Marking written work - any ideas?

[anchovies]

I am finishing a research project for my PGCE and as part of it spent some time getting year 8 students to work on using point, evidence, explain in science. They produced a piece of writing before and after we focussed on it (based on a choice of questions such as "is a chef a scientist" or "how does a volcano affect people living near it.")

The second piece of writing is clearly much better than the first but I am not sure how to mark it quantitatively so I can justify saying - "it worked". I have emailed my useless tutor but don't expect to hear back in the next month! Just wondering if anyone has any ideas?

Many many in advance!

In primary I would use a checklist. Could you go something like that? A list of points/features they should include and then tick each one they achieve. If you want to make it quantifiable you could give a mark for each tick and then total them??

Great idea thankyou! Will have a go at putting something together

Use the English reading NC criteria xx

Anchovies - look on TES - lots of useful stuff there on PEEL. Good luck - just finished my last assignment so know exactly how you feel!

If you follow the link to the materials I used these do do something very similar for an old school
www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/resource/5325/literacy-in-science-training-materials
You need session 3 but all of it is worth reading