The key things are that there is assessment and feedback related to work. There are numerous ways to do this.
It can be traditionally teacher marked work…..this can take the form of random ticks, scores out of something, a grade, brief or detailed comments.
It can involve teachers providing ‘success criteria’ for tasks when work is set and teachers ticking on these to indicate strengths and weaknesses or targets.
It can involve teachers talking about work that has been done and providing answers verbally or on paper or another firm and students then marking their own or peer work.
It can involve teachers looking at work in class and giving verbal feedback.
Effective feedback involves students being pro-active and not passive. This means, students engage with their own work once completed to look at it was strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes this is called DIRT - directed independent response time. It needs to be directed by a teacher so students know what to look for and how to respond to observations. Students need to understand what is expected or what success looks like or what examiners are looking for. Them getting to grips with this is vital for progress. They need to respond to teacher feedback - identifying areas to improve/address and then doing it - either in current work or the next stages. All if this requires lots of teacher direction.
Actually, work which is all teacher marked work is ‘lazy’ teaching in terms of it enabling progress. Some posters on here might measure its success in terms of how many hours the teacher has spent doing it. Or how much ink has been spilled on the page. But this isn’t a measure of effectiveness. How much student ink has been spilled after doing the work and responding to feedback (given in whatever form) is a better measure of effectiveness.
Without doubt, teachers need to look at work and they need to give feedback. Efficient and effective are key words. It’s assessment for a purpose…for learning, not for its own sake.
So when you look at your kids’ books, look for teachers’ marking, but also kids and peer marking and particularly your own child responding and understanding what needs improvement and applying that going forward. Ask them what they need to work on and what is required in answers to do better. If they can answer those questions, things are working. If they have no idea, it’s not.