LEARNING TO LEARN
My Action Research project gave me the opportunity to investigate and record different ways of marking - which I had been trialling for a number of years - to incentivise boys to act upon any written feedback in both formative and summative assessments , and make them better proof-readers . Initially , I used marking codes :
M
TH Cx
Gr AL
––>
Qu Sh
Meaning unclear due to poor expression / sentence structure
Link to tragedy / tragic hero
Context needed ( who says this / when / to whom / about whom ?)
Grammar error
Analyse language closely , especially individual words
Be more logical in your order / odd essay or paragraph structure
Quotation needed
Where is Shakespeare ? He should be at the heart of all your analysis
This meant that pupils had to look at the codes they had received carefully and match them to a comment . Deciphering the specific targets for their own essay became integral to the pupil action in light of feedback that I was aspiring to . It enabled them to quantify their errors and have a clearer focus on how to improve / what to check for in following assessments on the same text .
This measurable and mathematic approach engendered productive attitudes in the pupils , for example : some began to add up which codes they were receiving more frequently and compare with their peers . This was a welcome shift from previous response to feedback – look at the grade , read comments , forget .
As well as codes to improve both essay technique and my own differentiated feedback ( and to save precious time by not having to write the same comments over and over again ), I began to use different ways of marking to improve written communication , spelling , punctuation and grammar ( SPAG ). My focus was for pupils to become better at identifying and correcting technical errors – rather than correcting them myself . Instead of the common practice in marking of circling or changing errors , I placed a green dot in the margin on the line where the error occurred . It was then up to the pupils to find the error and make the correction themselves .
F Au SW
Write formally
How does this impact the audience ?
So what ? Why does Shakespeare |
do this ? How does this add to the overall impact of the play ? What is |
SPAG |
|
the reason that Shakespeare chooses to do this ? Why is this necessary for
Shakespeare to do ?
|
0 % |
100 % |
18