A key stage 4 and 5 focused email this week, my apologies. I hope the ideas provided can help make reviewing the mocks a little more productive. Here are some ideas I found:
1. Split up the questions into "easy to mark" and "hard to mark" questions. As the teacher, you will probably want to mark the "hard to mark" questions yourself, but there is a huge benefit to your students if they self-mark or peer-mark the "easy to mark" questions. You can either write your own simplified mark-scheme if you think the official exam-board mark-scheme will be too complicated, or let them loose with the real thing. Ask students to use two differently coloured pens (red and green work well - red for errors and green for great things) and annotate their work using the mark-scheme.
2. Always consider looking at the answers to difficult questions as a class before you hand any marked work back to your students - the discussion is more likely to "stick" with your students if they aren't simultaneously feeling a) annoyed with their mark, b) smug and elated, or c) trying to find out what everyone else in the class scored.
3. How to "go over" difficult questions. One suggestion is to write your own model answer, and ask students to compare their own answer to the model answer, using a highlighter or coloured pen to indicate the differences. Another suggestion, also involving a model answer, is for students to focus solely on that answer before seeing their own answer - ask students to indicate where marks for different Assessment Objectives have been awarded, or the use of "signposting" or "structural" words such as consequently, therefore, furthermore and so on. A third suggestion is to provide a personalised cover sheet to each student, attached to the front of their mock exam, on which they need to write down 5 key learning points that they want to take away from their exam along with a personalised piece of homework to complete for the next week based on the feedback from their exam (this could be anything from "learn definitions more accurately" to "include more evaluative points" to "set my work out more neatly") - next week, check that they have indeed done their personalised homework.
4. Resit the mock in a few weeks time - you can choose to alter questions slightly, or set the same paper. If you have students who have done brilliantly well first time round, give them a different paper to tackle, or appoint them to your "marking team" (you can always provide biscuits as an incentive!). Alternatively, keep a note of the questions that students struggled with first time round and ask them to just repeat those questions.
I hope the students take something more than a grade away from the mock examination process. Have a great weekend.
Best regards,
Neil
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