Verbal feedback involves the teacher responding to students’ work verbally in lessons: ‘How about trying it this way… Have a look at your answer here… Can you see that…?What could you say in this sentence about how she is feeling?’… etc
‘Live’ marking involves the teacher circulating during the Guided and/or Independent Practice part of a lesson, looking at students’ written work, and putting some marking/written feedback on it in red pen (at HBK, teacher feedback is written in red pen).
Teacher feedback – done well – has a huge effect size, and teachers use verbal feedback regularly as part of their stock-in-trade. ‘Live’ marking is a different matter: for a variety of reasons, it is not typical practice in many schools, but I think it has an important part to play.
I think the main benefits of live verbal feedback and live marking are:
1. They provide a brief regular opportunity to connect with individual students and to check for understanding – done habitually, that means a lot of connections with individual students over time
2. They enable teachers to look at students’ work in the moment, while the students are doing it. An error or misconception spotted early can be addressed early. That contrasts with taking in written work and finding that a student made a significant error four lessons ago; the moment has passed – better late than never, of course, but better early than late
3 Live marking avoids – or it certainly reduces – the workload resulting from taking in class-loads of exercise books on a regular basis
4. The student can act on the feedback and improve their work there and then – provided the verbal or written feedback requires them to: remember Dylan Wiliams’ key challenge to teachers to make sure that feedback involves more work for the recipient than the donor – actionable feedback (e.g. Sp = correct your spelling mistake x3; Re = rewrite/recalculate this part …)
5. When teachers look at students’ books regularly, even briefly, the students are far more likely to keep their books well (a higher standard of work, with less graffiti, less wasted space etc). The converse is true, too: unmonitored books will often be badly kept
6. Teachers circulating to give feedback and do marking are also managing students’ behaviour because they are getting next to the student who is sitting idly, and the student who wants to use spare moments to chat with their mate; circulating regularly in the classroom is a key classroom management technique
Here is the Teach Like a Champion 2 take on the issue: ‘Reading, assessing and responding to students’ work in real time are indispensable to checking for understanding, showing your interest in students’ work and setting a tone of accountability…’ (page 185 of my 2015 edition)
There is certainly a cost to live marking: the teacher has to be disciplined in maintaining the live marking habit – which means habitually taking the red pen as you circulate around the class. Ideally, a teacher will look at students’ books, in class, regularly – how often probably depends on how many lessons per week or fortnight they teach the class. But … if you mark one book only in a lesson, or one row … that’s one more than you would have had you not embraced live marking and feedback.
Live marking allows teachers to connect with students and provide actionable feedback whilst also reducing their out-of-lesson workload. It’s a great teaching habit.
FAQs – Overheard staff room conversation between a live marking enthusiast and a live marking sceptic.
How can I get around all the students or any at all? I’m teaching!
Well, Barak Rosenshine would say that if you are not designing episodes of guided or independent practice in your lessons, then your ‘teaching’ is not as good as it could be! We need to get round!
Yes, but how is it fair on a class if I mark some students’ books and not others? And what’s the point?
This is where ‘marking’ – actually making marks such as ticks in books – comes in handy. You can see at a glance which books you’ve checked so you don’t go checking the same ones again. Use a tick (and for really good bits use a double tick or a quick smiley 🙂 the students will love it!) Then you can ask for a quick ‘whose book have I not see in the last few lessons?’- a nice way for everyone to feel valued! Got Year 11? – ‘Whose book have I not seen recently? Please leave your books open on my desk before you go. Thank you’.
So is that all I have to do to get management off my back in monitoring – just tick and flick?
No – the tick is for you! You know what you’ve seen and where you can go back to to do more checking next time … if you want to! And the ticks are for the students, too – that acknowledgement from you might be the highlight of their day. We sometimes complain about a lack of effort or low standards from students … just think of all the students we don’t have the time to praise, thank, reward … or even just acknowledge (not our fault – what a tough job!) – a little tick or double tick during the lesson now and again won’t hurt at all … far from it!
I never remember to take a red pen with me when I’m circulating, but I AM circulating!
Yes. It’s about habit. Run back to your desk and get it – it’s worth it! Once you’re in the habit you’ll wonder how you ever managed to give incisive feedback without it; it’s a low-tech wonder!
Yes but feedback where you just write in all the answers for them is useless. Better, surely, to just let them work out where they went wrong by themselves.
There’s a point there; you can underline or put a question mark by something and wait a moment to see if the student recognises their error. If you get an ‘oh, yeah!’ moment … great – green pen time for them. If there is an underlying misconception or gap in knowledge you can ‘just tell ‘em’ and/or just show’em – either way … it’s green pen time for the student, and they learn something.
Is all that individual feedback worth it? Isn’t it better to do whole-class feedback – less work for the teacher.
Don’t both have their place? If you walk around with your red pen and find several students with the same mistake or knowledge gap, you can go back to the front ‘woah, woah everybody – this thing is causing a problem so it’s worth going over together …’. And of all the things that teachers do that are time-consuming … at least let it be the things that have the most IMPACT that we don’t give up on!
