An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback). This blog post has been beautifully illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati.
Accompanying podcast episode:
Whether it’s high-stakes assessments, end-of-unit tests, coursework, homework or classwork, it’s inevitable that every teacher will have to mark some assignments the old-fashioned way from time-to-time – i.e. by hand.
This can be a daunting task for many of us who, in today’s EdTech age, are so used to marking things digitally (or allowing software to do the work for us!). I’ve written at length, for example, about how automated systems like MyMaths and Educake, and live-quiz apps that have ‘assignment’ options, can mark classwork, homework and other assignments within seconds and provide detailed analytics within summary reports.
Thankfully, I’ve been in the position where there’s no other option but to mark assignments by hand more than a few times in my 17 years as a high school teacher, and I’ve made every blunder possible – wasting countless hours of my life in the process!
At least I now have enough experience of doing marking the wrong way to pass on my knowledge to my readers – I guess every cloud does have a silver lining, after all!
So, get your red pen ready (or whichever color you wish to use) and let’s learn how to efficiently mark assignments by hand!
#1: Mark every script one question at a time, or one page at a time
What this means is that if you have, say, thirty exam papers to mark, then ONLY mark question 1 for each paper (or page 1). Then, when you’ve finished marking question 1 (or page 1) for each paper, ONLY mark question 2 for each paper (or page 2), and so on.
The reason this works so well to improve your marking efficiency is that:
- You will get quicker at marking the same question the more times you do it in succession.
- It becomes easier to compare one student’s answer to another, which is great for choosing model answers to showcase and to ensure fairness.
Marking our papers this way is MUCH quicker than marking, say, one whole exam paper/assignment, followed by another, then another.
#2: ALWAYS have a mark scheme available for the assignment you are marking
Never set an exam paper or assignment if it doesn’t come with a mark scheme. If you don’t have one, then create one. This ensures fairness and efficiency during the marking process.
During my early years of teaching, I would find myself quickly creating exam papers and assignments due to my poor time-management skills. I would often forget to source the mark schemes for those documents.
Have you ever tried to mark a stack of exam papers without having the model answers to hand? It’s a nightmare scenario! You’ll find yourself spending tons of time attempting to apply marking consistency across multiple answer types. This is almost impossible to do without a mark scheme.
Another behavior to avoid is quickly sourcing worksheets or assignments from the internet, without making sure there’s model answers that go along with them. This is a particularly toxic action for the busy/stressed teacher, as time is limited. It seems like a great short-term fix to quickly source those questions from a particular web link you’ve found. However, in the long term, you’ll pay for it with frustration and more wasted time since it will become very difficult to mark that work in the absence of proper marking schemes.
#3: Keep your papers organized
Don’t lose them – and that’s easier said than done! I find that it’s often best to keep all of my papers at school and do all of my marking at school, because:
- Papers don’t get lost in transit (e.g. if I were to take papers home to mark).
- It’s good for my work-life balance – schoolwork stays at school.
Consider creating a special area of your room to keep the work that you are marking by hand. Perhaps a special drawer in your teacher’s desk is appropriate, or a shelf on your classroom wall.
#4 Utilize live marking where possible
One-to-one conversations with students offer the best possible feedback out there – because those conversations are personal and should involve some metacognition. Students will have to process information and think about their responses deeply during the live-marking process, which should always involve some type of conversation (even if it’s a short one).
If possible, walk around the class and mark work in real-time as the students are doing it, or call them to your desk one at a time for a conversation and to add some hand-written comments to their work.
I’ve written an entirely separate blog post about efficient marking strategies, which includes a detailed section on ‘live’ marking, here: The ‘Four Pillars’ of Time-Saving Marking – Richard James Rogers
#5 Do NOT give the work back to the students until the data has been inputted into your school’s tracking system
This is sounds so obvious, yet, to my embarrassment, this is a mistake I have made in the past.
This really is the epitome of stupidity because once the graded work has been given back to the students, you’re going to have quite a job on your hands to get it all back again so that you can input the assessment data.
Mark it, input the data, then give it back to the students. If that means that the students have to wait a little longer to get their work back, then so be it. Due diligence is more important than quick turnaround.
Summary
I really hope this blog post was helpful. Life is precious, and short, and too valuable to be marking work inefficiently in my opinion.
Speed up your marking time by….
- Marking one question at a time, or one page at a time
- Sourcing mark schemes for EVERY piece of work that is to be marked by hand
- Demonstrating good housekeeping by organizing your papers – don’t lose any!
- Marking work in real-time, if possible
- Input the assessment data into your school’s system before giving the work back to the students
In addition to the above points, I would also advise teachers to seek help from colleagues when you are unsure about how many marks to award for a student’s answer. You may find that a fresh perspective will confirm, or refute, your initial thinking on the matter. Also, get efficient with free periods/non-contact time, too. If you plan what you will mark in those ‘frees’ carefully, you’ll find that minimal weekend and evening time is taken up with marking (which is what the status quo should be).
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