Notes and Scribbles - Whole-Class Feedback in Primary

Marking has had some really bad press recently.  Time and again, it is blamed for teachers' workload and also for being ineffective and a waste of time.  "No Marking" policies do their rounds on the education blog-sphere every now and then.  Whole-class feedback is a popular replacement for marking, with teachers often filling out a grid with information from pupils' books instead of writing in the books themselves.  Despite this all being very persuasive and attractive, I still mark my pupils' books after every lesson. Our school has stripped our feedback policy of many marking statements but it still involves marking.  To see more about why marking is still worth doing, read the first half of this post by Chris Curtis.

By "marking", I mean a recognition of the work the child has done and an indication that the book has been checked with at least a tick or use of my most-used stamper, Checked By Your Teacher.  This helps pupils to be accountable for their work and encourages them to do their best as they know each piece will be seen by their teacher.  If necessary, I will write more in a book - particularly to praise the child for something specific or to highlight or circle errors.  To find out more about how I mark quickly and effectively, see this blog post.

In our book for primary teachers, we write about how checking is more effective than extensive marking of pupils' books.  We make it clear that recognition of the work completed is still important but that teachers can gain much from checking the work without necessarily writing anything on it.  The checking of work can then inform planning for the next lesson.

One way in which we've reduced marking expectations is to introduce whole-class feedback in the form of a journal.  I call mine "notes and scribbles" because that is simply what it is.  No grid is needed for me to gather my thoughts - I simply write what is necessary without constraints.  This is just an A4 exercise book which I use across the primary subjects.  I used to write my scribbles on post-it notes but I find this is quite useful to keep all the notes together. I write the title and date at the top of the page to track the work and then write down anything I need to remember as I'm checking books.  This includes:

• issues to address with the whole class including spelling/grammar issues, repeated misconceptions, presentation reminders.
• focus groups of children for intervention on a particular issue.
• conversations to have with individual pupils about a misconception or error.  
• strong pieces of work to show to the class or to use as a model piece for the following year.
• a piece of work to look at as a class (I always ask for the child's permission to do this).

My notes are probably complete nonsense to anyone who hasn't checked the books.  Below you can see a page for an early piece of writing in which I'm gauging pupils' strengths and weaknesses, particularly in relation to their accuracy in basic writing skills (spelling, punctuation, paragraphing).  In every child's book, I underlined 3-5 spellings for them to correct (this indicates to the child that I've read their work).  

Annotated page in my Notes & Scribbles book. Click image to enlarge.

In the next lesson, while children are finding spelling corrections, editing their work or continuing their writing, I then set to, acting on the notes I took in the lesson.  

Child A has missed out many full stops.  When I was first a teacher, I used to write "please add in full stops" or something to that effect when faced with such errors.  However, missing full stops is often an indication that pupils struggle with sentence structure.  Therefore, rather than writing in this child's book for them to find where the full stops should be OR writing details about sentence structure at the end of their work, I spend a few minutes explaining sentences and then editing this work with the pupil.  We sat together with a highlighter and went through the paragraphs, putting a yellow line where the end of a sentence came.  Independently, the child then put in the appropriate full stops and capital letters; it wasn't how to put full stops that cause the misconception, it was why.  

(For more ideas to use when looking at sentences and sentence structure with pupils, see this post.) 

Child A's work after our discussion. Red pen = child editing. Green pen = me. Highlighter = work done together.
(You can also see she has corrected her spelling of discovered after my whole-class feedback.)

Child B has muddled her sentences in paragraphs.  Rather than writing "your paragraphs are muddled" or "please sort your paragraphs" or giving a detailed description of her error and how to correct it, I spent a few minutes with her discussing paragraphs.  She quickly realised where she went wrong and we used a highlighter to start sorting the sentences into appropriate paragraphs.  Independently, she continued highlighting and then rewrote the paragraphs.

Child B's work after our discussion. Green - S.C. Johnson.  Orange - the mission. Pink - the planet.

In looking at my pupils' exercise books, there's no indication about my checking and its impact on the pupil's learning but, combined with my notes and scribbles and with a quick explanation, it's clear that checking the work made a big difference to some pupils' understanding of the basics of writing.  Feedback isn't for someone scrutinising my books; it's entirely for the benefit of my pupils and I believe both checking and marking can have a part to play.

Please Note: All work is used with parents' permission.

6 KS2 Free-Writing Sessions (The Literacy Shed)

"When is our next free-writing session?" 

This has been the most-asked question in my classroom over the last fortnight.  After Easter, we started weekly free-writing sessions to encourage a love of writing in our year four classes.  These have continued as and when possible.  Free-writing sessions have been so successful in help kids enjoy writing and become better writers, I thought it was worth sharing the slides and notes from these six sessions.  

Each lesson is based on a video which can be found on The Literacy Shed website.  Rob Smith has created an amazing resource for teachers to use to inspire pupils in their reading and writing.  Although called free-writing, we encourage the children to base their writing on the video stimulus for the week.

We used the videos in the session notes and slides (freely downloadable by clicking the image at the bottom of this post) in year four but they are equally transferable across KS2.  Please check the videos are appropriate for your cohort or class before using them - particularly Alma, which is a little creepy! 

Every lesson the following things happen which are not on the session notes as they are something we discussed as a team before starting these sessions: 

• Pupils review their target from the previous week.
• Teachers collect appropriate vocabulary from children on the main whiteboard.
• Teachers model possible starters to different pieces of writing based on the stimulus.
• Children are given talk time before they start writing to discuss their ideas.  
• After talk time, pupils work silently.
• Children write in a separate free-writing book.
• Various word mats, sentence prompts and dictionaries/thesauruses are out at tables. 
• Pupils edit their work throughout the writing time and afterwards. 
• Children get the chance to read through someone else's writing and share their own. 
• Teachers ask what theme or genre children would like a free writing lesson on for the following week. 
• Teachers read and check children's work and simply mark with a target for the next week. 

We have found that by giving an incremental target for children to work on in the following session, weekly marginal gains have led to overall more effective pieces of writing.  It also doesn't take long to complete and it focuses the children on just one thing.  Before each session, we discuss any whole-class errors or areas for improvement.  Pupils are proud of the work they have done and we are happy with their progress since the first free-writing session.  

Here is an example of slides for one session (children requested one about sports) and below that is a clickable image for you to view and download all resources. 

From this, children wrote about clones in chess, gymnastics, skiing, netball, basketball and hockey as well as some great commentaries of the final game in the video. This really captured their imagination.

Click image to view and download all resources.

Education Graveyard

At the end of July, I will have completed a mere five years in teaching.  It sounds like a short amount of time but I can't say it has passed exceptionally quickly.  Recently, I came to sort out my cupboard in a bid to locate a "Little Miss Bossy" book which we use to teach imperative verbs.  In sorting through some of the items in my "teaching resources" and "displays" boxes, I started to do something which teachers rarely do - throw things away.  All of these items I had kept "just in case".  However things have changed in my classroom in the last five years so much that these are no longer worth keeping.  Some of the changes are down to my classroom practice and beliefs about education.  Other changes have been imposed from the government down.  I am sure you can work out which are which!  So here I present my Education Graveyard of the last five years.  

Ability Groups

I have written previously about how I was an ability group obsessive.  Over the last five years, I have gone from having ability groups for all core subjects to having no ability groups whatsoever.  Everything is taught whole-class in mixed-ability groups.  Movement is fluid so children can have adult support when needed and complete paired and group work successfully.  Read more about what I do instead here.  These velcro grouping charts were satisfying to throw away as I remember hours spent trimming, laminating, trimming again and velcro-backing the names that went on each set.  Also, notice below the death of "Literacy" and the rebirth of "English".  

Maths ability groups for display

Reading and writing ability groups for display

Connectives - RIP

The death of the humble connective. OK. Perhaps not so much a death but a retirement from duty.  Instead we welcome to the scene: conjunctions.  What's the difference? Who knows?! Why the change? Who knows!? I wonder, if we had a change of government, whether they'd rename them again.  It was too much of a long shot to keep these. Bin. 

Connectives display cards

Guided Reading Organisation Materials

If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that I stopped teaching Guided Reading in favour of whole-class lessons nearly three years ago.  Despite this, I apparently still kept my master timetable, monitor cards and information sheets.  We have gone on a long journey with whole-class reading and I have documented every step in this blog post.  Needless to say, these didn't require much thought before they made it to the dustbin. 

Organising 5 x 25min sessions of Reading carousel activities

Assessment Foci

APP was far from perfect. However, what it did provide for us, in all core subjects, was an overarching focus for sets of our objectives.  These seemed fairly logical to me and were easy to differentiate.  Unfortunately, the new curriculum provided nothing of the sort so we had to cobble up our own.  

Reading AFs

Word Wall

I feel like pre-made word walls have had their day.  Now this may be because I work in a school with a strict nothing-stuck-on-walls policy.  Or it may be because I prefer for displayed words to be more flexible and come from the children's ideas.  I still enjoy using Scribble HQ - my writing working wall and so no longer have a use for these resources.  

The Word Wall bricks

As it turns out, I never found the "Little Miss Bossy" book so I'll have to keep searching for that! 

The Power Of Choice in Learning

"You choose"

The phrase has so much more power than is first anticipated by the two short words.  By default, there is nothing prescribed for you but you take things into your own hands.  You have the power.  And that, alone, is powerful. 

I hadn't considered how important 'choice' is in learning until I started at my current school.  We have a 'Core Offer' which consists of things that we consider to be important elements and strategies to use in each lesson.  It is featured in our Teacher Handbook and is something which is referred to in planning and observing lessons.  I remember first reading through the Core Offer and recognising many of the elements as things I plan into lessons anyway: learning objectives matching activities, personalised learning and questioning, among others.  Every part of the Core Offer was something I did everyday, except for one. 

"Pupils will have an element of choice within their learning."

This really stuck with me and made me rethink a lot of what I do.  I have previously mentioned how early in my teaching career I was obsessed with grouping children by ability.  Thus I was prescribing what they did and how they did it.  Without meaning to, I was putting a glass ceiling on their learning; clearly this was before I'd heard of the idea of a Growth Mindset.

I started by including quite trivial choices for children to make so they felt they had some control over their learning: different colours of paper, a variety of context options or different writing implements.  Ultimately, these didn't have a great impact in their learning but I saw very quickly an increase in engagement.  They were buying into the lesson through a simple decision-making process.  This, along with reading about Growth Mindset, led to me completely changing how I managed differentiation, personalisation and challenge in lessons.

Rather than providing certain groups with prescribed activities at their level, I started explaining some different options of support to my class for the one activity they were completing and letting them choose if they needed support and how much.  Quickly, I realised this worked better if they sat in mixed-ability groups.  That way, they could learn from each other, keep their confidence as there's no "top" or "bottom" table and there was an enhanced team-spirit feel in the classroom.  With some guidance and conversations, children were choosing appropriate activities and challenging themselves.  I had never experienced a class so focused on their learning before and, without any evidence to back this up, I credited the element of choice for their enhanced positive attitudes.

It wasn't until the following year that I started to realise the difference choice can make for some children who struggle to behave in school.  I was teaching a child who had a tendency to cause problems during lessons.  Many teachers use "the choice" when managing behaviour in and out of the classroom.  For this child, the choice had always been whether to do the work in the lesson or not.  Teachers had previously said, "You can choose to do this work now or choose to do this work during your breaktime with *SLT member*".  Early on, I had taken a similar tactic but once the child was settled in my class, I started saying, "You can choose whether you do X, Y or Z" and the expectation was that the work was done in the lesson; the choice was about how the work was completed rather than whether it was completed.  This made a real difference and meant that they completed more work in the classroom and there wasn't the need for break time intervention.

Since then, I've been experimenting with different ways that children can have an element of choice in their learning.  Sometimes, the choice is about presentation format or use of practical resources; other times it is about the subject of a piece of writing or question to research, answer or investigate.  Each time, it amazes me how the children engage in their choice and produce some brilliant work, and reminds me how different the lesson would be if I had prescribed these elements.  

Related Links

Alison has used a writing project called You Choose which you can read about here.
You can read more about challenge is organised in my classroom here. 

Using Highlighters in Primary

In recent weeks, there have been a couple of blog posts (from Alex and Jon) about the use of highlighters in school.  Reading these made me think about my use of highlighters so I decided to go on a highlighter hunt in books for how both the children and I use them to have an impact on learning.  I was completely surprised by how much they are used in my classroom so here are some examples of what I've found they can help with.

CHILDREN'S USE

Sentence Structure

I have written previously about how I have tried to help children sort out there sentences.  Below, you can see how the child has serious errors in their sentences.  Using the highlighters to indicate a change of sentence makes it very clear.  The pupil can then re-write the work in the correct structure.  For more information about how I tackle ingrained misconceptions about sentences, please click here.

Maths Word Problems

I know often teachers ask children to highlight the information in work problems.  I get children to highlight the question as many times children have done the working out right but have chosen the wrong piece of information for the answer.  This helps them answer the actual question they are being asked.

Thinking Blocks

The children also use highlighters in their workings out.  As a school, we use thinking blocks to help children visualise mathematics.  Sometimes, it is necessary to colour some blocks so using highlighters is much quicker than colouring in or shading.  The child below is finding fractions of a number so she has used highlighter to indicate the amount which showing her understanding of the maths concept.

Here you can see highlighters used in fraction word problems and the calculation of the answers.

Long, Chunking, Bus-Stop, Column Division Method (Or whatever else you want to call it!)

Here, highlighters help the children locate where the answer is in their working-out notes.  

Subordinating Conjunctions

When using subordinating conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, children often forget the comma.  I can't remember whether this highlighting was done by a peer or the children themselves but it has helped to highlight the important parts of the sentence: conjunction at the beginning, comma after the clause and ending punctuation.  This serves two main purposes; it helps the children do corrections if they have missed elements and it highlights the key learning so it's easier for me to mark.  

ADULT'S USE

Stampers

I have a few stampers which give different options - highlighters make it clear which part refers to the work.  Our success criteria is organised into Good/Amazing/Awesome and I have a stamp to indicate that a child needs to remember Capital Letters or Full Stops.  You can see these highlighted below. 

Addressing Misconceptions

For children who can read and understand my comments, highlighters help me in explanations of their misconceptions.  Below, I have written out the calculation and the highlighter has helped me focus her attention on her target.

Pink/Green

Many primary schools use this: Pink = Tickled Pink = Evidence of great work  Green = Growth = Things to improve.  As you can see from the photos below, I use this across their work and on our success criteria which is titled Good / Amazing / Awesome (inspired by Ian).  Sometimes I provide corrections for the green areas but often it is the child's job to correct their work.  A simple pink or green mark near the end is accompanied by a comment to show an overall assessment of their work.

Scribble HQ - Writing Working Wall Display

Inspired by FootieFanMiss' Working Walls, this year I have kept a writing display as a fluid way of recording what we are learning and to help children improve their writing.  This is definitely a work-in-progress but the kids are really enjoying using it at the moment and it is having more impact than many of my displays have before!  This short, photo-heavy post will be a quick tour of what's on there and why!  To start with, this photo shows the wall as a whole.  I've called it "Scribble HQ" after the the location in my favourite children's book, Scribbleboy by Phillip Ridley.  I tend to read part or all of this book to every class so they understand the link! 

We are really focusing, in year 4, on word types so we have some mini word - clouds.  Some of them are pre-made but most are the children's ideas, sometimes with names or initials to give them ownership of the words.  

There is a space for our Alan Peat sentence of the week.

Next to this are some examples of the Alan Peat sentences in the books we have read as a class.  The children have got really good about pointing these out as we're reading so I try and bookmark them and write them up! 

When children bring in work which they've done at home linked to our writing, that goes on Scribble HQ too. 

I can use the display to address any little misconceptions which are consistent across the class.  Here you can see they are struggling to differentiate between these two words so this should remind them, complete with my lovely stick men! 

These post-it notes have been added this week because we are working on inverted commas for speech.  I stole some words instead of "said" from children's work, wrote it on a speech bubble and put their initial on it.  We'll add to these over the next few weeks so that children can have a variety to choose from. 

As I said, this is just a start and something I'm experimenting with this year.  I was a bit hesitant at first as I was unsure that it would be used by the kids and was worried it would take forever to do.  However I've found most of the content can be added in lessons and the kids use it all the time! 

UPDATE July 2015:

This is how the Scribble HQ display looks at the end of the year (minus my finger  and stapler - sorry!).  There are a few additions that are probably quite unclear:

th (top left) - lots of my class use f or v instead of sticking their tongue out for th. Cue a quick doodle to model it correctly. 

cos > because (at the bottom left) - I'm trying to counteract this lazy speech.

Tricky Spellings (top in the middle) - I just keep adding to this when particularly hard spellings crop up. 

TiP ToP paragraphs (top right) - just a quick reminder. 

Prefixes and suffixes (top left) - trying to make this part of their everyday language. 

Sorting Out Sentences

This year I have a group of children who are really struggling to write in sentences.  At some point along the way they have not understood how to write clearly.  They are not the weakest readers in the class and nor is their speech and language lagging behind - they simply haven't grasped how and where to put full stops in the right place.

I have tried a few techniques for getting them to correct their work and learn to start a new sentence correctly.  There is not one solution to this problem and neither will the same technique work for every child but you will see that these strategies can and have made a difference to these children.

Firstly, I started correcting the sentences for the children but this wasn't effective.

Next, I began drawing a line to show the children where the sentences go so that they could add in the capital letters and full stops.  This was more successful but they still didn't understand where to put the sentence end in the first place.

I was mostly out of ideas so at this point I turned to Twitter for help.  I cannot find who gave me this idea but someone suggest they write each sentence out in a different colour.  They tried it and enjoyed it and it made the sentences really obvious to them.  It also was kinesthetic; physically putting the pen down at the end of each sentence. For most children this made a difference and, with my help reading through their work, it enabled them to write in clear sentences. 

 However, the journey of one boy in my class was not so straight forward.  I let him write the piece of work independently before I read it aloud as it should read - with the full stops in the wrong place. Next, I would get him to read it to me and I would put in sentences (indicated by a line in the picture below) when he took a breath.

Then, like the other children, he would rewrite it with alternating sentences in different colours.

Unfortunately this still wasn't working so we tried another technique which was suggested on Twitter: highlighting.  He wrote this independently, then we went through it together, highlighting alternating sentences.

He then rewrote it correctly and highlighted the sentence punctuation using the colour key at the top.

After the Christmas holidays, he was doing much better and would independently highlight the sentence punctuation, reading aloud to ensure it was correct.

Below is the most recent piece of work he did.  Not only has he used the correct sentence punctuation but he has also included commas in a list and to show a clause. Big cheer, happy teacher, sentences: sorted!