What do you want to mark?
This is a question worth considering.
And we might turn it around and ask: What do you want to give feedback on?
These questions are two sides of the same coin.
They both cut to the heart of what makes marking effective and efficient.
If you know what you want to mark, if you know what you want to give feedback on, then you can plan learner work to achieve your goals.
Having a clear sense of what you are trying to achieve with your marking means there is a purpose underpinning your efforts.
You can extend this purpose out and use it to structure learner work.
That is, you can plan what work you will ask learners to produce.
Through doing this, you can elicit the information you want and put yourself in a position to give feedback on the things that matter.
To illustrate, let’s consider the position of a trainee teacher.
Someone right at the beginning of their career.
For this teacher, planning lessons looms large in their mind.
It is a difficult task to get right, one that occupies a great deal of their thought and attention.
When they take learner books in, they are interested to see what work has been produced, and they mark it on this basis.
Indeed, part of their focus is actually on seeing whether the lessons they’ve planned have been well-received – whether they’ve had the intended impact.
As such, learners’ work is viewed through the lens of getting to grips with lesson planning as much as anything else.
We can imagine that the trainee teacher will be pleased to see work in learners’ books that suggests their lessons are going down reasonably well
That they are having something like the desired effect.
But compare this situation to a more experienced teacher. Someone further into their career.
We would expect this teacher to be skilled at lesson planning and to be no longer concerned about whether they were getting things right.
Instead, this teacher’s focus will have shifted from their own performance to learners’ performance. And they will have this in mind while planning their lessons.
This second teacher will structure their lessons so learners produce work that gives a good insight into current performance.
The more experienced teacher will be able to think forward and predict what kind of tasks will give rise to what kind of work.
They can plan with marking in mind.
We can pull out two key differences between the approaches of these imaginary teachers.
First, our more experienced teacher conducts more effective marking.
Because they plan with marking in mind, they find themselves with learner work that centres on what they’re interested in.
Whereas the trainee teacher ends up with work that may or may not give them the insights they need to accurately assess performance and give useful feedback.
Second, the experienced teacher is a more efficient marker.
They know what they want, they structure learner work to gain access to this and, therefore, it is easier for them to mark quickly and precisely.
To sum up, planning lessons with marking in mind is always beneficial.
It means thinking about the work your lessons and assessments will give rise to.
And being prepared to tweak your planning to gain access to the information you really want from your learners.
