What Peer Marking Can Tell You About the Marker

Peer Marking:
-time saver
-gives children the opportunity to see each others' work
-allows pupils to receive feedback from people their own age

Here's something we've recently learned to use better...
- Pupil A completes their work
- Passes it to Pupil B
- Pupil B reads the work and leaves a peer assessment 
(This does all the points above)

- Teacher reads the assessment and gains a better understanding of Pupil B's grasp of the task

Some examples:

Above: peer used 'story' - we were writing a recount. 'Describing more' is ok, but describing what and how - does the peer assessor know?

Above: 'Nothing' - really? A piece of writing in Year Five (or at any age) with no scope for improvement?

Above: Tense identified. What 'sentence types' and why?

Look at your peer assessments more closely. What does it tell you about the pupil carrying out the assessment? What do and don't they know?

Plant a Conker!

I was in the park with my three year old daughter. I found a conker on the floor. "Look," I said. "What's that?" she replied.

I explained, it's a seed, grows into a tree, you can play with it, it's spikey, but brown and shiny inside. "What?" she replied!

So, we're going to plant it...

So, right now, it's about 'Conker Season'. Grab one. Plant it. Share it's journey with this class. And, your next... Then, plant it in the school grounds. 

Talk about how it grows and remember where it came from and what it will grow into.

In fact, as the year goes on, plant the odd seasonal item and have it there in class as an ongoing experiment that can be referred to.