4. Brief but probing questioning from the teacher to drill down - PDF document

St. Francis’ Catholic Primary School Marking Policy Presentation and Display Policy September 2016 Mission Statement We welcome and value all as individuals created by God, to work, learn, pray and play together. Like St. Francis, we show care and respect for each other and our world. We have high expectations of each other, and inspire children to be the best that they can become. Aims of marking: o To form the direction of the pupils ’ learning by telling pupils how to go about improving their work o To provide targets for learning o To provide feedback to pupils/parents o To inform children of targets achieved o To praise/encourage/motivate o To provide a means of communication between teacher and pupil, commensurate with the children's level of understanding o To be one of the means of rewarding children using the school merit system o To be able to praise effort as well as achievement o To annotate if necessary whether work is independent or what level of support was needed and what resources were provided to support learning o To assess the pupils formatively in order to raise the standard of the pupils ’ work. Assessment within a lesson – use of red, orange, green cups 1. All children start the lesson with their cups on red 2. Introduce the lesson objective – if you are u sing a ‘hook’, just introduce the objective when it is appropriate – quite often this looks like; hook – questioning – so what are we going to be learning about? – introduce objective 3. Children then asked to use the cups to show how much they already know about the objective. Children select red, orange or green

4. Brief but probing questioning from the teacher to drill down regarding choices 5. Using their answers, teachers can either generate or add to the Success Criteria. 6. Have frequent ‘cup check s ’ during a le sson – you might want a monitor, a timer etc. This cup check is relating to the objective, the bigger picture of the lesson and gives the teacher feedback about who needs support or extension 7. Green means – I can meet this objective and I can explain it to someone else 8. Orange means – I’m beginning to understand this well and I think I’ll get there on my own 9. Red means – I need some support to meet this objective 10. At the end of the lesson, go through the Success Criteria and give a reflective self assessment against them, recorded with a coloured dot/square/written reflection – Phase leaders to direct for their phase (NB – where they finished, not an average of the lesson – it doesn’t matter that they struggled at the start if they meet SC at the end) Important points to note • Get children to appreciate that red is good, ‘red is ready for real learning’. You are learning the most when you are red. • What are you doing for the children who are green at the start? It may be your questioning shows they aren’t really gr een, but if they are, they are going to learn nothing for the remainder of the lesson unless you adapt – this would be judged as inadequate teaching. This is really Assessment for Learning at its most dynamic – checking and responding to what is in front of you. Be ready to extend by higher order questions, or extension work – BUT this must be the next steps in learning, not more of the same. A number of staff have introduced Green Cup Challenges – these are not ‘extension’ or ‘extra’ work, but are next steps towards the same objective. In the best practice, children move on to the ‘green cup challenge’ when they reach green in the course of the lesson – though teachers will operate their own systems for when the children are allowed to move on • This fluid and ongoing assessment is why, in most cases, worksheets are so limiting – the teacher’s expectations are set with the creation of the sheet and they cannot be changed, extended or deviated from • It is vital that teachers and children know the next steps for each child – otherwise differentiation is about aiming for the middle and giving more/making harder or dumbing down – not necessarily meeting a child’s learning n eeds. Hence, being familiar with the Literacy and Maths targets stuck in books is very important for both staff and children. Since the introduction of National Curriculum 2014, next steps will be about breadth of learning and applying skills in different contexts – not moving on to the next skill

Peer Assessment • At least one peer assessment activity should take place in Literacy, Maths and RE each half term, using the phase appropriate proforma Quality Marking • Quality Marking is specifically and only related to the lesson objective and success criteria • All Quality Marking, including gap tasks/next steps, is to be completed in purple pen – not felt tip • Comments should always include how far the child has achieved the objective of the lesson. Use of stamps, eg TARGET ACHIEVED or stickers could help here. Other comments such as those relating to presentation spelling etc. can be added where necessary • In yellow , highlight examples in writing (objective or examples of correct work in Maths) to show where children have met success criteria or achieved objective. In pink , highlight errors or misconceptions which need to be addressed. • Quality marking, from Yr1 to Yr6, should appear in books with the following structure:- www (what went well) ebi (even better if) next steps Phase Leaders may decide to purchase stamps with this structure ready prepared for each teacher • ‘Next Steps’ should include some kind of ’closing the gap’ task. For maths this could be a Post- It with a ‘now try this..’ or a Ne xt Steps Challenge. In grammar work, next steps are likely to be about correcting common errors/misconceptions. For extended writing, you could use one of the following: a reminder - making children think in a more detailed way. E.g. say more about how you feel about this ; a scaffold - this is a more direct prompt or even a question e.g Can you describe how… or a directive Describe something which…; an example - for lower ability pupils, in which they can choose one of your examples or come up with one of their own; challenging misconceptions – why do you think…? ; or explain how you know . Make sure that you don’t give the same kind of challenge to the same children all of the time – particularly likely for lower ability children. In KS1, it may not be appropriate to have an extended written ‘next steps’ which requires a written response. A s a minimum, the teacher must write the ‘next steps’ and it must be visible – for monitoring – that and how the children have responded. This could be letter or number formation or correcting pink highlighted errors in a different

coloured pencil. This could be accompanied by a prompt, relating to the objective to move learning on. • All written marking in English and Maths should be quality marking – however this should only be one group for English and one group for Maths each day – in most cases, the group which the teacher intends to have as their focus group the following day. • For all other books, no other marking than pink highlighting is required. This does not need to be specific to the objective, and can be for presentation, grammar/punctuation and common spelling errors. It is not necessary for teachers to make any written comments in these books. • Teachers may choose to value children’s work by adding stickers, stamps, smiley faces or positive comments. Expectations/Process of quality marking feedback: – • As with Maths, any written English work – grammar, comprehension etc as well as extended writing can be quality marked • Each day, in both English and Maths – for lessons with a written outcome – the teacher should work with a focus group. The group should get continuous ‘quality marking’ feedback during that session, highlighting successful examples, giving prompts and extension challenges. • Each night following a written outcome lesson, the teacher should quality mark the books of one group for English and Maths. This should be the group that will be the focus gp for the next day. • In the next lesson, after whole class input, the first task for the teacher with the focus gp (no more than 5 mins) is to help them respond to the quality marking. Then, they have the continuous feedback for that day’s work as part of the focus gp. Effectively, they get 2 lots of quality marking in a row. • Books will therefore show quality marking on different days for different gps • For every five written outcome lessons, children will have one quality marked in preparation for the next day’s lesson and one quality marked during the lesson as part of the focus gp • Quality marking in preparation for the next day means – highlighting, closing the gap task, updating objective record sheets and any relevant ITPs. • If the ‘flick through and highlight’ of the other books reveals a child who is really failing to understand, make them the focus of TA intervention for the following day.