Mentor materials
Planning effective and manageable marking and feedback
Learning intentions
Your ECT will learn that:
- Working with colleagues to identify efficient approaches to assessment is important; assessment can become onerous and have a disproportionate impact on workload.
Your ECT will learn how to:
Make marking manageable and effective, by:
- Recording data only when it is useful for improving pupil outcomes.
- Working with colleagues to identify efficient approaches to marking and alternative approaches to providing feedback (e.g. using whole class feedback or well supported peer- and self-assessment).
- Using verbal feedback during lessons in place of written feedback after lessons where possible.
- Understanding that written marking is only one form of feedback.
- Reducing the opportunity cost of marking (e.g. by using abbreviations and codes in written feedback).
- Prioritising the highlighting of errors related to misunderstandings, rather than careless mistakes when marking.
Topic introduction
In their self-directed study session earlier this week, your mentee extended their knowledge of planning effective and manageable marking and feedback, using the the research and practice summary in this week’s ECT materials to inform and strengthen their practice. They considered different approaches to providing efficient feedback that maximises time spent in relation to learning gains for pupils. Your mentee reviewed their own approaches to giving feedback and spoke to a colleague about how they make assessment as efficient as possible.
In this session, you will help your mentee build on their self-study, focusing in more detail on the practical enactment of efficient approaches to assessing and giving feedback. You will also consider the benefits of using verbal feedback instead of written marking and explore the use of codes and abbreviations in written feedback.
Meeting activities
Throughout the session, try to refer explicitly to the Learning Intentions, and encourage your mentee to record key points in their Learning Log. Tailor your use of the Theory to Practice activities below in response to the Review and Plan sections of this session.
Review 5 mins
- Start this session by briefly following up the actions that your mentee set at the end of last week’s session. Ask your mentee to summarise:
- what they did
- the impact of this on pupil learning (including how they are evaluating this)
- what they will do going forward to build on these actions
- Clarify the Learning Intentions for this session with your mentee.
Plan 5 mins
At the start of this module, you looked at all of the ‘learn how to’ statements for Standard 6 and conducted a module audit with your mentee. In some areas, they will already be confident and skilled; in others, they will want more practice and support from you and others. Look back at this audit now and use it to help decide how you and your mentee will make the most productive use of the suggested Theory to Practice activities below.
Theory to Practice 35 mins
Discussion with mentor
Ask your mentee to talk you through the activities they completed during self-study this week. Discuss with your mentee the most efficient approaches to feedback they have used in their own practice. Use this discussion to develop your mentee’s ability to analyse the decisions they make about their practice and the factors that influence these decisions.
You could ask your mentee:
- ‘what approaches to feedback do you use most frequently?’
- ‘what do you consider when selecting approaches to feedback?’
- ‘how does research inform your thinking when selecting approaches to feedback?’
You could also contextualise this discussion with reference to your school’s assessment policy and practices.
Sharing of practice
Focusing specifically on verbal feedback, where the teacher speaks with individuals or small groups about their work during lesson time, share with your mentee how you use verbal feedback during your own lessons in place of written feedback after the lesson.
When sharing your practice, you could:
- model to the mentee how you use verbal feedback effectively to give accurate and clear feedback which encourages further effort and provides specific guidance on how to improve
- pick a specific example of verbal feedback that you have given and explain:
- what you did
- why you did it
- why it had positive impact in that situation
- how your mentee could apply this approach in their own practice
Collaborative Planning
Work together with your mentee to plan an opportunity within one of their upcoming lessons where verbal feedback could be used instead of written marking. This should improve learning by combining high-quality feedback with efficient use of time.
As you work on this together, you may wish to:
- explore the specific benefits of verbal feedback, rather than written marking, in this lesson
- consider benefits relating to time taken and quality of pupil learning, in particular
- challenge your mentee to identify likely challenges they will face in making good use of verbal feedback
- support your mentee to plan how best to address these challenges
Sharing of practice / analysis of artefacts
Share with your mentee how you reduce the opportunity cost of marking activity – i.e. how you make your marking efficient so that you free up time to support learning in other ways or to make your overall workload more manageable.
To support this activity, you could:
- use examples of your pupils’ work and show the mentee the codes or abbreviations you use
- explain how you help pupils to make sense of these codes/abbreviations
- demonstrate how and why you prioritise the highlighting of errors related to misunderstandings, rather than careless mistakes, when marking
- contextualise your discussions with reference to your school’s assessment policy and practices
Next Steps: 5 mins
Agree with your mentee how they will now put their learning from this week’s session(s) into practice in their teaching. Help your mentee to clarify:
- the action(s) they will take and how these action(s) are expected to contribute to improving pupil learning
- what success will ‘look like’ in relation to these action(s)
- how they will evaluate their success in taking these action(s)
Note the date of your next mentor meeting, when you will check on your mentee’s progress.