Provided by Francisco Alegria

Prior to a parents consultation evening each student is given an attainment plan which they have to fill in. A sample is provided below:

The idea of the sheet is get students to rate their current effort both in and out of the lesson and provide a reason why they have, for example, rated themselves a 2 for homework. This can then prompt a discussion with the student as it may be something that you were not originally aware of.

The students also have to identify the independent learning they are currently doing – this is pre populated for each year group. This is then used to direct students to specific activities to help improve their learning.

The students take the document home and get their parents to sign it. They are then returned to the teacher and are used during the consultation evening. For parents who are unable to attend this gives them an idea of how well their child is working in that specific subject and can prompt a discussion at home.

I have found that I am giving comments and feedback that are tailored to the student rather than the same comments over and over again.

Teaching and learning priority: Effective assessment, feedback and dialogue

Strategy / Idea: Yellow Box Marking

I wanted to find a way for my sixth form students to get more out of the work that I marked and actually do something with the feedback I gave them. I first came across this idea when reading ‘Mark, Plan, Teach’ by Ross Morrison McGill (https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2018/05/19/yellow-box-methodology/) and it is something I have been using for over a year.

Yellow Box marking is about finding and selecting one area of work the student can fix. The addition of a new empty yellow box (which varies in size) allows the student to identify what work is expected in their redraft / improvements. For some students this makes corrections more manageable and you can focus on a particular skill that they need to develop.

You are not expected to mark the re-drafted version – unless it is for summative assessment purposes. It is better to offer verbal feedback on the improved piece of work. A change I am making this year to help with this is that I am getting students to highlight or underline any new information that they include so that it I can easily spot the improvements they have made.

Alternatively you could choose one area of a child’s work to mark. Let them know that you will only be marking one section e.g. the conclusion. Mark it well and in detail and offer feedback (verbally or in writing) and no matter what, ensure that the feedback is specific and diagnostic.

I have found this to be a very useful assessment and feedback strategy as the student knows where to work and what to target; improvements can be identified much more clearly to help aid student progress.

I have even used this to help students who write too much! I know that under exam conditions these students are going to run out of time and they need to learn to prioritise the points they make. I get them to redraft the answer by picking out the most important parts from their first version and informing them that they cannot go outside the lines of the box.

The following is shown on the board when students are completing DIRT:

Examples from student assessment books:

This highlights the section that needs to be improved (you don’t always need to use yellow!)

This box was drawn after the answer and includes the redraft

In this example the student achieved 2/9 in the answer – there were a number of errors in their knowledge. In this case I did mark the answer again.