THERE are many ways in which teachers provide feedback on written work. Some methods work well but may involve a huge time investment on the part of the teacher. Other methods provide deep, rich acknowledgment and constructive advice, while eating into ZERO hours of the teacher’s free-time.
Marking books is a task that takes awfully a long time, especially if you feel that you need to write long personalised comments in each book (which many new teachers do).
Why marking is important
To grade and give summative assessments of students’ performance
To correct students’ mistakes
To help students to improve their current level of performance
For teachers to receive feedback from students about how well they appear to be understanding the content being taught
To motivate students to work harder
For accountability purposes
Effective marking entails:
Planning: It’s a great idea to plan your marking out for the week. You could break it down into manageable chunks, or get it all done in one go — whatever works best for you!
Use schemes of work to think about which pieces of work should be prioritised.
Use feedback codes — These can be used to show students common strengths and areas to develop. This reduces the need for lengthy responses.
Doing your marking as quickly as possible is one of the most consistent messages. Do your marking as soon as possible and return back the books to the students.
Mark all the corrections.
Mark the dates and subheadings.
Write constructive feedback that inspires the student to do better. Select your terminology wisely. Avoid comments such as “see me, disastrous, like mother like daughter, etc.”Your comments should build the child.
NB — Book for your staff development workshops Dr Manners Msongelwa is an author, teacher and youth coach. He can be contacted on +263 771 019 392