Following the success of our first Marking and Feedback fortnight of the academic year, it was great to hear from Lead Practitioner Mr Johnson and Advanced Lead Teacher Mr Lyley in our Friday Faculty Focus at the end of last week as they outlined some of the superb strategies that staff had been trialling across classrooms in the school. Colleagues had been using the professionally published resource booklet created throughout 2022.23 entitled ‘Creating Consistency’ outlining proven ideas for making marking smarter and had been choosing one or two ideas to try out during the fortnight.

Highlighted ideas included Educake based recording techniques, code marking, live marking and student-teacher verbal feedback strategies. Colour coding feedback and the provision of repeated DIRT activities, in line with the online platform Educake, gave students an embedded and planned approach to improving their work in English.

The use of Padlet in Humanities provided instant live feedback in lessons enabling the teacher to respond in the moment and tailor the learning journey to addressing misconceptions and building more effectively on prior attainment, thus enabling students to make accelerated progress.

Parents and carers have commented recently that our approach to providing good quality marking and feedback has helped their children improve their work on a more consistent basis and make better progress. It is certainly something we want to continue to strengthen as we know that excellent feedback can assist students to make up to 8 months more progress in an academic year than expected.