I’m marking work and writing reports for Y9 (they have them early to help them with their choices for GCSE courses). I’m dismayed by the poor work that they feel they can get away with handing in. Some can’t even hand in a piece of work with their name on (what grade should they be given?).
I want a reporting system that lets the child see what grades they have and even see what I am going to write about them. Then maybe they will hand in the work that is missing or improve their behaviour BEFORE the reports go out. Parents would be more involved too.
While a lot of the blame lies with my inexperience of teaching, the fact is the reporting cycles are still long in schools. And kids are plodding aimlessly through a faceless system.
It’s not your fault Richard!!! If you’re using Moodle then I’ve just been playing with the assignments. You can have submission for electronic documents, and offline assignments for anything they hand in.
You can also set up your own grading scales – e.g. levels or even sublevels. And if your pupils are grouped then you can do the quick grading for one group – so just go down the group giving levels/comments. Extremely quick.
Once done the grades/comments will be in the grade book of each pupil. I have a feeling that they can even change their settings to recieve an email when their grades are uploaded – so they’ll know instantly.
For those that don’t hand in work I sent group emails to them all telling them the date to hand it in by or the date to come for detention. Wasn’t easy – but seemed to be of some benefit.
Not sure if you’re using Moodle though.