North Baddesley Infant School

Policy for Marking

Our Vision: At North Baddesley Infant School we are committed to valuing and nurturing each child as an individual who will achieve their best and develop an enthusiasm for lifelong learning. Our vision is for the children in our school to grow into responsible, caring and fulfilled adults who actively and positively contribute to the society in which they live. We are committed to raising standards, values and self esteem for all those involved with our school through cultivating a secure, yet exciting environment that is positive, supportive, stimulating and enriching.

In this way, we are happy, valued and achieving together.

Our policy for marking supports this by:

Recognising that marking is an essential part of planning and assessing teaching and learning.
Ensuring the purpose of marking is to assist learning.
Promoting high standards and positive attitudes to learning and behaviour.
Ensuring a consistent approach to marking throughout the school.
Valuing work and giving recognition and praise for achievement.
Providing constructive feedback and clear strategies for improving learning.
Correcting mistakes, addressing misunderstandings and offering encouragement.
Providing assessment information and informing future planning.
Enabling pupils to reflect on their past performances and set new targets together with the teacher.
Provide ongoing opportunities for self assessment.
Teaching children to recognise what they do well.
Fostering a culture whereby it is okay to make mistakes but good to learn from them.
Ensuring marking is regular and frequent.
Encouraging pupils to accept help/guidance from others.

Our procedure for marking:

At North Baddesley Infant School, we believe marking should:

Acknowledge each piece of work.
Be undertaken as quickly as practicable, where possible with the child.
Involve other adults within the classroom as appropriate.
Be selective and relate to specific learning objectives and targets known to the pupil in advance.
Be constructive. A negative comment should be supported by a constructive statement on how to improve so that the child is clear on what they need to do to improve further.
Support the child’s learning and not overwhelm or demoralise them with too many corrections. For this reason, not all spelling, punctuation and grammar errors are marked in every piece of writing but they will be noted as a future teaching point. Teachers should use their professional judgement when deciding how many corrections to mark.
Include a brief constructive comment where appropriate. This comment should be specific to the learning objective and content of the work. General comments such as “good” are to be avoided unless qualified with further comment as to why.
Take account of individual ability and effort.
Be manageable for staff.
Be in keeping with the ways in which the school recognises and celebrates children’s achievements.
Provide pupils with the opportunity to assess their own work and that of others.
Be in a different colour or medium from the pupil’s writing, but not dominate. For this reason, red ink is inappropriate.
Good presentation is expected and may be commented on after the learning intentions have been considered. All work should be dated and titled using an “I can” statement reflecting the learning objective/success criteria that will be marked against.
Be consistent across the school and use the codes identified in the appendix.
Use the agreed codes/symbols for marking and display these prominently in the classroom to ensure children are familiar with them.

Types of marking:

Summative marking/feedback

This usually consists of ticks and other simple marks associated with closed tasks where the answer is either right or wrong.
This can also be marked by the children, as a class or in groups.

Oral Feedback

North Baddesley Infant School recognises the importance of children receiving regular oral feedback. This is particularly important in the early years and KS1 where children may be unable to read a written comment.

Formative marking/feedback

This is used for a more substantial piece of work that is marked in the absence of the child, such as a piece of writing.
Not all pieces of work can be marked in this detail and teachers will use their professional judgement to decide whether work will simply be acknowledged or given detailed attention. When marking in this way, teachers highlight examples of where the child has met the learning intention whilst identifying an aspect of the work which could be improved. To support this, they provide a focused comment which should help the child to ‘close the gap’ between what they have achieved and what they could have achieved.
Useful comments include:
- A reminder prompt (e.g. 'What else could you say about the prince’s clothes?')
- A scaffolded prompt (e.g. 'What was the monster doing?', 'The monster was so angry that he...')
In order for the marking to be formative, the information must be used and acted on by the children. Therefore, when work has been marked in this way, time is given for children to read and respond based on the improvements suggested.

Self-marking

Where possible, pupils should self-evaluate by identifying their own successes and areas for improvement. In addition, pupils may be asked to mark their work in pairs, to engender discussion about the work. Children may also be asked to highlight ("tickled pink") specific success criteria in their work using a pink highlighter.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Review

The school will review this policy annually and assess its implementation and effectiveness. The policy will be promoted and implemented throughout the school.