Teachers in England spend hours marking pupils’ work and in the final mile run up to national exams teachers are often exhausted by their efforts. A key challenge appears to be how we ensure pupils work just as hard as their teachers and taking responsibility to manage their own learning. Common issues I hear regularly […]
Supporting Exam Preparation: The Final Mile Read More »
Teaching and learning can be prone to shifting trends. Some aspects of teaching may suffer from waning popularity, but we cannot lose sight of them because they are so integral for successful learning. Formative assessment is one such aspect that demands our focus – or a refocus – on its central importance. Just before the
4 Reasons to (Re)Focus on Formative Assessment Read More »
“The main role of feedback, at least in schools, is to improve the learner, not the work. The idea is that, after feedback, students will be able to do better at some point in the future on tasks they have not yet attempted.” Dylan Wiliam Giving some pupils timely and effective feedback on their writing
Feedback: Improve the learner, not the work Read More »
Every so often the issue of marking and feedback emerges and fractious debates kick off. Teachers with marking ingrained as a daily habit, can view it as essential; whereas, many teachers see it as extraneous to their core work and simply not worth the time and effort. So, if marking is murder, is it worth the
Marking is murder! Read More »
When I was growing up I sought out books that mirrored my world. I can name the narratives that walked me through my tortured teens, or those books that helped me attempt proper adulting. From each reading, familiar character became both a reflection and a fragment of myself. When I became a teacher, few books
The Hidden Lives of Learners and Me Read More »
Since 2012, I have written numerous posts about feedback and marking. This is no surprise given our school system has been seemingly addicted to making ‘progress’ visible, with feedback becoming a quick fix for all our ills. Of course, feedback is richly complex, like most things in the classroom, so I thought it may prove
The Feedback ‘Collection’ Read More »
And the evidence says… Feedback is the answer! It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a teaching wanting to help their students learn effectively must give lots of feedback. Marking, lots of it, should get to the root of many of our problems. We just need more of it, right? This easy assumption neglects a
Focusing on Feedback Read More »
