The Fifty Ninth Republic - May Half Term beckons

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

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@noblegiraffe

How do you get away with not marking books?

My department policy is not to mark books too. Waste of time.

I wish I could persuade my hod and SLT towards this!! That's been my view for years, but they've got a huge thing for marking. So homework is set twice a week for each class, to be done in their books, and I have to mark their books once a week, concentrating on their homework. It's pointless!!! Mostly because for some classes I'm marking the same homework at least 15 times, because they copy from each other.

I love making displays and planning/resourcing!

And I feel your pain over marking, Can't - English, Maths and 1 or 2 x Foundation every single day. Deep mark English extended write and Maths task weekly. It's hard to keep on top of it with everything else - so much of which is utterly pointless admin or paper for paper's sake.

We don't mark homework either, what's the point when they either don't do it, rush it, copy it or do it with a tutor? What does the teacher learn from that?

We mark exit tickets done in silence during the lesson so we can see exactly who has understood what was taught that lesson. Takes 15 minutes to mark a class set, then we do whole class feedback and follow-up work the next lesson. Once a week.

It's really useful, you can teach a lesson and think it went really well, then mark the exit tickets and find that they don't actually know what they're doing. Or vice versa!

You've got to think 'what is the point of this marking' and if it's not to accurately find out what they, as individuals, know/don't know then why do it?

Jumping on to say I HATE marking unless it's one particular area of my subject.

Like planning and resource creating.

Hate doing displays.

Have had 2nd vaccine now. Rebooked (although below 50) and got it 3 weeks ahead of original appointment. V happy. DH getting his week after half term.

Hope everyone ok

We mark exit tickets done in silence during the lesson so we can see exactly who has understood what was taught that lesson. Takes 15 minutes to mark a class set, then we do whole class feedback and follow-up work the next lesson. Once a week.

I’d love to do this but in my subject, I only have them once a week and it’s just too time precious to drop some curriculum content more frequently to do this bar end of term assessments which we do. It’s one of the reasons I do get a little jealous of those subjects with more lessons in a week! Even our KS4 have just two lessons a week (and SLT expect same sorts of results as other subjects who have more timetable time)

Therefore, homework helps us to supplement those assessments with more regular data, otherwise I’d barely know the kid. However, what we mark them on is have they met their written target from the previous homework, as in have they visibly actioned it and told me they what they did to do so (there is space for them to do so. )

This has been a godsend to us for the past few years and seeing each child progress on their own targets (as mixed ability classes) has been so useful and rewarding.

I think that is probably a big difference between maths and English noble and your system sounds ideal for maths, but not really English (although an exit ticket every lesson/ 15 minutes marking per every lesson??) My DSs had this outlying difficulty in maths which I have discussed before, mind, and I felt they always missed out in whole class feedback. They did have some traffic lighting thing which showed what they were bad at/good at.

I don't mark books and things. It's essays I like marking.

I don't do displays. My walls are blank!

One of us will be round to sort those walls out for you this morning, Piggy

What I ahte about our schol is the numebr of staff who hoard kids' work in schol : ex books, mocks ect so the kids never take reponsibility for their stuff and don't have apst tests to revise from.
Hangover form Ofsted.

Our TAGs thing being led by data guy is coming home to roost. All kids taught/prepped really well, worked really hard, standard high. But data says only 4 of them can get 8 and only 10 a 8. Opposite happened in my option subject where they have all been given higher grades than their work deserves. All being done on past performance of subject and bell curves. And this is a school terrified of scrutiny and appeals!!? It is impossible to argue/push back against their methodology. Data drives our school, has done for 15 years now. Our ex head even had a catchphrase.

I don't do displays. My walls are blank!

Me neither. I consider them distracting and a faff to do. I’ve got into endless trouble over this.

I have to admit I'm very jealous of the marking I hear about in some secondaries. When our local secondary's head of English told me they only in depth mark one piece per half term per child, I must have looked like someone slapped me. It does make me question why we have to mark every piece, in detail, for every lesson.

In a normal year, it's not too bad because I manage to get loads of marking done live in lessons. Covid has totally messed me up though and can lead to hours of marking every night if I'm not careful.

In normal times, I typically manage to get a chunk of marking done during the day through live marking but Covid has messed that up.

Not sure why there were two versions of that last paragraph 😂

We're expected to mark every 8 lessons. That's fortnightly for us and monthly for subjects like computing. We don't have a homework timetable and although we're expected to set it, we only do if it's worth something... so no "oh shit it's Wednesday give them something to do"
I did have a conversation about marking with a colleague yesterday who told me the books haven't been marked for 6 weeks because all the homework is on mathswstch. But what about the class work? Tumbleweed.

noble I have been pushing for your system for about 4 years, but SLT refuse to consider that this might possibly work. I hate marking homework, I fully agree that it is completely pointless!!! But I've been told that if I want to mark exit tickets it's as well as homework, not instead of. Thus adding to my marking load rather than reducing it. Homework is the bane of my life.

My subject is marking twice a half term. We do short little tests - I usually get mine to do on paper so I can take away and mark but not lug books anywhere. Tick is correct, cross if wrong, maybe circle something or write in some. Use a whole class feedback template with worked solutions - then they look at which ones they got wrong, listen to me go through it, look at worked solution do some similar questions to make sure they can now do it.....because I’m not writing the same thing on 30 different bits of work it doesn’t take long.

Homework my subject use an online platform so it marks itself and I check it’s been done.

MrsHam
But what about the class work? Tumbleweed.

Is nothing said about that? In most of the primaries I know, if you left 3 or 4 pieces unmarked, there'd be someone in SLT wanting to "have a word".

@MrsHamlet we never mark classwork ourselves. In normal times I put answer you around the room and they go up and check. These days I usually have to display on my board for them to mark themselves. I expect that they mark every single question in their own books. At the start I expect them to check every 3-5 questions so they don’t do a whole load of questions then discover at then end or after the lesson they were all wrong.

To be clear that’s my subject - I don’t know exact what all others do!

I love planning. Love the in-class stuff with the kids. And hate marking.

I went on a Shirley Clarke course that was inspirational and said that the most powerful feedback is given in the moment and after-lesson marking was practically pointless. We ditched marking in every book in every lesson and now do one-page marking instead. Along with pit-stops to address any arising issues mid lesson and peer and self marking.

Homework was also pinpointed as a waste of time in primary but that remains, sadly.

Aibu to be excited about moving classroom? My partner teacher, the one who couldnt face school back in Sept and hasn't been in all year) has retired.
My room is smaller and an awkward shape giving me no flexibility for seating etc. Theirs is a larger rectangle with a really good setup. I've requested the room (got to have done perks as a minor member of the SMT) and am having it.

Teen dd2 will go in and help me set it up in the holidays so I'm making my plans and starting to have a huge clear out now!

Iam that's one of the reasons I've got to observe. In theory, self marking is fine - but the checking isn't happening.

Exit tickets once a week, piggy, not every lesson! Once every three weeks they do an end of topic test (30 minute test) and then three times a year they do an hour long assessment.

We record marks for the tests and assessments but exit tickets aren’t recorded (so low stakes in the modern parlance).

When our local secondary's head of English told me they only in depth mark one piece per half term per child, I must have looked like someone slapped me.

In depth marking of Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 homework would take hours and hours for an English teacher with those essays etc but I assume there would be another ways of marking including marking tests/mocks (GCSE and A Level takes them forever to turn around (Lit and Lang) by the reporting deadlines etc) , peer and self assessing to record, so probably not as ‘little’ as it sounds!

only one piece of marking per child per half term for English? That's a lot!! A protracted campaign has moved us away from that.

Less formal marking (high stakes) actually means teachers do more ad hoc marking because it suits the task, and more purposeful tasks, imo.

I went on a Shirley Clarke course that was inspirational and said that the most powerful feedback is given in the moment and after-lesson marking was practically pointless. We ditched marking in every book in every lesson and now do one-page marking instead.

It goes to show that there are so many different styles of pedagogy that suits different key stages and subjects.
We had an INSET with Dylan Wiliam 5 years ago, coming to our school to speak and I had the same experience as you with how I reacted and he said with the large class sizes (we have 34 in a lot of KS3 forms) then feedback written is the most effective (but not ticking and giving a grade, which will get ignored as you say) but with the targets I mentioned above.

Really helps when you see pupils as infrequently as I do.

I just sometimes feel with all this feedback.WCF/ one page marking/ redoing things to improve when any actual teaching of content goes on??

To be honest, my subjects gets the best VA GCSE grades in the school (hence the wild TAGs being awarded by data guy!) and I do lots of scaffolding of tasks and discussion of how to write answers, gradually removing the scaffolds, lots of quick quizzes, lots of focus on tier 2/3 vocabulary. Seems to work. They do also have NEAs mind.