Writing Programme – Day 4

1. Writing Programme – Day 4 Andrew Crosby (andrewcrosby@beechwoodjuniorschool.co.uk) Emma Thorne (ethorne@thornhillsch.net)

2. Marking and editing

3. What is the point of marking writing? • When used well, marking and feedback is one of the most effective strategies for accelerating pupil progress. • When used poorly, it is a waste of time and can damage learning.

5. Look at your own books – find an example of some feedback that had a positive impact. Why was this? Did it provide guidance/close a gap? Did it correct mistakes and raise expectations? Did it provide a reminder about success criteria or non negotiables? Did it provide a target? Did it provide further practice to consolidate learning? Did it provide a challenge or deepen thinking? Did it provide motivation or encouragement?

6. Marking was identified as the single biggest contributor to unsustainable workload in the Department for Education’s 2014 Workload Challenge. What are the benefits? What are the costs?

7. Now look at your books and find an example of some feedback that has had no impact or negative impact. Why? Was there an opportunity for the pupil to respond? Did the pupil have enough understanding to respond satisfactorily? Were there sufficiently high expectations that the pupil must respond? Was the marking accurate, timely and well directed? Was the marking clear and understandable? Was the marking at the right pitch and achievable?

8. Marking and feedback - what do the children think?

10. Marking and feedback - the risks • A waste of effort – you become exhausted, the child learns nothing • You should have given yourself a break and re-thought tomorrow’s lesson • It’s all too positive • The child thinks they are better than they are or that they can ‘get away with it’ • It’s all too negative • The child thinks they are useless – nothing they do is ever good enough • It’s inaccurate • The child consolidates mistakes, they lose respect for you, they become confused • It isn’t responded to (accurately) • What a waste of time! The child learns they can ignore the teacher. • It is overly proscriptive • The child learns to be dependent on the teacher; they lose confidence • There is too much of it or it is too challenging • The child becomes overwhelmed. They can’t see the wood for the trees.

11. Marking and feedback for writing • Use the school marking guidelines – but you decide what, how and when to mark. • will there be an opportunity for pupils to implement the marking? • what sort of marking is required here? Where is this pupil on the learning pathway? • Should I show, instruct, remind, enforce, suggest or challenge? • Should I encourage or criticise? • what is the most important thing that will help this child move on? • is this an individual problem or a common trend for my class? • is this something to tackle now … or later? • What will the impact be on this child? • Should I spell it out or let them figure it out? • Will they welcome the intervention, or will it demotivate or confuse them?

12. Marking and feedback – what do you want to achieve? • A three pile sort might be all that is needed: • Support – Independent – Challenge • Set and maintain expectations: • Basic skills/presentation/quality of work • Level of productivity/challenge • Motivate and enthuse: • Provide reassurance that they are on the right track • Let them see you are excited by their ideas and progress • Encourage them to aim high • Provide direct guidance (lower achievers/earlier in the unit): • Correct/improve this… ; add ….. here • Try this; do it this way • This doesn’t work, fix it or try something else • Use questions to check understanding or encourage reflection or deeper thought: • Why…, which…, what if…, would….? • Prove …, justify…, evaluate…,

13. Marking and feedback – questioning • Four aims of questioning: • Diagnose problems – where does the problem lie? What is the cause? Where are the gaps and misconceptions? • Assess their readiness to move on – have they really understood? At what level? • Ask them to reflect and evaluate their own learning – what do they think would help them to improve? • To deepen their thinking – would changing the rules make them think differently? Can they evaluate different options?

14. Editing – what works? • Purpose • Content • Layout / Structure

15. Correcting • reviewing spelling, punctuation, capitalization, sentence structure, and grammar • correcting any mistakes • checking for sense • refining/simplifying complex structures for clarity Marking and Editing • Checking • achieving the success criteria • achieving a target • responding to feedback • using all the agreed features • Revising • adding, deleting or improving words • adding or deleting content • reorganizing sentences or ideas • altering grammar or punctuation for effect

16. Editing against the success criteria/target

20. Editing scaffolds – Grammar Spelling Punctuation Capitalisation • Do my sentences sound right? • Do my verbs and nouns agree? • Are my verbs past tense? • Did I use a capital for the first word of every sentence? • Did I use a capital for the names of people and places? • Did I use a capital for the word “I” • Did I make all the other letters lower case? • Did I put some punctuation at the end of each sentence? • Does my punctuation mark match the type of sentence? • Are my sentences too long? • Have I spelled common words correctly? • Have used phonics for words I don’t know? • Have I used the correct homonym? • Have I used …[adapt for year and pupil?

22. What are we looking for? • Remember • Understand • Apply • Analyse • Evaluate • Create

23. How will the marking and editing shift as understanding deepens? • Across a unit of work, a child will move to a deeper level of understanding. Within a unit of work, pupils will be at different levels of understanding. • In literacy, they will move from: • understanding, copying, acquiring and practising the skill or concept … • … to independently applying the skill, deciding when and how to use it, refining it’s accuracy and relating it to other skills … • … to (GDS) evaluating it’s effect or success, critiquing it, and using it creatively and purposefully to develop ideas of their own.

24. Progression

25. How would you move this Y2 pupil’s work towards EXS?

26. How would you move this Y6 pupil’s work towards EXS?

27. How would you move this Y2 pupil’s work towards GDS?

28. How would you move this Y6 pupil’s work towards GDS?

29. Self and peer-assessment “Assessing their own work or that of others can help pupils develop their understanding of learning objectives and success criteria. Research has shown that pupils make more progress when they are actively involved in their own learning and assessment.” “The development of effective self and peer assessment takes considerable time and effort.” “It is recommended that peer assessment should be introduced first, only moving on to self assessment when both teachers and pupils are fully comfortable with the former.” NFER

30. Peer-assessment first • Developing self and peer assessment skills is a valuable investment for the long term future of our pupils. • Pupils tend to be more critical of the work of their peers than teachers would be. • But our pupils, even low-ability pupils, find it very motivating because they have a larger audience for their work. • The allocation of response partners should reflect the nature of the task. Where pupils are evaluating each other’s work consider asking them to work with someone working at a similar ability. • Verbal peer assessment especially with younger pupils- evaluation is often given in the form of, ‘What I liked…’ whereas older pupils link it more explicitly to success criteria.

31. Benefits Purpose Skills Valuing learning opportunities Productive and supportive ethos Audience Celebrate success- celebrate progress

32. Rules for peer-assessment Make the rules for giving feedback explicit and ensure that pupils understand and follow these rules when working in groups or with response partners. • Respect the work of others. • Identify successful features. • Think about the learning objective and the success criteria when suggesting improvements. • Word suggestions positively.

33. Peer discussion and evaluation • Reinforces the purpose and brings focus back to audience- tone and style • Use of success criteria (in this case for editing) scaffolds the discussion and gives pupils something to look for. • Have you included it correctly and appropriately? • Have you included it? • Opportunities for teacher AfL. Discussion raise misconceptions. Does the phrase BESS WAS FORCED TO KILL HERSELF (in capital letters no less!) fit in this piece of writing?

34. We want to avoid… I like that the character is called Bob. It’s really good. Nice handwriting

35. Marking mix-up • Can you match the feedback (in envelopes) to the correct piece of writing?

36. Marking mix-up

37. Marking mix up • Which of these apply to you and your partner?

38. Written feedback Reinforce children’s understanding of the skills to help them be successful…or highlight misconceptions for you to address.

39. Link it to your reading I thought it was effective when you wrote _______________________________. The effect it had on me was __________________________________________. I want my reader to have lots of information about tigers. How did I do? Because _________________________________.

40. Pupil coaching and GDS • GDS- give them time to generate ideas and begin writing. • Use your teacher time with other pupils who need more input for writing. • Return to your GDS- • Tell me about… • What impact do you want to have…? • Why did you…? • That’s an interesting choice. Why did…? • Which of these could you edit? • Have you thought of any other success criteria? Why will these help you achieve your purpose? • Try this with a small group and generate a “coaching language”. This will enable you to transition from teacher led to peer-led….and aid the editing process!

41. Self-editing What does editing look like in your classroom? When does it happen?

42. Self-editing • Skill focused • Not too many skills • Don’t over-complicate • Edit for the success criteria • Edit for the non-negotiables

43. Self-editing Redrafting What questions might you ask here? Proof-reading • Have you checked your full stops and capital letters? • Have you checked your spelling? Individual spelling resources SSV Current spelling rule Class focus words

44. Modelling the editing process • Make editing part of the writing process you model. • Include self-assessment in this. • When you do shared or guided writing you are inviting feedback from pupils (a peer-assessment of sorts). • Model that this is a continuous process and not just something to do “at the end”. • Pupils need to see the purpose of this -much like planning- and not just think of these processes as the “bookends” of writing.

45. Steps of editing • Edit for the reader • Edit for sense PAG • Edit for spelling • Work backwards from the bottom up- focus on word not sentence level.

46. Publishing • A celebration of the writing • An opportunity to share with an audience • Recognising writing as a form of communication- it is meant to be shared with others! • Makes writing process truly purposeful and less ‘synthetic’. • If children know that they are expected to/have the opportunity to share what they have written they will: • Pay more attention to SPAG • Pay more attention to presentation (handwriting) • Pay closer attention to purpose and effect • Have a greater understanding of the impact they wish to have with their writing. • Be proud! • Be confident!

47. Every piece of writing should be published.

48. Start with the end • Make the final outcome something that inspires them to write. • Make it something they are excited about. • Make the expectation explicit. • Share high quality examples and show them how much faith you have in them- you believe they can achieve something truly special! • You will start to notice them making conscious choices throughout the writing process. “I want to do that in my…” • Makes the audience clear from the outset. • Drives them to achieve their best. They can’t wait to get that final step! • It makes each step in the learning journey clear and purposeful. We are doing this because…

49. How do your children publish their work? • Publishing doesn’t just have to be written or word processed in best. Write a narrative based on Alma and record our stories as a voiceover.