Using Peer & Self-Assessment in the
primary classroom: Self & Paired
Marking
From Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research Project
Self & Paired Marking:
Key Principles
• Aim for children constructively marking
their own work against the Learning
Intention of the task, sometimes with a
partner
• Children need to be trained, in stages, to
mark their own and others’ work
• There need to be ground rules about paired
marking to avoid anxiety
Feedback from the teacher, peers and
self-assessment is based on the “success
& improvement model”
Unlocking Formative Assessment
Shirley Clarke 2001
Closing the learning gap in marking –
success & improvement model
• Make learning intention clear
• Indicate successes and improvement needs
against the learning intention
• Keep closing the gap comments to a
minimum (Too much information confuses)
Closing the learning gap in marking –
success & improvement model
1. Highlight or circle three places where the child
has written the best aspects against the learning
objective/intention (for younger children one
success may be enough)
2. Indicate with an arrow where some
improvement could be made – usually one
improvement is enough
initial findings were that children loved the
highlights, but hated the arrows – mainly
because they did not know how to make the
improvement
Closing the learning gap in marking –
showing children how to improve
• Extend the arrow to the nearest white space and
write a “closing the learning gap” prompt for
the child
• Choose a reminder prompt, a scaffolded
prompt or an example prompt depending on
the child
• Insist that the child responds to the marking
• This enables him/her to make a small
improvement and start closing the learning gap
In Peer & Self Assessment the aim is to
involve children in the analysis and
constructive criticism of their own work
• Feedback is integrated into the structure of
the lesson
• Time is built in for reflection in a structured
way
• Pride in successes, modification and
improvement become a natural part of the
lesson
Class reflection on success &
improvement – one teacher’s model
• Find one word or phrase you are really proud of
and underline it
• Tell the person next to you
• Three minutes to identify two places you have
done well against the success criteria (eg success
criteria: use good connectives) and read it to your
partner
• Five minutes to find one place you could improve
• Write your improvement at the bottom of your
work
Whole-class checking approach
•
•
•
•
Use 2-3 minutes near end of lesson
Pupils could use a green pencil or any colour
Could focus on one success criteria
Could be an ongoing check on sentence
demarcation, key spellings, adjectives etc
• Pupils read their own work
• Teacher praises improvements
Teachers have found that more learning takes place in these 2
minutes than if children had just continued with their work
When asking children to check for spellings ask them to look at
key words or those that they know are wrong
Self-Assessment
Quality self-marking needs to be
introduced in stages
Quality self-marking stage 1:
children identify their successes
• Teachers have found that children as young as
year 2 can easily identify successes if the learning
intention is clear
• LI should be a knowledge, skill or concept rather
than a broad concept
• Successes can then be read to a partner or shared
in a group or whole class setting
• Identifying successes improves self-esteem and
encourages children to continue to improve their
work
Quality self-marking stage 2:
children identify a place for improvement
• Do not introduce until children have got used to
identifying successes
• Ask children to find one place in their work
which they think could be improved against the
LI
• Children then draw a wiggly line (or underline in
green) under the sentence or phrase to be
improved ready for teacher to write
improvement suggestion
• Teacher will write improvement comment later
• Child will then improve his/her work
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•
•
•
Quality self-marking stage 3:
children identify successes and make an
“on the spot” improvement
Once children have become used to the teacher’s
improvement comments, they can be asked to identify an
area for improvement and make their own improvement
in the lesson
It is usually best for children to do this on their own at
first
If they are used to pair discussion, they may be able to do
this in pairs straight away
The teacher’s role now changes from being a full-time
“marker” to an effective interventionist, commenting
only when necessary and advising on children’s own
decision-making
Quality Paired Marking:
findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research
Project(1)
•
Teachers were asked to experiment by asking children to
highlight success in a partner’s work
•
“I have introduced writing journals, for children to write to a
friend and share one thing they liked about their friend’s
writing” (Y2 teacher)
“I don’t exactly ask them to highlight success with a pen. I ask
them to work in pairs, read each-other’s work – then say two
positive things and make one suggestion for improvement”
(Y4 teacher)
The feeling was that although children could say good things
about another’s work, they would need support to be able to
relate those good things to the LI or success criteria of the
lesson
•
•
Quality Paired Marking:
findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research
Project(2)
• A few teachers reported that what transpired in
some KS2 classrooms was that children wanted to
discuss the highlights with their friends and were
doing it at their own instigation
• “ They started to do it themselves. They look at
the highlights and discuss. They are doing it
naturally” (Y6 teacher)
Quality Paired Marking:
findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research
Project(3)
•
•
•
A small number of teachers who had tried peer
highlighting had found that some children as young as Y2
were able to spot the appropriate bits to highlight
“When they are working with partners they can pick out
the bits they think are the best and know why. A child will
say “That’s what we had to do (success criteria) and these
are the best bits”” (Y2 teacher)
“Sometimes they are able to say whether work met the
success criteria – and say why” (Y3 teacher)
Quality Paired Marking:
findings from Shirley Clarke’s Gillingham Research
Project(4)
•
•
•
•
•
The impact of paired marking relies on the teacher
allowing time for children to consider the marking
“I have given them time to share their highlighted bits
with each-other – this made an impact on the use of
conjunctions when that was the LI – some children could
see from others’ highlights how to use conjunctions” (Y6
teacher)
“Children do understand the prompts better when they
have time to discuss them with a friend” (Y6 teacher)
“I am consciously making time for them to talk about
their improvement” (Y5 teacher)
“I ask them as a matter of course to read the highlights to
themselves and think them over” (Y4 teacher)
12 Golden Rules for peer assessment
with a “response partner” (1)
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Both partners should be roughly the same ability, or one
jump ahead or behind, rather than a wide gap
The pupil needs time to reflect on and check his/her
work before response partner sees it
The partner should begin with a positive comment about
the work
The partner needs time to take in the child’s work so it
may be best for the author to read out the work first. This
also establishes ownership of the piece
Children need to be trained in the success &
improvement process or whatever marking process is
being used
Children must both agree about the part to be improved
and changed
12 Golden Rules for peer assessment
with a “response partner” (2)
7.
The author should make the marks on his/her work as a
result of the discussion
8. Children need to be reminded that the focus of their task
is the LI
9. The response partner should ask for clarification rather
than jump to conclusions (creating a dialogue)
10. The improvement suggestions should be verbal in the
first instance
11. It is useful to role-play response partners in front of the
class, showing them the wrong way and the right way
12. Use response partners two thirds of the way through a
lesson, so that children can make the improvement and
continue writing with a better understanding of quality
Our Agreement on Marking with Response Partners
We decided that there were some rules we all needed to keep.
When we become Response Partners we all agreed to:
• Respect our partner’s work because they ahev done their best
and so their work should be valued
• Try to see how they have tackled the Learning Intention and
only try to improve things that are to do with the LI
• Tell our partner the good things we see in their work
• Listen to our partner’s advice because we are trying to help
each other do better in our work
• Look for a way to help our partner achieve the LI better by
giving them a “closing the gap” activity to do
• Try to make our suggestions as clear as possible
• Try to make our suggestions positive
• Get our partner to talk about what they tried to do in their work
• Be fair to our partner. We will not talk about them behind their
backs because we wouldn’t like them to do it to us and it
wouldn’t be fair