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St Marys- Marking policy 2014 Introductory Statement The marking policy at St Marys is seen as part of the cycle of effective assessment which includes using learning Intentions, success criteria, and quality questioning and quality feedback both oral and written.

At St Marys marking is most effective when it is: • Simple • Appropriate to age and ability • Helps children know what they have done well against learning Intentions and success criteria • Clearly shows how to improve or next steps • Supports self and peer assessment • Builds in time for children to act on feedback • Requires the children to do something to improve • Addresses the child and their individual targets Comments should: • be positive and recognise effort, e.g.…a well planned investigation” or “…..clearly presented results”; • contain personal comments, where a teacher responds to the content of the work, such as, “I was very interested in the setting of the story”; • be constructive or diagnostic where teachers make children aware of what they need to do in order to improve their performance. These should relate to learning Intention or National Curriculum Level Indicators (when applicable) and reflect the skill and understanding of the child.

Aims & Objectives The aim of the school policy is to ensure that children are taught and consistently encouraged to value feedback, and to know that it is addressed to them and designed to help them learn, improve and achieve higher standards. The children should see that the response to their efforts is not just to record a grade or mark.

To help achieve this aim, the marking policy should be applied consistently across all classrooms.

The objective of the policy is to raise pupil achievement and the judgement on the effectiveness of the marking policy rests on the impact that marking and feedback have on pupil progress and attainment.

The following points are considered as indicators of effective marking and feedback: • pupils showed that they understood that the purpose of the marking or feedback was for them, to help them improve and produce higher standards of work • teachers mark pupils’ work regularly and that there is sufficient work in the books to allow for impact • teacher’s handwriting is easy to read and models the school style and that all spelling, grammar and punctuation is correct.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014 • marking recognises successes against the learning objective and helps pupils understand what they have done well • teachers provide constructive feedback to pupils so that they can identify and understand how they can improve their learning and standards • action points for improvement are given that specifically relate to instances in the marked work and give opportunities for pupils to close the gap to desired outcomes • teachers use their marking and feedback to deepen pupils’ knowledge and understanding and to help them make progress in the subject • there are clear instances of marking eliciting responses from pupils and dialogue between teacher and pupil • pupils have support to conduct peer assessment or self assessment, where appropriate through the use of clear success criteria • marking and feedback clearly links to target setting and is evidence of achieving targets • teachers use assessment to check on how well their teaching is achieving the learning objectives and adjust their teaching and classroom assessments accordingly.

Cross Curricular Links This policy should be applied at all levels across the curriculum.

Planning This policy should be applied at all levels across the curriculum.

Methodology Marking is against the learning Intention and comments are related to the extent to which each pupil demonstrated that they met the intention. Comments should, therefore make clear how the learning intention was achieved or not. Standardised symbols shall be used as part of this assessment.

The letters Ach should be marked if the child has met the learning objective. If they have not yet met the learning objective then marking of next steps and further improvements should be clearly evident.

In Early Years, feedback is often through verbal comments to particular children, with questions to encourage dialogue and pupil understanding. Written comments are often in the form of a record for other adults to generate actions, tasks and provision to support the child to take the appropriate next step. As children progress through Year 1, written feedback can be read with them to encourage understanding when ‘quality marking’ has been undertaken. Standardised symbols and labels in EYFS, KS1 and for SEND pupils should still take place for the children to identify their action points.

Where appropriate verbal feedback should given. This is indicated by the symbol Opportunities for pupils to read, or have comments read to them, and respond to action points should be built into the daily and weekly timetable.

Quality marking, that is, marking in depth, should be undertaken daily Each teacher marked piece of work (not self or peer marked) should contain a target or action point which addresses the correction or improvement of the marked piece of work not the next piece:

St Marys- Marking policy 2014 An action point is to ‘close the gap’ and improve the children’s attainment Action points require the pupil to do something.

Points that start ‘Remember to....’ are less likely to succeed as children do not remember!

The target or action point should address a specific improvement in the marked piece of work and require the pupil to do something to that marked piece. For instance ‘Add 3 adjectives to the second paragraph.......’ or ‘Redo question 5, laying out the sum as I have shown here...’

The action point is short, succinct and addresses a key point for improvement The action point is carried out on that piece of work not held over until the next piece of work Marking should be clear and succinct, and give the pupil clear messages. This will include specific development of SPaG in literacy and across the curriculum. Where appropriate, spelling and, punctuation mistakes will be identified in the margin using the symbols ‘sp’, and ‘p’. Pupils will be expected to correct their mistakes.

Where appropriate, adult support should be identified for SEND children and those in EYFS/Year 1 with the S symbol and supporting comments explaining the support given.

Differentiation, Progression and Continuity This policy should be applied at all levels across the school.

Standardised symbols verbal feedback LF-letter formation C- Capital letter(s) needed Sp- spelling *- next steps /improvements Ach - Learning Intention met S-Support Assessment Assessment & Record Keeping Marked work can be levelled by comparing the learning objective against the national curriculum level descriptors. Levels as evidenced in the planning, the evidence in pupils’ books and pupil responses form part of the teachers’ judgements on attainment.

Attainment information (on-going attainment assessment and recorded observations) is compiled once a half term and used to calculate pupil progress, inform pupil progress meetings and inform further planning, interventions and additional support.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014

Resources Teachers need access to moderated and standardised examples of pupil responses, and time to discuss example responses with colleagues to ensure internal consistency.

Classroom monitor resources should be used for daily assessments

St Marys- Marking policy 2014 Appendix A Annotated Samples of Marking

Sample 1 Year 2 This is an example of a piece of ‘real’ marking. It was clearly not meant for the child, although in the teacher’s mind, there was probably an attempt to communicate with the child.

It is typical of marking that is done ‘in case someone looks at the child’s book’, but what does it really achieve? We need to consider the audience!

Book review

This is a story about three bears and a norty girl who goes into there house and steels ther things. She doesn’t care about any thing and she tastes there porrij and she breaks the little chair and then she gos upsters and goes to sleep in the baby bears bed.

And then she thinks the daddy bear porrij is too lumpy and Mrs bears chair is too soft.

I like the story and I think you should read it too. It has good pictures and the riting is not much on the page so you get to read it kwicly. The best bit is when the bears come home and baby bear has a tan trum like my little brother dos.

T-Think about and plan writing to ensure good organisation and logical sequencing.

Try to be more imaginative and use lots of interesting descriptive words.

Use a range of sentence connectives.

Use joined script.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014

Sample 1 Year 2 (re-marked) The example is now marked so that: a. the child is able to read the comments b. it acknowledges success, since the work fulfils the purpose of the book review c. it asks for an improvement to be made, with some guidance provided Book review

This is a story about three bears and a girl who goes into there house and steels ther things. She doesn’t care about any thing and she tasts there porrij and she breaks the little chair and then she gos upsters and goes to sleep in the baby bears bed.

And then she thinks the daddy bear porrij is too lumpy and mrs bears chair is too soft.

I like the story and I think you should read it too. It has good pictures and the riting is not much on the page so you get to read it kwicly. The best bit is when the bears come home and baby bear has a tan trum like what my little brother dos.

Effective punctuation, Sam you have used the lI appropriately with detail matching your target I think I would like to read this story – you have made it sound interesting by using adjectives and full target sentences *Could you write a bit more that tells me about the girl? *What was her name? *What did she look like? Use the Wilf as a guide for what you are looking for?

The strange girl is called Goldilocks and she had beautiful gold hair .She was norty and she had a wonderful blue dress. At the end she was crying a lot because she was full of sadness and regret.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014 Sample 2 (Year 6)

This is an example of a piece of ‘real’ marking. It is meant for the child, and communicates clearly.

However there is no evidence that the child has thought further or been given time to respond.

Therefore what is the purpose of the marking?

There may have been some discussion about it, but this is not recorded. If the child’s book is the evidence record, then any dialogue that has taken place needs to be noted.

Questions to think about!

1. Explain what you did to your tambourine. How did you prove that a louder sound has bigger vibrations?

We put rice on a tambourine and first hit it softly and then hit it harder with our hand.

(Child’s work)

What happened to the rice each time? (Teacher’s comment) *Can you now explain what you did to your elastic band? How did you prove that a high pitched sound has more vibration than a lower pitched sound??(Teacher’s comment) We put the elastic band around different things and plucked them with our hand.

The thin band vibrated more than the thick band. (Child’s work)

Yes, it did. What difference was there between the pitch of the sounds made by the thin bands and those made by the thick bands? (Teacher’s comment)

In the space below the work, the child should write a response, and thus ‘close the gap’ between the actual and the desired achievement.

Using the child’s workbook in this way enables the child to add to the original piece of work. The teacher must therefore be analytical about the child’s performance, and write comments that enable the child to demonstrate his/her knowledge or understanding.

Signing, dating, acknowledging, providing space for response etc. provide an effective record of the child’s progress.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014

Sample 3

Ryan has been reminded about finger spaces, and this has clearly been applied in the next piece of work.

It rewards achievement.

It shows dialogue between teacher and child, and is an effective way of recording progress.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014

Sample 4 Ellis Y1 Context A unit of work was assessed in detail and the outcomes were written into the child's annual report.

Purpose This shows how the child's exercise book can be used as an effective record of progress.

Focused Quality Marking was done at the end of a unit of work.

The marking/assessment/feedback showed: a. success relating to the learning objective b. learning had taken place c. paired work/cooperation with others d. Feedback from the teacher had been provided and Ellis had been given time to respond to the feedback and make an improvement

Task The task was to design a piece of playground equipment. The class had visited a local playground and used the equipment, investigated how it worked and how it was made.

A class discussion followed about the structures they had seen.

Drawings were made of swings and slides and the children constructed swings and slides using ‘Quadro’. The children were taught joining skills and how to make tubes by rolling paper.

Learning objective: ‘From your drawing, construct a swing and a slide using junk materials’ Success criteria: ‘To successfully construct a realistic model of an item of playground equipment’ Recording: Photographs were taken of the models the children made.

St Marys- Marking policy 2014

Assessment: Comments relating to the objectives of the task were written on annotation sheets.

Target: To successfully construct a realistic model of an item of playground equipment Achieved very satisfactorily. Ellis was proud of her success. The tubes made from card were carefully compared to get similar sizes. Both a swing and a slide were strong enough to stand and be tested using a 'play person'.

Target: To be able to follow plans and instructions •

Followed drawing and exchanged ideas with her partner.

Target: To incorporate some type of movement into the model.

•

The swing moved freely.

Target: To be able to say what is and what is not working well with the model.

•

She was able to explain her design. When it was pointed out that the swing was too high, this problem was immediately rectified.

Target: To be able to work with a partner.

•

•

Ellis worked well with her partner and although she tended to take advice from Megan, her

St Marys- Marking policy 2014