New Marking Scheme Across School

Dear Parents/Carers,

I am writing to share information about a new way we are marking work and giving children feedback in school. As a staff, we agreed the primary purpose of marking/feedback is to help the children's learning move forward. To this end, we have adopted a system that can be summed up as essentially, "Green for good, pink for think, purple polishing pen to fix or improve."

The teachers and TAs are all equipped with pink and green hi-lighters and will circulate in the lesson ("live marking") showing the children where they're doing well and how they can improve.

Green hi-lighter is used for:

Work that meets the Learning Objective/Success Criteria.

Where a child has used a great word or phrase.

Correct use of punctuation.

Where a child has got something right they've previously been getting wrong. 

To denote that the Learning Objective has been met.

Pink hi-lighter is used for:

Spelling errors, tailored to the needs of each child, prioritising high frequency and non-negotiable words.

Sentences that need re-writing for clarity.

Punctuation errors.

Incorrectly formed letters. 

This is not an exhaustive list and teachers will develop their individual style, which the children will grow to better understand as this marking style embeds. On the vast majority of occasions, there will be more green marking than pink, and not every error will be pinked. 

Children, in response, all have a "purple polishing pen," which is used to addressed the errors hi-lighted in pink. Teachers have spoken with children about mistakes not being something bad or completely avoidable - but rather opportunities to help us learn and get better.

This marking scheme is in the early stages of implementation, but having chatted with a few children, I have been pleased with the comments: "It makes you more focussed," "I can see more easily what I've done wrong and what I've done well."

If you are interested, talk to you child about this new method of marking - I'd be very interested to hear their thoughts. 

Kind regards,

Miss E Wilson

Headteacher