"Write-Less Marking": 8 time-saving marking tips

Ask any teacher what the greatest obstacle is to performing their job effectively, and you will almost unanimously get the same response:  TIME.  If we completed every aspect of our job in the most thorough fashion possible, we would likely be forced to take up residence in the classroom cupboard because there would be no time to EVER LEAVE COLLEGE GROUNDS.  And what is one of the biggest consumers of a sixth form teacher’s time? Marking. 

Moreover, as if a huge pile of marking isn’t problem enough, many teachers become so anxious about how their written feedback may be judged by a 3^rd party “book scrutiniser” that even more valuable time can get wasted proving to a line-manager what has taken place in the classroom, instead of relaying advice in a form that will be best received by the specific learner.

It’s useful to bear in mind, that whilst we know that feedback is incredibly important to a learner’s progress, there is no law stating that any feedback must come in written form. (That’s right – it’s not even an Ofsted expectation!) However, marking can be a great way to provide targeted feedback, to inform our future planning, to check whether learning has “stuck” and to move learners forward

So, below are 8 Write-Less Marking techniques that will have teachers doing less and students doing more. By creating an effective dialogue or “feedback loop” between teacher and student, we can boost metacognitive strategies, proof-reading skills, and student engagement all at the same time.

1. Before they submit their assignment, get students to highlight, in one colour, areas where they think they have met the objective particularly well, and, in another colour, areas where they think they could do better next time. This not only makes your marking process quicker – because your focus can go straight to these areas - but also gets students to really engage with success criteria and the essential art of proof-reading!
2. To build on the strategy above, you can also have students annotate their own work, pointing you to the aspects that they deem most important/ challenging/ confusing. They might, for example, write down questions that they still have about the task or the topic.  When you are checking their work, you can suggest a resource that will assist them in finding the answer or practising the skill.
3. Where a student’s lack of proof-reading is slowing your marking process, raise a student’s awareness of this area for development by correcting mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar in the first paragraph only. Invite that student to count the number of literacy corrections in the first paragraph and work on an assumption that there will be approximately the same number to now find and correct themselves in each of the following paragraphs.
4. When giving verbal feedback to a student about their work, ask them to try to immediately summarise, in a written annotation, the feedback that you have just given. This creates a record of your conversation and crystallises points for them to “action”.
5. For formative assignments or first drafts, highlight things in green that successfully meet the objective and highlight things in red that need improving. Do not write any commentary. In the first instance, students must engage with this colour-coding to understand what they have done well and what their next step should be. After interpreting your highlighting, they could even be asked to write their own diagnostic comment and you can check this next time you see their folder.
6. It’s useful to see marking as a “gap-spotting” exercise. Ask yourself, “What is most holding this student back? What skill, if developed, would give this learner the biggest boost?” Now, simply set a gap-closing task at the end of the work. This targeted task can then easily become a subsequent piece of meaningful, personalised homework.
7. After using the technique above, try supervising part of a session dedicated entirely to letting each individual learner act on their personalised feedback. By identifying learners’ “gaps” as you mark their work, and allocating tasks specifically designed to close those gaps, you are responding to individual needs as they arise, in a way that is difficult to do via a generic whole class activity. This practice also ensures that your written feedback is acted upon.
8. Be experimental with the tasks you set so that you are not unnecessarily generating pages of written work to mark, where getting students to demonstrate their learning in a different way might be more memorable. For example, perhaps they can create a presentation that will benefit the rest of the class, a voice recording, a chart or mindmap, a “How To” film, a set of flashcards, etc. Or homework might take the form of a sheet for parents or friends to fill in about how well they now understand the concept the student has taught them.

Isabella Wallace is author of the best-selling teaching guides, “Pimp Your Lesson!”, “Talk-Less Teaching”, and the “Best of the Best” Classroom Guides for Teachers. An experienced and award-winning educator, she is consultant and contributor for the Oxford Dictionary of Education and presents nationally and internationally on teaching and learning - including at SFCA's upcoming Summer Conference.