When we judge a piece of work we do so through a set of expert lenses.

These lenses comprise the different categories we associate with the subject in question.

For example, an art teacher might look at categories such as originality and use of line whereas a PE teacher might look at ones like technique and commitment.

When assessing learner work – when making judgements – we invoke these categories, often without an awareness of what we are doing.

We then use them to help us make a comparison.

For example:

The Art Teacher

• Does this painting show a good degree of originality?
• Well, compared to my existing understanding of the category – my expert understanding – I would say no, it doesn’t. Therefore, I can give useful feedback on this area.

The PE Teacher

• Did the learner demonstrate good technique when throwing the javelin?
• Compared to my expert understanding I would say the technique was good as she approached the line but less good as she threw, so I can give feedback on the latter.

If we accept that we use categories to make judgements about learner work, then we can speed up the marking process by sitting down and making a list of these categories.

We can then keep this list to hand while we mark and refer to it when we come to write our feedback.

This speed up the process and means we always have a set of areas on hand to which we can look when deciding what feedback would be most useful.

Here are two examples to illustrate.

Example 1: History

At the start of the year the history teacher sits down and makes two lists: a general category list covering the key areas they look for when marking the work of any learner and a set of lists covering additional categories that they might look for depending on the age of the learner.

They keep these lists somewhere close to hand and take them out whenever they come to mark learner work.

They place the relevant lists on their desk and refer to them as they do their marking.

Specifically, they use the lists as a basis for the targets they set.

They read what learners have written, then they identify a series of strengths, then they select a category the learner needs to work on and use this to construct an appropriate target.

Example 2: English

The English teacher sits down and makes a list of the key categories they use to make judgements about A Level creative writing.

They share this list with their learners and explain that they’ll be using it when assessing their work.

This has the benefit of helping learners to understand where the teacher is coming from, what good looks like, and what they need to develop if they are to become better creative writers.

Through the course of the year the teacher marks learner work, focussing on one or two categories at a time.

They tie their positive and developmental feedback to these, meaning learners are consistently encouraged to reflect on, think about, and respond to information that references the key categories one must master to be successful with creative writing.