Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Marking and Feedback Policy
This policy recognises the following Articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
(UNCRC):
Article 13: Children have a right to information
Article 29: Children have the right to become the best that they can be
Introduction
The marking of children’s work is undertaken to promote and assess children’s learning and to provide
them with motivation and encouragement. Our aim is to enable children to become reflective learners
and help them to close the gap between current and desired attainment.
This policy will:
• Promote high quality feedback throughout the school
• Ensure that children are taught and consistently encouraged to value feedback, and to know that it is
addressed to them and designed to help them learn, improve and achieve higher standards.
• Raise pupil achievement
• Provide an approach to marking that is both manageable and effective
• Standardise the schools’ approach to marking, ensuring that this policy is applied consistently across all
classrooms.
Principles of Marking and Feedback:
Marking and feedback should:
 Provide recognition and appropriate praise for effort and achievement, thus making it a positive
process.
 Provide specific information on the extent to which children have met the learning objective, success
criteria or their individual targets.
 Be manageable for the teaching team and accessible to the children.
 Give clear strategies for improvement, focussing only on 1 or 2 areas for improvement at any one
time.
 Set a challenge to move learning on if the child has met the learning objective. E.g. provide a question
or suggestion.
 Allow specific time for pupils to read, reflect and respond to feedback and make improvements
where appropriate.
 Be made throughout the lesson to reflect on the learning.
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Provide a tool for teacher assessment – diagnostic, formative or summative
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Promote children’s self-assessment by linking marking and feedback into the wider process of
engaging the child in his or her own learning.
Inform future planning and individual target setting.
Use the agreed marking symbols and systems throughout the school. (see appendix)
Comment on the presentation of work to ensure high standards of presentation in work across the
school.
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Teachers/ Support Staff should:
 Allow specific time for children to read, reflect and respond to marking where appropriate.
 Respond to individual learning needs taking opportunities to mark face-to-face where appropriate.
 Use the systems and marking symbols underlined in this policy
 Use marking and feedback to inform future planning and targets
Our Approach to Marking and Feedback
The following types of feedback are used in our school:
i) Oral feedback
ii) Marking/written feedback
i)
Our Approach to Oral Feedback
 This should occur whilst the work is being carried out or is fresh in the child’s mind.
 Oral feedback must always be given when an adult is working with a small group or individual children.
 The adult will talk to the child about how they have met the learning objective or individual targets
and then question the child about a specific part of the work
 Oral feedback may be to correct a child’s understanding or to extend the child’s learning
 Oral feedback is particularly important in the foundation stage or where a child is unable to read a
written comment
ii)
Our Approach to Marking/Written Feedback
Frequency of Marking/Written Feedback across the School
 All work should be marked.
 Marking and feedback should take place as soon as possible. This should be during the lesson
alongside the child or soon after the lesson.
 In Key Stage 1 (KS1) a minimum of one piece of extended writing per child must be ‘quality’ marked
every week against personal targets. Children must be given time to read, reflect and respond to this
‘quality’ marking in order for it to be effective.
 In the foundation stage teaching staff will focus on giving regular oral feedback but they may write
a comment with the child when work has been recorded. Staff also annotate work as part of the
process of gathering information for the EYFS. With some children this process will carry on into
KS1.
Methodology for Marking in Key Stage 1
 Teachers should identify what they need to assess in each lesson in order to determine the amount
of detail required in marking.
Examples:
Diagnostic assessment e.g. mental maths test – ticks and dots (for incorrect answers) by the teacher
could be used here to provide the teacher with information to inform planning
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Formative assessment e.g. during a maths topic or work on a particular genre in English – specific
feedback is given to indicate what is good and why it is good and how the child can improve their
work. Time needs to be provided for the child to respond to feedback.
Summative assessment e.g. at the end of a unit of work – used to quantify and reward achievement.
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Minimal marking should indicate progress towards the learning objective using the triangle system.
For formative assessment, and where the child has not fully met the learning objective and/or
success criteria, the next step in learning (NSL) should be indicated and the child should have the
opportunity to respond to this.
All work will be marked in a green pen and must be consistent with the school handwriting script.
Staff should initial each piece of work that they mark on the learning objective slip
Teachers should ensure that the agreed codes for marking are used to ensure continuity across the
school (Appendix 1). Some codes are subject specific.
Teachers must ensure that children understand the school’s marking and feedback systems including
marking symbols. Time should be given to explain systems and symbols to the children.
Marking should focus on successes against the learning objective and improvement needs against the
learning objective (or individual targets when this is the lesson focus)?
Spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. should not be marked in every piece of writing unless this is the
lesson objective or relates to individual targets. This is because children cannot effectively focus on
too many things in one space of time.
Marking should be cross-curricular to encourage children to consistently apply their skills in English
and mathematics.
Work should not be over marked as this confuses children and can have a negative impact on their
self-esteem and motivation.
If a member of staff has difficulty reading or understanding parts of a child’s work, the work needs
to be discussed face to face with the child.
Where it is necessary to annotate children’s work i.e. because it is difficult to read, this should be
done sensitively. Full transcriptions of children’s work must be done in black pen or pencil at the
bottom of the page or on a post-it note.
Enabling All Pupils to Respond to Marking and Feedback
We shall enable children to respond to marking and feedback by:
 Ensuring that verbal feedback, marking symbols and teachers’ comments enable children to develop
their understanding of what has been learned and the steps needed to improve
 Asking pupils to read and, if appropriate, respond to the teacher comments as part of the classroom
routine
 Encouraging teachers to use responses that will elicit responses from pupils
In the foundation stage and in the early stages of year 1 it is appropriate for pupils to comment on what
they have done well, a problem they have overcome and what they need to improve to develop learning
(for example, three stars and a wish).
Examples of prompts to elicit responses from pupils include:
 I have learned to…
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
 I am better at…because now I can…
 My work is good because …I could make it better by…
 I get mixed up when I try to…I need help with this
 I found this work hard because I don’t know how to…
In Key Stage 1:
 Pupils should be given 5-10 minutes as required to respond to feedback (NSL) and edit their work
accordingly at the start of lessons or at various times throughout the week when the teacher feels
that it is appropriate
 Teachers should model how to respond to feedback
 Children are encouraged to ask for clarification, if they do not understand a comment, and should be
clear about what they need to do, as a result of the feedback they have received
 Self-assessment and feedback relating to this should form part of the process
Individual Writing Targets in Key Stage 1
 All pupils in KS1 must have individual writing targets. A writing target sheet must be attached to
each child’s writing book to ensure children have access to them.
 Year 1 pupils should have at least one writing target available to them from the start of autumn term
1. Able children should have 2 targets.
 Year 2 pupils should have 2 targets in place from the first few weeks of the autumn term.
 Each child should be familiar with their writing target/targets i.e. they should be able to tell a
member of staff what their target/targets are. Where possible children should be involved in
setting their own targets.
 Teachers must plan for and provide children with the opportunity to work on their targets at least
once per week. Teachers should mark children’s work against their writing targets at least once per
week.
 Marking should indicate where children are making progress with targets and praise and rewards
should be given as an incentive.
 School writing target sheets should include:
i) The child’s name
ii) The date of when the target was set and met.
iii) Individualised child-friendly target/targets relating to next steps in writing and assessment
criteria.
iv) 3 columns alongside each target so that progress towards each target can be ticked and dated
 As soon as a child has met a target, they must be given a new one.
 Children must demonstrate progress towards a target in 3 pieces of work. The teacher will tick one
of the 3 columns each time that progress is demonstrated. (See appendix 2)
 Writing targets should be achieved within 6 weeks and target sheets should show demonstrate that
regular progress is being made. If regular progress is not being made teachers should consider the
following indicators:
i) Does the child understand the writing target? Has the target been explained? Have the
required skills been modelled explicitly?
ii) Have opportunities been provided for the child to demonstrate progress towards their target?
iii) Is the target appropriate? E.g. is the target too challenging?
See appendix 2 for an example of a writing target sheet.
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Self-Assessment Marking Across the School
Children should be given the opportunity to self-assess their work regularly, particularly in core
subjects.
In Key Stage 1 this will be achieved by children using assessing their performance against the learning
objective and success criteria in literacy and numeracy work. If a child thinks that they have met the
learning objective they will record a tick against it. This process needs to be modelled and discussed
regularly with the children for it to impact fully on their learning.
The following methods can be used for self-assessment in the foundation stage:
i) Traffic lights – red (R), amber (A), green (G)
ii) Two stars and a wish
iii) Traffic light smiley face cards
Note that these methods can be written or verbal. Children will do this initially through conversation
with an adult or through whole class discussion.
Peer and Paired Marking in Key Stage 1
Children should have the opportunity to discuss and review their work with other children. They should
be encouraged to identify successes in other children’s work and also look for improvement points.
 A number of points need to be considered:
i) Children need to be trained in this process, through the teacher modelling with the whole class.
ii) Ground rules should be established (listening, confidentiality, etc.) so that all work is evaluated
with sensitivity.
iii) Pairings should be ability based
iv) Children should be aware of the learning objective , otherwise they will talk about punctuation
and neatness.
Shared Marking Across the School
Teachers may use a piece of work form an unnamed child to mark as a class on the whiteboard. This is
particularly relevant to English work. It is recommended that the teacher seeks the permission of the
child in advance. This process enables the teacher to model the marking process and teach particular
points at the same time.
Keeping Parents Informed
Guidance and information on marking will be shared with parents at Meet the Teacher meetings. Written
information on marking and marking codes will be enclosed in homework folders.
Supply Teachers
Supply teachers are expected to use the triangle system to mark books against the learning objective. A
list of the school’s marking symbols will be included in each classroom blue folder. Teaching assistants
should refer supply teachers to this information.
Monitoring and evaluating this policy
This policy will be monitored through further consultation with staff and through planned reviews.
Children’s workbooks will be monitored as part of the school monitoring cycle by the SLT and subject
leaders, with feedback given to individual members of staff.
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Where appropriate, the SLT and subject leaders will highlight good practice and areas for development,
in a summary document.
Approved by staff: 2nd September 2015
Approved by GB committee:
Approved by full governing body:
Review date: September 2015
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Appendix 1: Key Stage 1 Marking Codes
Symbol
Meaning of symbol
Notes and examples
General Marking Codes
Learning objective fully achieved
Learning objective partially achieved
Learning objective not met
VF
S
Verbal feedback given
Support given
NSL
Next step in learning
Where ‘S’ is not used the child has
worked independently
NSL
Marking Codes for English
LF
Letter formation
sp + ___ correction
Spelling mistake
^
is
Today ^ Thursday
A word is missing
Remember to use spaces between
words
/
//
CL
.
? !
Teacher to give example of correct
formation
sp sed said
“
,
/
I went to the shops with my mum.
Start a new line or paragraph
“What’s that?”// “I’m not sure,”
replied James.
Capital letter(s) missing
Full stop(s) missing or check your
work for full stops
CL thomas
In the wrong place or you have
forgotten to add this/these
Marking Codes for Mathematics
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?
!
Thomas
“
,
Marking and Feedback Policy
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Hillside Infant School
Incorrect
Tick for correct answer
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Marking and Feedback Policy
Hillside Infant School
Appendix 2
F
Example of Individual Writing Target Sheet
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