My year 9s have just done their end of year exam. In RS this means the same set of questions skills repeated for religions and themes. They’ve done three sets of these so they are marked on 1/2/4/5/12 mark questions, 3 times.
I got them to write their answers to each set on a different piece of paper. So Christianity on one, Islam and another and theme B on the final piece.
Instead of marking all of their papers I have marked them one by one. So I marked all their Christianity papers in one go and then did my usual whole class feedback on particular points of knowledge or common errors, whilst reminding them of the requirements of each question. They then ‘green pen’ their work which means they improve their initial work taking on the feedback I’ve given to the class and where they’d missed marks on their own work.
Between that lesson and the next I marked the Islam section and then did the same. I have to finish marking their Theme B and will do the same.
This means:
- It spread my marking out over more days but each section was fresh in my head as I fed back as I’d only marked that one section.
- We could focus directly on 5 questions, instead of 15.
- Their green pen work was more targeted as there was less to do in thirds.
- My feedback was repeated three times. This links into the research of repetition and retrieval to aid long term memory.
- Although I was required to determine a grade using marks it has stopped them ‘just’ looking at the ticks (I refuse to write marks!). The purpose is to improve their work not to see what they got. Delayed grades are the lesser of two evils.
I’ve looked at various research about feedback timing. Most compares ‘instant’ versus delayed. By definition these sort of test feedback couldn’t be instant so it would be interesting to know if there is any research that just deals with different lengths of delayed feedback. This is taking a week and I genuinely feel it is working better than if I’d done it all at once.
I am lucky to have the luxury of time with this group, but if I didn’t , would the time spent on delayed, staggered feedback be better than all at once delayed feedback?
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