When we highlight learner work the eye is immediately drawn to the different colours on the page.

This can help learners to better understand what feedback you are giving or to what section of their work your feedback refers.

Another advantage is that highlighting can be done quickly and with minimum effort; it adds little to your marking workload and may even subtract from it.

Let’s look at two ways you can use highlighting.

First, you can highlight different parts of a learner’s work, then write your feedback at the end, beside a key indicating the relationship between the colours and what you have written.

For example, we might have three highlighters – red, blue and green.

We go through a learner’s essay and highlight some parts in red, some in blue and some in green.

At the end, we write a detailed comment outlining two key strengths and suggesting one area for improvement.

We also create a key like this:

• First strength = Red
• Second strength = Blue
• Area for Improvement = Green

This method means it is easy for learners to see how your feedback connects to their work.

It also makes it easier for them to refer back to your comments in the future.

For example, in two lessons’ time we might ask the imaginary learner to remind themselves of their area for improvement.

They can flick back through their book, find the relevant page and immediately see the green highlighting reminding them what they need to work on.

Second, you can highlight a section of a learner’s work and then write your feedback exclusively about this.

The benefit here is that the highlighting causes the learner to zone in on the area of their work you most want them to think about.

For example, we might have a Year 6 learner who has written up a report of a science experiment.

Much of this is good but we also notice one area in which they have not understood what was expected of them.

As such, we decide the best option is to focus our feedback on this, so they know what to do differently next time.

We highlight the relevant section and write our feedback at the end of the report.

When the work is returned to the learner, they can quickly find the area to which our feedback refers and can then analyse it in light of our comments.

Here are two examples to further illustrate.

Example 1: Maths

A maths teacher marks using a pen and two highlighters.

They use the pen to tick correct answers and to write any formative comments at the end of the learner’s work.

They use the first highlighter to indicate careless mistakes.

That is, incorrect answers that the learner could have avoided if they had checked their work more carefully or paid more attention as they were doing it.

The second highlighter is used to indicate useful mistakes, that is, mistakes based on misconceptions or faulty technique. These are mistakes from which the learner can learn.

Learners are trained to understand the teacher’s method and are thus able to act on the marking when their work is returned to them.

Example 2: Sociology

A sociology teacher explains to their class that they want to see a greater use of contemporary examples and that these should be relevant, original and well-explained.

When marking learners’ work, they use three highlighter pens.

The first colour indicates areas where a contemporary example could have been used but wasn’t.

The second colour indicates contemporary examples that are not as relevant as they could be.

And the third colour highlights contemporary examples that meet the success criteria.

This ends with learners getting work returned to them that is easy to analyse and from which they can quickly and effectively come up with their own targets.