Sample Marking

Marking is a powerful tool that teachers use to assess a student’s progress, reward their hard work as well as allowing them to look for and reteach any misconceptions. At Millthorpe teachers within lessons circulate the class during independent work, monitoring presentation, rewarding effort and excellence in your child’s work as well as looking for misconceptions.

Over the next term we will be adapting our Sample Marking policy that will work alongside the existing Assessment Feedback Policy. Your child will still complete a Standardised Assessed Piece and receive personalised written feedback from their teachers. The Standardised Assessed Piece happens every half term or term depending on the number of lessons they have in the subject.

What is Sample Marking?

Your child’s teachers will look through a number of books during or after each lesson, which will allow them to identify any common misconceptions and then plan activities to address these misconceptions with the students during the following lesson. These activities will be completed by the students using a purple pen. The school will provide every student with a purple pen after half term.

Of course, it will often be the case that misconceptions don’t apply to every child so there will be occasions where it doesn’t apply to your child. This will be the opportunity for the teacher to consolidate knowledge, creating greater fluency and embedding this knowledge in your child’s long term memory. The purple pen will also allow students to easily identify the common misconceptions or important pieces of information when looking back through their book, which will help them during their revision.

How will my child know their book has been marked?

Your child will know when a teacher has looked through their book as a code will be placed in the margin next to the work completed. The code is R, A or G.

R = Red indicates that the student has not met the learning outcomes
A= Amber indicates that the student has partially met the learning outcomes
G= Green indicates that the student has met the learning outcomes

This is designed to help students know which aspects of their learning require more practice. These codes are not used to create a mark or score for individual students. Teachers will still be circulating, supporting, helping and advising students’ during the lesson to ensure that they meet the learning outcomes.

What does the research tell us about effective marking?

Research tells us that for marking and feedback to have maximum impact it should happen regularly with clear actions for next steps. The feedback should be prompt because otherwise by the time the student gets the feedback, they will have forgotten all about the work it relates to. Feedback needs to be given back by the next lesson after the work is done to maximise progress. This form of feedback enables teachers to plan effective lessons for your child ensuring that they have understood this new concept before moving on to the next one.