myself.

Am I being unreasonable and PFB? Is this normal?

Thanks.

Not if you want to keep your job 😡

Seriously?

Some HTs don't like their current fad being challenged

Do any of you have opinions on peer marking/comment sheets from other children stuck in books? One of our governors is really keen on this and picks me up on it every time she comes in to observe.

I think it is of benefit to children to mark other people's work, it helps them understand what is being looked for in their own work, and to develop self evaluation skills.

I remember working really hard at a piece of homework in year 7, admittedly not year one, and receiving only a negative comment about presentation. At that point, I distinctly remember giving up trying as there seemed no point (learned helplessness?). Okay I might have been over-sensitive, and I do get the point about meaningless praise. But I do think an amount of praise is essential to feel that you are acknowledged for what you are doing right, and to spur you onto to greater efforts. Why is this seen as patronising?

Justasking IME sometimes a piece of work is that bad that there are very few positives. For a child 7/8 yrs old +, to see "Well done, you've spelt 'the' correctly" or other such scraping the barrel comments, can be very patronising. That's where the enforced positive comments strategies fall down, when there is literally nothing good to say.

Not that all work is like that, some is absolutely astoundingly good. But it's much better, IMO, to give on the spot praise for it. So much more meaningful than 'this is a great sentence opener, you've used an exciting adverb.'

To add to that, sometimes a piece of work meets expectations so well that you struggle to find negatives. Hence comments about presentation or other trivial things.
However, that's bad marking and a next step or challenge should be given instead.

I don't think peer marking works for the younger children.

I hear what you're saying Cashew, and as I say, I understand that meaningless praise is not helpful. But some pps were saying that their children had no positive comments in their whole exercise books, just ways to improve.

I'm pretty sure my own piece of work I was referring to in my previous post wasn't poor in all regards as I'd put a lot of effort into it and I'm reasonably bright. It's that the teacher chose only to focus on the negative - an ink blot on the page (leaky pen!). I just wanted to show how damaging that negativity can be. I can still remember how it felt decades later!