I’ve always felt marking to be an important yet time consuming aspect of the job. Throughout my NQT year I felt that my marking went unnoticed by the students most of the time; they just wanted to know what grade they got and didn’t take notice of the advice they were given. A lot has changed since then and I’ve realised the power of meaningful feedback.
This year I’ve worked on engaging learners in the feedback process by developing meaningful self and peer assessment as well as incorporating Directed Improvement and Reflection Time into the planning of my schemes of work.
I feel if we spend the time marking, it might as well be beneficial and productive for the students; it should have an impact and encourage development of their work. Therefore a few months ago I set about creating some DIRT sheets, which I’ve used with my classes in a number of ways. For instance after GCSE students completed an exam question, they were given feedback and re-wrote their answer to the same question – it was quite clear when marking it the second time around that the feedback had been beneficial and they’d progress. Another way I’ve used them has been after KS3 pupils have created a piece of extended writing, pupils were given feedback and then had the choice to either improve their SPaG, to level up or to quite simply improve their answer.
Since creating my original DIRT sheets which have been used across the school, as well as my departmental DIRT display I’ve become more and more interested in marking and feedback. I was recently invited to take part in the work scrutiny which I found really insightful and have since been researching additional techniques.
Whilst I was thinking about and researching marking and feedback, I decided to make a few subject specific DIRT sheets for other staff to use.
Can you work out the subjects?
How to use
The idea is that once learners have read and taken on board the feedback in which they are given, they then improve or level up their work on a DIRT sheet.
I’ve found they help to make the improvements stand out in their books and for some reason they help to improve presentation, which is never a bad thing.
If you’d like to use my DIRT sheets, you can find them here.
Feedback is always appreciated.
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