Episode 18: How many colours is enough when marking?

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Hello, I'm Emily Guille-Marrett.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Introduction

This is The School of School podcast. Welcome to The School of School Podcast.

Adam Gifford

So the question that I get asked often, and I imagine lots of people do, what's your take on marking, right? What's the best way to do it? How does it work? And it's multifaceted but one thing that comes up is the use of different colors in marking. So you might have different experiences of this, right? Whether it's as a parent, people you know working at schools, seeing it in different books and whatever. The question I want to pose to you is this, marking how many colors is enough to mark books? So I'll throw it out there to the first bidder. Don't know if it's going to be Andy or Emily but...

Andy Psarianos

Okay. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I've actually never really thought about... I was actually quite surprised the first time I ran into this because my experience in school was that there was only ever one color, was always red and it was always showing you what you got wrong, right? That was my experience with marking as... or the only thing that I remember as a student or a pupil. I know that, that's now almost become, I suppose, a science, an art. Certainly something that lots of people have opinions on. I've never really thought about it, but I don't know. I mean, what's your take Emily?

Emily Guille-Marrett

So I love stationary. So, I could see how there's a lot of people out there that... I teach at higher education level, but I don't teach for the little kids, but I do know a lot about... I've seen a lot of books in my time and I know teachers have opinions and I understand this.

I love stationary so I see some teachers get very excited by all the different colors that you could potentially have. And yeah, kind of who is that kind of for, that's one thing. It's a bit naughty of me, but that's true. I'm deadly serious about that.

I've seen marking where the different colors, the highlighter pens delineate certain different things. So, the teacher's got a system that this one might be the spelling, this might be... this is another thing to look at, this is a good thing. And then at the bottom it kind of reminds you... And then you've got your conclusion with your colors, like your key and then what they're trying to advise that.

It looks pretty fancy on the page, and I have to say, I have experienced on one occasion, parents loving it. I'm not sure whether the children got anything out of it. I mean, again, I'm being a little bit controversial, and a little bit, cheeky got a little issue as you can probably tell about it. But what I found fascinating, was it delivered for the parents because they felt that that was a very diligent marking job that that was being done there. That made them feel good because they felt that their children's work was being well marked.

They didn't matter what the mark was or what the viewpoint was, but somehow there was a lot of... I found this really interesting, it was a little turning point for me in my views of marking, but what I loved was the parents. The fact that they bought into this, the look of it, it was good. It was this deep marking. I also find people like, and I'm going to pronounce her name wrong, is it Daisy Christodoulou? And she's been doing the... she's part of the no more marking. There's a lot that's been done on no more marking. We don't need to mark it, and arguably, maybe there is no colors on there, on the other extreme, and that's not necessary and it's the feedback that we give in other ways that that is required. So from rainbow marking to no colors at all, I don't know where I sit on it. But you can tell, I have some issues around some of the pretty pages that I've seen marked.

Adam Gifford

I see stuff like that and I think of teacher workload. Freaks me out. I think because it's, again, I'm a bit broken record with this, right? But I always... Show me the evidence. If you've got a school that does really well with no marking and a school that does really well and they use five different colors, I want to know why? Did the marking or not marking have anything to do with it? Or did the learning happen even before you got to the marking stage?

And I know that there's been phases, a lot of teachers nod their head to this were two stars and a wish. Yeah, that was a key one. Now I'm not saying that these are bad things, it points out two things that you had done really well and I wish you had done this a bit better. So, this sort of phraseology, when it comes to marking, it almost like it just... it captures the imagination of everyone and you want to get on board with it or use green pens for your targets and use blue pens for this and purple pens for this one over here cause we don't want to use red anymore cause that upset the children. And you kind of think maybe that's just because it upset you as a child and now you're an adult and you can get to make those decisions. Get rid of the red pens because I didn't like it when I was a kid cause you always used to mark my spelling wrong, you know? So I've got a bit of an issue with that.

So I kind of... I just wonder about things like this is, are we focusing on the right... what is the impact at the end of the day? How many marking policies have been developed without the children being involved? I don't know. Do we just say, "Well, no, they won't like red," and I've heard a child say, "We quite like red because it's easier to see than purple, Mr. Gifford." Okay, that kind of just makes sense, I can read it.

So I don't know, but when I do see highly elaborate marking, the first thing that goes through my mind is if I was a teacher, and particular if I was starting as a teacher, would the time it took me to mark to that level of presentation, would that be better off spent with me learning my trade and about a subject? Or if I was marking something that was about creative writing? I wonder if that time could have been reduced somewhat and I could have learned how to support children, learned creative waiting a wee bit better rather than spending a huge amount of time marking. So I just think we need to be careful and we need to make sure that the time we put into it, is worth it. And we need to put those checks and balances in to make sure that it is.

Andy Psarianos

So this came up once when we were doing a lesson study, the question was around journals, right? And someone asked a question, do you mark the journals? And it wasn't really a clear answer, but a few people kind of voiced their opinions about it and stuff. And I think the question that resonated with me or the point that somebody made that really resonated with me was why do they write the journals? Is it so that you can assess them? Or is it part of the learning process? And do you expect them to have well formulated ideas at that stage?

Because if you're throwing the journaling up at the beginning of the last lesson, so you heard we do this discovery thing, then you're going to do some journaling, right? They don't really have the idea yet, this is now part of the learning process. So is it even fair to mark the journal? Because really what you want is you want that journal to be owned by the child and you want it to be a learning tool of theirs, where they write maybe their unstructured ideas as they're wrestling with this new concept. Then is it fair to point out their errors and... are you helping? What's the point of the marking, right?

I remember being small and keeping in mind, I don't know why every opportunity I get I talk about how miserable my childhood experience was, and that's not true, actually. I actually enjoyed going to school, I just wasn't good at it. I remember writing as a small child and being so excited about this story that was inside of me, that was coming out and I was so proud of it. And then you get that piece of paper back from the teacher and it looks like the M25 at rush hour, right? It's just a bunch of red marks everywhere, like brake lights and it's really deflating, right? Well, I thought I was pretty good, but now you're telling me it was actually kind of rubbish.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Is it where... That's interesting, Andy, because it's where it is as well. So you've made me think about my youngest son. I sometimes tell stories, but one that was a bit of a light bulb moment for me and he'd done a painting. So this is when he was in year one, a long time ago now. No, no, probably younger than that actually. But anyway, he'd done this painting and it had this lovely message on the front of the painting like, "Great work Albi. I love your whatever it was." It was such a sweet message. And there's mom, there's me, "Oh, what a lovely teacher. She's so nice and nice things about my child's painting. It's so wonderful." It's been damaged as far as he was concerned. His canvas had been ruined by these scribbles-

Andy Psarianos

How dare you.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Yeah, it was really... It was fascinating. Because I thought, for him, he would've been happy to have been told that or maybe have it written on the back. It's just as you were saying that it was like the M25 and they scribble over all my work. And I was thinking sometimes maybe we forget what the power of the pen entering the space that has been written or drawn on. It's really interesting.

Adam Gifford

But I think the other thing too, so we're talking a lot about say corrections, yeah? Where things go wrong. One of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever, ever read both primary and secondary school, but happened to be a year six, girl Izzy. Oh, I'm probably going back a good 20 years now. I read this piece of writing and it utterly flawed me. It was beautiful. Simple. There wasn't a single word... the number of words she used was perfect. Not a word less, not a word more. Utterly perfect. We put it against the SATs marking criteria and it was pretty crap. And if I put it against the marking and I was doing two stars and a wish, I would have to do a throwaway wish thing to say, "I wish you could write like this every day Izzy," but that piece of writing was not an everyday piece of writing.

It was a stunning, wonderful piece of writing that you... I don't know, you're lucky to produce once or twice in a lifetime. She happened to do it when she was 11 years old. And so I think that again, this is that whole thing around, we've got... I know that SATs but it's still a form of marking. You're still going to mark it, make decisions based on a criteria and that is what markings about. Every day when we take books home, we are marking to a criteria and we're in that routine and we do it. And I think sometimes we've just got to accept as well there's stuff that just doesn't fit into that. And actually, I would've spoken to Izzy the same way I'm speaking about it now, very passionately because it did. It knocked me for six, I couldn't wait to see her parents.

I told everyone. Not a person didn't get dragged in that day to read that piece of writing. Stunning. But also to remind all of us that actually, who gives a toss about the criteria sometimes. Who genuinely cares about that when you've got something like that? Yeah, and so I just think often with marking, it's referred to too much. Oh, there's too much going on and all that sort of stuff. But I also just think it limits saying, "Do you know what? That's pretty special." And that's what more do you need to do when you see that and children are sincere when you say stuff too. I think that if something moves you like that piece of writing did, that's better than any marking set up that you're going to do.

Andy Psarianos

So how many colors is it now?

Adam Gifford

Oh, struth.

Andy Psarianos

Well, I think it comes down to you got to use your professional judgment. Is what you're doing is it helping the child learn? If it isn't, then just stop doing it, right?

Adam Gifford

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

If you can't see how this is going to help anybody, then why are you doing it, right? And the answer to that might be because I don't know, my head teacher said I have to.

Adam Gifford

Yeah.

Andy Psarianos

Right? And in which case, well tough, right? Do it. Don't complain. There's no right answer? Is that what we're saying?

Adam Gifford

Yeah. But remember, fight your corner when you have a piece like Izzy's. That's what I'd say, just as a wee reminder. Just use those to evaluate and interrogate a policy.

Emily Guille-Marrett

Yeah. But Adam, how lucky was Izzy to have you, I think.

Adam Gifford

Oh, I don't know. I think anyone would've been moved by her writing, in fairness.

Andy Psarianos

Thanks guys.

Closing

Thank you for joining us on The School of School podcast.