2009-2010 - Hornbill School Website

• Changing your classroom management;
• Giving them shorter term targets and rewards:
• Giving the child more time;
• Being more flexible;
• Involving someone else to help;
• Involving the Inclusion Leader/support service;
• Bringing in parents on a more regular basis.
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Marking Policy
1. Introduction
Our marking policy offers guidelines to all our staff on the way in which we respond to
children’s work. In many cases, our response will be to talk with the child about their
work so that we can have a discussion with the child rather than simply making a
written comment. In the cases where this is not possible, we try to mark their work in
an honest, positive and supportive way that will encourage them to make progress at
their next attempt.
We also recognise that marking children’s work offers information which we can use in
assessing the level of their skills, knowledge and understanding of the task they have
undertaken. In this way, information gained from marking children’s work informs
planning of the next step that the child needs to take in their learning.
2. The purpose of marking children’s work
At Hornbill, we believe that marking our children’s work serves the following purposes:
To show that we value our children’s work and the effort they have made.
To give an indication of the professional opinion of a child’s work, to outline
expectations of them and to discus with them achievable targets.
To enable us to assess how much the child has understood.
To provide a basis for making assessments linked to the National Curriculum
levels of achievement.
To identify areas for development and inform IEPs or ITSPs.
To motivate and encourage the child through positive and constructive
comments which will help them to make progress.
3. Common principles about how we mark children’s work
We mark all our children’s work in graphite pencil or black or blue pen or in
those colours agreed in our school editing keys. (Copies of KS1 and KS2
keys attached.)
We try to use the child’s name in a written comment because we fell this
makes it personal.
We would never want the amount of correction to be over-facing for a child,
even when there are many errors.
We endeavour to use the Nelson style of handwriting when writing
comments in order to provide a model.
Often we prefer to take a selected paragraph in a longer piece of written
work or a particular section of maths work and mark in a pre-determined
focus – this then informs future planning.