heart of heartlands lessons

Workload. Since joining the wonderful world of education, this is the word I have heard used the most frequently. My assumption is that no matter the longevity of your service, nor the brevity, workload is something that can demotivate and cause frustration in this otherwise sublime profession.

In my time at Heartlands, I have learnt many strategies to combat against workload, ensuring that working smart, rather than working hard, is always at the forefront of my mind; one area of which being for marking.

Whilst on placement, in my trainee year, I was shown how to use a crib sheet. An efficient way to deep mark students work in under half the time with more accuracy and differentiated support for students. What once had been a 2 hour trawl through a class of 30 had now become a 45 minute delightful experience.

How to use the Crib Sheet

The crib sheet is made up of 6 different sections: WWW, EBI, FIT Activities, Polaroid Moments, SPAG and Common Misconceptions. To use the WWW and EBI section effectively, it is best to come up with a success criterion so that students can receive targeted feedback in line with their assessment. Following from this, FIT Activities can be easily designed to help support those specific targets by creating resources that elevate those EBIs. By using a visualiser with your class, Polaroid Moments becomes a constructive way to share exemplars of excellent work from peers in the same group. Common Misconceptions is an excellent way to address whole class misunderstanding quickly and efficiently, and SPAG helps to target those keywords that are commonly spelt incorrectly.

Outcomes

Successes of this were that students were given more time to reflect on their EBIs; more scaffolding to ensure further improvement; common misconceptions were addressed, which helped me to identify where gaps in knowledge lay; and, most importantly, feedback was targeted for students in time for their AFAs. Along with the use of ‘Polaroid Moments’, a fantastic way to highlight where students’ work has been specifically impressive, students were more engaged with their learning and able to autonomously refine their skills.

If you aren’t using it already, I would strongly urge you to start, as I feel it is a resource with endless possibilities that will lessen the heavy workload we currently have.