Feedback and Marking

This is a hard post to write as I feel that this is one of the weakest areas of my teaching. I have to be honest, I struggle! I am well read on types of feedback and marking but I often find it a challenge to apply to maths when the answer is either right or wrong and it is SO natural to tick and flick. I hate ticking and flicking I also hate writing “great” or “well done” I despair when I see it in other books when I am observing. But what is the answer? I’m not sure I have one!

We did a lot of work around growth mindset, Carol Dweck being the expert. One of the things that came out of it was providing learners with a help zone. The idea of the help zone is that at any point in the lesson learners could go and seek further information to help them overcome what they are stuck on. This was universal to all subjects and it is something I really ran with. I always have a help zone, I have a travel pack for when I am in between rooms! It contains:

• Chromebook - learners can look online for answers

• Revision Guide - learners can research the topic

• Templates/grids - prompts that learners may need, e.g. lattice method grids pre-printed

• Equipment - if tracing paper will help with a rotation or loci question, why not use it?

• Dictionary - English one to help with definitions, overseas language to English if I have a few learners from the same country in class too

• Answers - to all the questions/worksheets/tasks of the class

Why do some teachers make the answers a secret, it was the same when I was at school. I vividly remember by teacher telling me that she would give me the answers after I had done the first exercises. Interestingly she recently interviewed me for a post, I didn’t recognise her, it’s funny how the mind builds up images of people over time! If the students have the answers they can mark their work and move on to an appropriate task when they are ready. Sometimes it is easier to unpick where you have gone wrong when you see the answer. I am a firm believer that as hard as understanding is to teach if you can articulate how, where any why an answer exists incorrect or correct you are on your way to developing understanding. 

If you are sat in my class and you can’t go forward because you haven’t got a clue how to tackle the first question. I would like to think I would spot you and be able to help. However with adults they can be very good and acting like a swan and mis-lead the teacher into being OK when they aren’t (this happens weekly with a student of mine who rattled through work happily but all of it incorrect!) If you are stuck and you don’t want to ask for help, how do you get help? Yes students should be comfortable asking for help, that is the purpose of staff being there! But sometimes it is a lot more than that, take my student with severe anxiety in public. For her to turn up is an achievement. Yet when she is stuck, how does she alert me, how do I know? I actually keep a close eye on her but what she likes best is that she has the answers and she can work out where she went wrong once she sees the answer and then move on. Take my confident student who likes to regularly tell me I have written something wrong on the board. She wants to know that she has got everything right and get to the harder work before I have even typed it out! She needs the answers so she can pick and choose a few of the easier ones to do, check she has got it and move on. Take my student who is a doctor in her home country. She needs the answers because she knows the maths but is unfamiliar with the language of the GCSE exam. She wants to read a few questions and answers before moving on to the harder work. 

If my learners have the answers, what am I doing I hear you ask? I have my trusty coloured pen in my hair. It can be red, green, purple or rainbow coloured depending on the department I am working in. I wander around the room giving feedback and asking students, why did you put that? Can you tell me how you got that answer? What would happen if we did this? I am helping those who are really struggling, offering alternative explanations. I am having conversations with my learners about their homework, or lack of it. I am asking them to move up a level in the tasks they are completing. I am spending time with them. I think that is a better use of my time than me standing at the front reading the answers out so that they can tick and flick.

So how do I record feedback? This is another challenge. They have got everything right, they have answered a more challenging set of work. We are collectively at the end of the topic now, where do I take them? How do I feedback? Like I said I am not an expert but I take this opportunity to ask them to find my error in some incorrect work that I have done or for them to write a cheat sheet of their workings out, I challenge them! See my post on Challenge for all

To record feedback is hard, most of it is verbal, or notes over corrections. I have tried the old, “verbal feedback given” stamp and they have to copy down what you said. I like this idea, it allows them time to reflect on what you said and by writing it down it may stick a little more than if they just heard it. However it takes time, it slows them down, pace is crucial in maths. I also have the challenge of adults who don’t really want to talk things through with me or admit that they are struggling freely, I mean who does! So I hit upon a fake imessage idea. It is a printed template, it has a blank fake messaging conversation

that looks like this,

We use this during the lesson to capture verbal feedback. I am the green, they are the white. Sometimes I will write in the green myself for speed. The white is what is important to them, their misconception. I then developed it to include a progress line on the top as well. This then meant that learners naturally wrote in the white part how they felt in my progress checks in my lesson. Say we were mid way through translations and we were just finishing translations with words before we looked at column vectors the lesson naturally has a progress check in, learners will record their thoughts in the white message bubbles at that point. “This is easy” “ I need to remember that I pick a corner first” and so on. 

When I think about my aim when providing feedback, it isn’t to say “great”. It is to develop the learner, that is why I am there. They can watch videos on you tube and learn translations without me. They can also find exam questions on translations and mark schemes and tick and flick them without me. The purpose of me being there is to help them overcome misconceptions. I am there to guide them on next steps. I am there to provide alternative explanations. I am there to praise them. I am there to support them. All of this needs an active dialogue between me and my learners. I need a one to one with them during class, after class, mid week when they tackle their homework and before they come into class to check on their actions from the last one to one. This isn’t possible! But if we have an active dialogue we can achieve many of these things. This messaging print out allows me to do this. Remember the old red card on the desk to alert you that a student was struggling. These do the same thing, they can write down they are unsure and you can see it as you go round the room. I take them in at the end of the lesson, provide detailed summary feedback from my point of view after the lesson. I set next steps or challenge work and we have 5 minutes reflection on what i have written at the start of next lesson. 

Now I know what I do isn’t perfect, nor is it ground breaking but it works for me and I may provide someone with a structure that may help them, so if you are struggling to avoid writing “great” it may be worth a try?

British Values in maths

I must admit, when British Values came on the scene, I let out a little sigh! Purely for the fact that I saw it as something else I had to do. I held onto this mindset for some time. I attended training on it, held in-house in my FE College, and my opinion changed. Once it was clarified that it was essentially a code of conduct for lessons I was off and running. I began using a stock template, here is a bit of an example.

Tolerance and mutual respect when discussing ideas. Promoting inclusion through targeted questioning.

I thought I had it cracked! My observers thought I was hitting it and I was never really asked to look at it again. Reflecting after, a half term, I let out a little sigh again. This time I was sighing at the fact I was including the same thing on my next set of planning. It was boring. But my mind got distracted and I never re-did it. Fast forward to the next half term and I was joined by a new PGCE student. Instantly I knew she would be brilliant, I wasn’t wrong! She blew me away in many areas but especially in British Values. She looked for democracy examples in Parliament that would bring her lessons to life, like when she taught fractions the number of elected MP’s vs non-elected Lords and their positions in the law-making process. It was a pleasure to mentor her. Unsurprisingly we employed her once she qualified and together we co-planned the following year. It was a joy! My British Values were on point and I enjoyed the challenge of planning for them. It gave my planning purpose rather than being an added extra.

Let me give you an example of how planning would work. Take compound area and perimeter. Queue screams of excitement at a lesson on compound area! Remember my students are re-sitters and have probably been taught how to calculate compound area and perimeter, they need it bringing to life! 

I assemble a series of T and L shapes of desks. Room size dependant!

We then, as a class, put chairs around the shapes, counting how many places are around the outside of the shape.

Then we imagine (or actually do if it is appropriate) putting the chairs on top of the desks and seeing how many chairs could fit inside the shapes.

Then we have a discussion about what we have done, hopefully concluding a difference between area and perimeter. (I always sing “round the outside round the outside” to remind them!)

Then I ask them to tell me if they think the area is large enough for a bedroom and how would they position the furniture if it were their bedroom.

Generally the students struggle to fit everything they want in their bedroom in, so I ask them to make a larger area using the desks so that they can accommodate their design.

I then bring up the “technical housing standards” from the government, 2015. Then we look at the government bedroom standards from the 2018 tenancies document. The minimum size is 6.51 m2. One of the L shapes I set up before class generates an area of 6.5m2.

I then ask the learners to imagine two 15 year old girls sharing the 6.5m2 room. 

I then explain the bedroom tax and that any room 6.51m2 is classed as a bedroom and children of the same sex inder 16 are to share. I give a scenario of a double bedroom, and two single bedrooms of 6.51m2. A family of 2 parents and 2 daughters aged 15 live in the house. They receive housing benefit and have had a 14% reduction in their benefit as the girls are expected to share and therefore they have a spare room. We then explore the rule of law, democracy and mutual respect and tolerance. 

My re-sitters sometimes share their own personal experience with this scenario and it requires delicate handling. I have felt uncomfortable in these conversations but I am comfortable with the experience I am giving the learners. British values and understanding the world we live in are of equal importance to me. Anything I can do to prepare my learners for the world outside the classroom holds as much value as course content as it develops them as young people and hopefully I encourage them to become active members of society.

This is just one example of where I integrate British values into my lesson, I have more but the joy of finding the opportunities yourself is really powerful and I encourage you to look again at your planning.