Eight ways teachers can reduce their marking mountain

Thanks to MJS for spotting this article in The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2016/may/15/eight-ways-teachers-can-reduce-their-marking-mountain#img-1

Marking comes with the territory of teaching but, as the weather gets better, most of us would rather avoid spending all evening with only a set of books for company.

In fact, marking was identified as the single biggest contributor to teachers’ unsustainable workload in the 2014 Workload Challenge (pdf). Since then, two new reports – a Department for Education (DfE) independent workload review(pdf) and an Oxford research review entitled “A Marked Improvement” (pdf) – have highlighted ways to cut the marking mountain without affecting students’ progress. So here are some of their key recommendations to buy you a bit more time in the sun......

Follow the link above to the full article.

RAG123 marking experiment

An account of a teacher's decision to RAG123 mark students' books. This means the students rate themselves on a scale of 1-3 for effort each lesson and Green Amber or Red for their meeting of the success criteria for the lesson.

The teacher then marks their work and gives their own RAG123. This has led to some good dialogue between student and teacher and this might be a relatively painless way for this to happen.

Food for thought.

https://mrbenney.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/my-rag123-marking-experiment/