Who are you marking for? Tweet this.
One year ago, I asked if ‘Progress Over Time’ and the removal of lesson gradings had been replaced with a frenzy over marking and redrafting?’ It is obvious from initial evidence that is has! But in this blog, I’d like to unpick even further a marking frenzy that is driving me bonkers every time I see other teachers/schools marking in this a particular way. It may work for you, your students and your school/staff, but for me it is absolute nonsense and further proof of ‘evidence Ofsted trails’.
So, what is it you ask? Well, last week, I tweeted this;
Verbal Feedback Stamping:
Listen to what I have to say about Verbal Feedback Stamps.
Verbal Feedback Stamps are a direct outcome of The Marking Frenzy and Ofsted fads. VFSM, or Verbal Feedback Stamp Madness – have no doubt – stems from Ofsted fads to show progress in lessons and over time. Whether you have been told to show this: within a lesson; every 20 minutes; or to show your senior leadership teams that students are acting on (every aspect) of teacher feedback! ‘Verbal Feedback Stamping’ is absolutely bonkers and is a waste of your time. It adds no value to a student’s learning.
I have taken 60 students’ books home this weekend to complete my ‘September marking.’ n.b. I normally only take books home each half-term, but my workload at the start of the year has been usually busy and has left me with little time to mark ‘at work.’ This has been a conscientious choice and is breaking away with my traditions. It may be that I am still coming to terms with life as a deputy headteacher. So, at home and on this occasion, I plan on using the Yellow Box methodology to focus on key areas of assessment and feedback.
To avoid endless truck-loads of ‘flicks and ticks’, I aim to complete each exercise book in one minute which should equate to 1 hour in total. In reality, I will be distracted; day-dream and/or veer-off from my original intentions. Dare I say, the clock will reveal the actual workload required 2-3 hours later …
However, at no time will ‘Verbal Feedback Stamps’ feature in my marking as evidence of dialogue. What is said, should remain in speech and remain evident in a student’s piece of work the next time it is reviewed. Students may of course refer back to a verbal-feedback conversation in an evaluation/review of work completed, but at no point should a ‘stamp’ be used to evidence that teacher and child has spoken to one another! Agree? Tweet it.
Pros and Cons:
Allow me to explain what I consider advantages and disadvantages of VFS;
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| It’s quick! | It’s a total waste of time! |
| It’s a visual reminder for you and the student. | It adds no value to the learning. |
| It’s proof to school leaders and inspectors that you are (actually) speaking to your students! | It’s proof that you are stamping for evidence trails and not really for you or the student. |
| It adds to the marking frenzy, your workload and worse of all, supports Ofsted fads to ‘show progress’. |
I’m sure there are many more pros and cons; what’s missing? Add them to the comments below.
Question Your Marking Pedagogy!
What do the 5 stakeholders (student, teacher, parent, senior leader and inspector) say about marking?
- Parents love reading marking in their child’s book. It shows their child has been taught and that the teacher has spent time working with them.
- Senior leaders also enjoy evidence of marking. Looking at marking is a quick snapshot system of identifying work output from staff and pupils.
- Inspectors adore marking. So much so, when they came to inspect teaching in my school into the 3rd week of this school year, they referred back to marking in books from the previous academic year! Inspectors make a valued judgement once every three years, and marking is some of the only tangible evidence that there is to demonstrate that there has been some teaching in the previous year. The question remains, has marking aided progress and have students acted on feedback? Only books and results will provide this hard evidence. And this is where I believe the Marking Frenzy may stem from.
- Teachers. Hands up? No teacher loves *marking. Why is this? Well, in my view, teachers are not given enough time within their directed time / workload to be able to complete the demands of marking placed upon them. This needs to change and no politician or school will be able to eradicate this problem unless a genuine workload is addressed with a budget, used to reduce teaching hours and replace this with time for planning and marking! Simple.
- Students. Kids rarely get the value of marking either. Very often they seek a reward, and rarely read the comments. All sorts of strategies are manufactured in order for students to act on feedback before receiving the rewards of ‘a grade.’
This leaves us with a huge problem – the two key stakeholders in marking – the producer (teacher) and consumer (student) – get the least from it. How could we change this? On this note, I will say that this and this has transformed my marking and work-life balance in and out of the classroom. Source: You can read @MrLockyer‘s presentation slides here.
This image should help clarify unnecessary workload;
Mark-Plan-Teach:
As part of our drive to produce a common Learning Policy for all teaching staff, we have produced a one-page summary. It says’
“Marking has two purposes. One, students act on feedback and make progress over time. Two, it informs future planning and teaching.
- Teachers must have a secure overview of the starting points, progress and context of all students.
- Marking must be primarily formative including use of a yellow box which is clear about what students must act upon and selective marking, where relevant.
- Marking and feedback must be regular
- The marking code must be used.”
There was a minor change in terminology from ‘should’ to ‘must’ in the details above. Like it? Tweet it! See the overview here.
Try these:
- Our whole-school approach to marking is here; including presentations.
- 12 Ways to Embrace Marking and Feedback.
- A Common-Sense Approach to Marking is here for all schools to consider.
- What NOT to mark? is here.
If you carry on stamping the word ‘verbal feedback’ into your students books, you only have yourself to blame for the marking frenzy and Ofsted fads.
Stop it now I tell you, stop it now!
Yep! I have collected all our stamps in – none in classrooms anymore!! Success criteria (no more than 3) to mark against in longer pieces of work (once every week) Simply highlight in green 3 things they’ve done well and the number of the SC in margin to which it refers. Then an Improvement only comment which child responds to in green pen. Monitoring of books focuses on did the comment move the learning forward/improve the piece? Teachers report that marking is now easier, more focused and manageable. And yes we have kept last year’s books to show the progress which is hugely evident just from flicking through from start to finish!!! This madness has to stop!!! Hope you’ve had a great start to the year, Ross! All the best! Tracey
Hi Tracey. Great start to year – very busy start – but should settle down next week. So good to hear you have collected ALL of your verbal feedback stamps in across the school; good for you!
In my view we see marking as the final stage of teaching something. We plan, we teach and we mark we then plan, teach and mark and so on. I do think there is a stage we often miss or overlook before we mark, before we teach and before we plan. That stage is “What do I want to know what my students and have learnt and how best can I determine this?” As my mentor said to me when I started teaching “Work out what you want to know before you ask the question”. This approach not only determines the type of marking and feedback we give but validates in too. Adopting this approach we can ‘stand up to’ Ofsted or whoever wants to challenge our marking.
Marking is an assessment of learning but we already know not all students demonstrate or record their learning and not all students do well in tests. Marking also involves seeing or observing learning and so marking can be a complex process. Not all teachers like marking but all teachers like to see the learning progress of their students. Knowing what you are looking for and orchestrating opportunities for demonstration helps this process. Marking looses some of its drudgery (in fact if you are finding marking a drudge I would suggest you are not doing it right – you are not using your marking to inform your planning and teaching) and when approached in this way and we engender a more celebratory view of marking.
I quite agree…I am irritated by the fact that some schools ask for planning for a week in advance? This seems to me to be entirely contrary to everything everyone knows about teaching and learning! My marking IS my planning and my differentiation
You may have to get ‘creative’ in how you respond to any one who requests “planning a week in advance”. I have seen good teachers tear themselves apart along with their relationship with the students because they felt they had to stick to their advanced planning. They knew it was not was needed but because it had been submitted they tried to deliver it in case they were challenged for not delivering the planned lesson. You know your students, your subject so sometimes the “plan” goes out of the window and you have to react to what is happening in the lesson (and in the previous one). Where this is the case it’s hardly worth beating yourself up about producing some crystal ball gazing planning document. That is what I mean about being ‘creative’. I’ll leave this point with a link to a diagram about how the teacher/learner relationship needs to be actively protected. http://wp.me/p2LphS-kk
What about asking students to bullet point your verbal feedback to help students process what you have said and as a reminder to them to act upon it. (Limit to 2 bullet points etc)
I don’t see any harm in doing this as long as it is constructed re-drafting time; it would be impossible to ask students to do this every time a conversation was had = evidence acting on feedback, rather than ‘actually’ doing it without saying/writing down what they will intend to do. We need to move to a point where we get back to teaching, and students ‘just getting on’ with what the teacher asks them to do without (the need of demonstrating to other observers) asking if students have listened.
This is what we have been trying to do. And using stamps(!) to prompt students to write down what is said to them. As with anything, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way (and the why) that you do it…?
Same – I give them feedback and stamp – they go and write their target and I then look for that in the next piece of work. I’ve found conferencing more effective than writing a comment as I know that the students have engaged with the feedback as I was part of the conversation.
I taught a Primary 1 class (Reception Class) last year . . .I gave verbal feedback to the children as they worked. I was expected to write comments based on the success criteria (tickled pink/green for growth). The children couldn’t read them! So who was the marking for? I had already figured out what they needed to do next to make progress through reading and discussing their work with them. The marking was only for management/parents/inspectors and had nothing to do with the learning. A complete waste of time in my opinion.
I teach y1 and am expected to leave half a bloody page of marking for children who can’t read it and a moving on comment!!!!! No, we spoke and I will remind children in next lesson because they will have forgotten……marking for SMT. Another case of lack of trust in schools! Please let us do our job!
One little stamp to bridge one wide trust gap between the classroom teacher and whoever’s checking their books… The only true evidence of effective feedback is improvement in the students’ work. Meaningful improvements need a bit of time to show up – as well as line managers who know what to look for.
I agree: the stamps are a sad form of surrender to Ofteditis!
I use mine in lessons, not as assessment for learning or to evidence conversations, but as a marker for me personally. When I take books in to mark a specific piece I can see whether one or two students are taking all my time up in lessons, or if there are students I’m not speaking to very often.
With 43 lessons a fortnight there’s no way I can reflect on this without something I can go back to and check over a longer period than a lesson.
Totally agree. Vfs is for me to monitor who I am talking to the most in class and more importantly who never gets a look in. There is a place for them but should never be used to show some external monitor how I’m marking
IF I were for some reason routinely (spontaneous verbal feedback is always important from time to time) using verbal feedback, it would be in conjunction with students using an e-portfolio that included their considerations of importance, understanding, planning, and revising approaches. Students would know such efforts are expected with them included in their final course grade proposal.
Unfortunately the “verbal feedback stamp” is seen as good practice in my school. Sadly I have just used one for the first time. I feel so dirty.
In my experience we had colleagues with consistently weak teaching using these in a core dept. to ‘paper over cracks’ where purposeful feedback was not taking place… Just used for show, complete waste of time and money.
A key issue you do not address is the consequence of working in a school where the policy is that every piece of work must be marked and that books will be collected by the head and check. I believe talking to children about their work is essential and I am then not going to mark is just so that when others look at my books they are satisfied everything is marked. Therefore a sticker (stampers are banned) to indicate verbal feedback was given negates me waisting my time or having to justify myself.
Personally, I have never used ‘verbal feedback stamps’ and don’t intend to. However, at the same time I appreciate there is no definitive way to successfully mark and have seen stamps used effectively (particularly in practical subjects) – they can make students acknowledge the importance of verbal feedback which can be overlooked – “in one ear out the next”, as the old saying goes. The stamp raises the status of verbal conversations, saying to the pupil that what I just told you is important, I expect you to respond to this advice. As some contributors have suggested, it can also be taken to the next step by asking pupils to record the teacher’s guidance next to the stamp. It’s easy to belittle staff who feel the need to evidence for OFSTED, but for some people these choices are huge, their job could be on the line. Stamping is quick and hassle free – there’s definitely no harm caused and offers potential for improvement. Of course, they also encourage (nudge) teachers to give more verbal advice and to think more carefully about the quality of their guidance – which as the Sutton Trust and John Hattie, to name but two, have pointed out can be extremely powerful in terms of progress.
Let’s not kid ourselves – effective marking takes time whatever method you use. Like many colleagues I have tried a wide range of techniques to ensure personalised / appropriate feedback in a realistic amount of time. I’m still struggling to get a class set done in anything less than 90mins. Let’s not pretend that getting rid of stamps, or any other technique, is going to significantly reduce this workload, as it isn’t.
While I quite agree that the stamps can be a box ticking exercise, anyone who has worked in a school going into category will know that Ofsted often going on schools with an agenda and will leap on anything to find fault. Those of us still clinging on in LEA schools are feeling particularly vulnerable and personally, if it’s between a 1 second stamp to tick an Ofsted box and the misery of years in category and forced academisation, I’d say the stamp. (Even if it means hanging my head in shame as an appeaser.)
Verbal feedback stamps are not about showing evidence of marking. They are about giving pupils an opportunity to record what we say to them, in their own words. The fact that we are having the conversation with them in the first place means there is something they have not understood in the whole class teaching. We all know that when we revisit a topic some pupils have often forgotten what we thought they knew. If you must think of these stamps as marking, then think of them as marking for your pupils. It takes no time at all to put a stamp on a piece of work as you go round your class talking with your pupils. There is too much negativity in this post for my liking.
I agree with you, Gillian. If used properly, it can show the teacher (and the child!) whether they have understood and acted upon any advice given while practising key skills. It can actually cut down on the need for more ‘marking’ (although ‘feedback’ is what we should be thinking about) out of lessons. Whether you use a stamp or not, pupils should still note verbal comments to help them in the future. My colleagues love them; we have no rules about how to use them/having to use them – that would be wrong.
Even the term is stupid. Almost all detailed feedback is verbal. Personally I don’t use semaphore or symbols, though I will admit to facial expressions and to ticking answers.
I love this blog, however it is my school policy to use VF stamps/write it in the margin during lessons and they have to respond in their different coloured pen. Do you have any links to good research articles to show SLT? I do not want to have negative book scrunities, but neither do I plan on ever using VF stamps in my pedagogy.
I will dig out something; not sure if anything exists though…
I don’t think anyone in their right mind would flick through their students books retrospectively stamping pages thinking “ah yes, I spoke to that student” stamp
I DO have an verbal feedback given stamp and I use it after brief conversations with students as I circulate the classroom. I stamp their work and they add a bullet point or a few key words to crystallise the conversation so they may refer back to my direct, personal feedback as they continue.
Hello – great post. Do you have a photo of the yellow box strategy in action please? Thanks
Yes. Search for ‘Power from the Floor’.