Closing the gap with peer marking

Came across a great example of how peer marking can be effortlessly, but effectively used to close the learning gap today – courtesy of our Head of Geography, David Brading (@davidbrading).

It went like this;

Step 1 – Peer marking based on clear success criteria

Students were set a writing task – ‘Describe in detail how humans use fold mountains’.  They were then given clear instructions on how to peer mark the work:

Circle the work when you see any of these. Put a number in the margin to reference.

1- Name of area- countries

2- Point- eg farming, tourism

3- fact of figure

4- Because

5- this means.

An example follows:

Step 2 – Peer markers write formative comments

Having marked the work in this way, the marker then had to write a formative comment, using the following guidelines:

– Write a Positive comment…. ‘what you did well was…’

-To improve the answer you could…..

-Set them a question to answer….

An example follows;

Step 3 – Students respond to marking comments

Once the work was handed back to the owner, they then had to answer the questions that had been set for them by their marker – shown above.  The marker’s comments are in red and the response from the owner of the work is in blue.

Step 4 – Students log improvements

Following this, the student then had to transfer the improvement comment on to their ‘Progress Tracker Sticker’ – to act as a reference point for later revision.

A simple but very effective process.