From Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project Using Peer & Self-Assessment in the primary classroom: Self & Paired Marking From Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project

Self & Paired Marking: Key Principles Aim for children constructively marking their own work against the Learning Intention of the task, sometimes with a partner Children need to be trained, in stages, to mark their own and others’ work There need to be ground rules about paired marking to avoid anxiety

Unlocking Formative Assessment Shirley Clarke 2001 Feedback from the teacher, peers and self-assessment is based on the “success & improvement model” Unlocking Formative Assessment Shirley Clarke 2001

Closing the learning gap in marking – success & improvement model Make learning intention clear Indicate successes and improvement needs against the learning intention Keep closing the gap comments to a minimum (Too much information confuses)

Closing the learning gap in marking – success & improvement model Highlight or circle three places where the child has written the best aspects against the learning objective/intention (for younger children one success may be enough) Indicate with an arrow where some improvement could be made – usually one improvement is enough initial findings were that children loved the highlights, but hated the arrows – mainly because they did not know how to make the improvement

Closing the learning gap in marking – showing children how to improve Extend the arrow to the nearest white space and write a “closing the learning gap” prompt for the child Choose a reminder prompt, a scaffolded prompt or an example prompt depending on the child Insist that the child responds to the marking This enables him/her to make a small improvement and start closing the learning gap

In Peer & Self Assessment the aim is to involve children in the analysis and constructive criticism of their own work Feedback is integrated into the structure of the lesson Time is built in for reflection in a structured way Pride in successes, modification and improvement become a natural part of the lesson

Class reflection on success & improvement – one teacher’s model Find one word or phrase you are really proud of and underline it Tell the person next to you Three minutes to identify two places you have done well against the success criteria (eg success criteria: use good connectives) and read it to your partner Five minutes to find one place you could improve Write your improvement at the bottom of your work

Whole-class checking approach Use 2-3 minutes near end of lesson Pupils could use a green pencil or any colour Could focus on one success criteria Could be an ongoing check on sentence demarcation, key spellings, adjectives etc Pupils read their own work Teacher praises improvements Teachers have found that more learning takes place in these 2 minutes than if children had just continued with their work When asking children to check for spellings ask them to look at key words or those that they know are wrong

Quality self-marking needs to be introduced in stages Self-Assessment Quality self-marking needs to be introduced in stages

Quality self-marking stage 1: children identify their successes Teachers have found that children as young as year 2 can easily identify successes if the learning intention is clear LI should be a knowledge, skill or concept rather than a broad concept Successes can then be read to a partner or shared in a group or whole class setting Identifying successes improves self-esteem and encourages children to continue to improve their work

Quality self-marking stage 2: children identify a place for improvement Do not introduce until children have got used to identifying successes Ask children to find one place in their work which they think could be improved against the LI Children then draw a wiggly line (or underline in green) under the sentence or phrase to be improved ready for teacher to write improvement suggestion Teacher will write improvement comment later Child will then improve his/her work

Quality self-marking stage 3: children identify successes and make an “on the spot” improvement Once children have become used to the teacher’s improvement comments, they can be asked to identify an area for improvement and make their own improvement in the lesson It is usually best for children to do this on their own at first If they are used to pair discussion, they may be able to do this in pairs straight away The teacher’s role now changes from being a full-time “marker” to an effective interventionist, commenting only when necessary and advising on children’s own decision-making

Quality Paired Marking: findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project(1) Teachers were asked to experiment by asking children to highlight success in a partner’s work “I have introduced writing journals, for children to write to a friend and share one thing they liked about their friend’s writing” (Y2 teacher) “I don’t exactly ask them to highlight success with a pen. I ask them to work in pairs, read each-other’s work – then say two positive things and make one suggestion for improvement” (Y4 teacher) The feeling was that although children could say good things about another’s work, they would need support to be able to relate those good things to the LI or success criteria of the lesson

Quality Paired Marking: findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project(2) A few teachers reported that what transpired in some KS2 classrooms was that children wanted to discuss the highlights with their friends and were doing it at their own instigation “ They started to do it themselves. They look at the highlights and discuss. They are doing it naturally” (Y6 teacher)

Quality Paired Marking: findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project(3) A small number of teachers who had tried peer highlighting had found that some children as young as Y2 were able to spot the appropriate bits to highlight “When they are working with partners they can pick out the bits they think are the best and know why. A child will say “That’s what we had to do (success criteria) and these are the best bits”” (Y2 teacher) “Sometimes they are able to say whether work met the success criteria – and say why” (Y3 teacher)

Quality Paired Marking: findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project(4) The impact of paired marking relies on the teacher allowing time for children to consider the marking “I have given them time to share their highlighted bits with each-other – this made an impact on the use of conjunctions when that was the LI – some children could see from others’ highlights how to use conjunctions” (Y6 teacher) “Children do understand the prompts better when they have time to discuss them with a friend” (Y6 teacher) “I am consciously making time for them to talk about their improvement” (Y5 teacher) “I ask them as a matter of course to read the highlights to themselves and think them over” (Y4 teacher)

12 Golden Rules for peer assessment with a “response partner” (1) Both partners should be roughly the same ability, or one jump ahead or behind, rather than a wide gap The pupil needs time to reflect on and check his/her work before response partner sees it The partner should begin with a positive comment about the work The partner needs time to take in the child’s work so it may be best for the author to read out the work first. This also establishes ownership of the piece Children need to be trained in the success & improvement process or whatever marking process is being used Children must both agree about the part to be improved and changed

12 Golden Rules for peer assessment with a “response partner” (2) The author should make the marks on his/her work as a result of the discussion Children need to be reminded that the focus of their task is the LI The response partner should ask for clarification rather than jump to conclusions (creating a dialogue) The improvement suggestions should be verbal in the first instance It is useful to role-play response partners in front of the class, showing them the wrong way and the right way Use response partners two thirds of the way through a lesson, so that children can make the improvement and continue writing with a better understanding of quality

Our Agreement on Marking with Response Partners We decided that there were some rules we all needed to keep. When we become Response Partners we all agreed to: Respect our partner’s work because they ahev done their best and so their work should be valued Try to see how they have tackled the Learning Intention and only try to improve things that are to do with the LI Tell our partner the good things we see in their work Listen to our partner’s advice because we are trying to help each other do better in our work Look for a way to help our partner achieve the LI better by giving them a “closing the gap” activity to do Try to make our suggestions as clear as possible Try to make our suggestions positive Get our partner to talk about what they tried to do in their work Be fair to our partner. We will not talk about them behind their backs because we wouldn’t like them to do it to us and it wouldn’t be fair