Teachers - how do you give back marked exam papers?

[SherriHewsonsNipple]

do you go through answers tog first?
give em back individually?

this is aD-G grade group - 14 of them , attention span of gnats.

could pull socks up a lot

I put a grade on individually and a massive comment - lots of "you could improve this by..." (bullet points if I don't think they'll read it all!), hand back, allow time to read and inwardly digest etc etc then summarise, maybe question by question, the main mistakes/good points from the answers of the class as a whole, don't pick on anyone for bad things but sometimes say "and I liked Sarah's point about...". I don't usually bollock a class for bad exam results, the grade does that for me, I think. Unless a particularly lazy sixth form class in which case I let rip.

have always done trad way
there must be a new way

It is v v tedious, I must admit. But sometimes the only time the whole class listens to me! I have pratted about with mark schemes, AOs, "let's discuss what we could improve" and such before but they just don't take it in IMO.

It depends. Subject?

One thing I like to do is highlight the bits (even if just a sentence or two) that were C+ quality, so it gives them a bit of an incentive to get more highlighting next time.

Or I do little coloured charts in word to put up on the board, showing which skills we were on average better or worse at - then they set targets from this etc.

oh go its driving me nuts even reading it - the idea of rehighlighting makes me sigh.

need a lesson on the basics though it seems

I go through the answers and have the pupils write in corrections in a different colour pen. It is meaningless unless they have their own papers in front of them. I take the papers back in but the act of writing out the corrections should help at least some of the answers stick.

My actual marking is simply circling the marks for the question (if they get full marks), or the maximum mark crossed out with the actual mark I have awarded them written alongside. I don't actually correct their answers or write any comments. Some of my colleagues do that, but I whizz throught the marking.

It is tedious, and difficult to get through to the end of the paper in the lesson following exam week.

I give an overview too, and major tips, but most tips/techniques will be reserved for Easter holiday revision classes. All they are interested in is their grade and the grade boundaries, and they switch off easily.

When giving out grades, we have to go through a charade of keeping their marks private from the rest of the class. I have their grades on an Excel spreadsheet, where I apply a filter to their names. I then get them to come up and look at their own grade, and they then promptly sit down and tell everyone else.

When I was at school and uni, your marks were posted on the notice board for everyone to see. How times have changed.

For mock GCSE exams my friend tells the class that they are the examiner, that it is 8.30am on a Saturday morning and they have a stack of papers to mark, this is the first paper they have seen and they are being paid just 70p per paper they mark (so they are not going to be very inclined to take hours hunting for the right answer in woolley text). She gives them the mark scheme and their own paper and lets them mark it themselves. It takes much longer than a real examiner would take of course and lots of questions are raised, but she thinks it's a good way of getting them to realise what the examiners are really looking for and how clear their answers must be to get all the marks.

Not sure if she marks them herself before or after this exercise, but it's an interesting approach.

god ic ant imagine having any semblance of order in a lesosn like that - think you need to haev pretty bright kids to understand the mark scheme

i have no probs with just writing their marks down on the paper - why do i need a spreadhseet routine?
its teh giving them back/ they see they are shit. they are pissed off/ they then dont listen, I am worried about

I just remembered one particularly dire set of mocks where I did individual interviews with each pupil afterwards and sat down with the mark scheme and explained it. It was a nightmare to organise but for the whole rest of the year I could say "remember what you did in your mock!" and they'd say "oh yeah, I didn't [xyz]". It was kind of intense and took about three lessons though, but lots of them were two grades below target and I had to do something!

now that IS an idea. thing is they turn off if oyu talk for more than 2 seconds.
Ds3(6) is very interested in it. AM now thinking of videoing random people explaining each answer and showing them.

Good luck Sherri - you sound like a great teacher ( as do all the others who offered advice ) the kids are lucky to have you !

I think generally when students are given "a mark", you need to expect that what they will do is compare their mark with others in the class, feel proud or fed up appropriately, and will not be interested in much else.

To get them to focus on next steps for improvement, you really need to get away from the marks.

This might be as simple as re-looking at the questions/answers in a different lesson from the one you give the marks out. (If you have to give out marks).

You could put up on PP or Visualiser examples of a good answer and a poor answer. Get the students to spot which is the good answer and why. (Though this is more obvious in some subjects than others - it depends what the subject is really.)