Top 10 Tips for Teachers: Marking

by Misty Wood in Education, December 13, 2009

Some helpful advice on how to keep up to date with marking and not let it grind you down!

Top 10 tips for Teachers: Marking.

Marking is something that we as teachers have to do. It is necessary for the student’s to have feedback on their work, and for us to assess their learning. A professional teacher uses the marks from the student’s books to inform their teaching and will review any aspects of a syllabus that don’t appear to be fully understood.

1 – Have a rota:

If you have a rota system and aim to mark the books in rotation, there is never that much to do. It only becomes an arduous task when the books haven’t been marked for ages. (I try to mark my books roughly every 2-3 weeks, and I teach over 300 students!)

2 – Provide levelled/graded learning intentions for lessons:

Get students to peer / self assess the work done in the lesson. This allows students to have levelled / graded work in their books that has been peer or self assessed, it is then up to you as the teacher to agree or disagree with this mark.

3 – Have a key system:

This makes the grading of their work a lot faster and easier. It also provides a grade the students can understand.

E = excellent,
G = good,
S = satisfactory.

4 – Have coded targets:

5 – Get a stamp “Key point” or something similar:

When marking prior to exams it is essential that the students know what to revise, this allows you to quickly highlight the areas of their work they need to concentrate on. These can be bought quite cheaply – I use this website.

6 – Allow students to self assess their work:

Provide criteria that the students have to work towards, in terms of presentation etc. Every third marking get the students to self assess and provide a target for improvement. My classes work out their own assessment criteria and they are harsher than I am! This also allows them to see what they have to do to improve.

7 – Circulate during lessons:

Tick off the work during lessons, circulate round the room and mark their work as they are going. Not only does this reduce the amount you have to mark – but it puts the pressure on the students to do the work!

8 – Keep it simple:

Marking takes a long time when you are checking for many things at once. It is possible to mark one aspect of the students work in detail each time you mark. For example Marking 1 = content, Marking 2 = presentation, Marking 3 = diagrams etc…

9 – Give rewards:

Students love to have rewards, if you give these in their books when marking the students really do work hard to get them, especially if their friends have them. They often take them home for rewards from their parents. I use small business cards stapled into their books. These can be bought quite cheaply – I use this website.

10 – Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get the marking done!

Simply keep going from where you left off on the rota, the beauty of this is that as long as you stick to it all the students get their work marked eventually!