Marking mocks: strategies for success?

A strategy for success

Every year I devise a mock marking strategy to keep me sane and organised. I have noticed over the years that my strategy has become less focused on the number of papers I mark per day and instead, more focused on the quality of the feedback I give students to help them improve. This isn’t to say I have it sussed as there is always room for improvement in this job, however, I can confidently say that this strategy allows for greater consistency, accuracy, efficiency and leads to more meaningful feedback for students whilst also acting as a chance for students to practise retrieving knowledge and improve their procedural skills.

Prepping the students

We are fortunate to have 10% of students’ curriculum time for RE lessons as we are a Catholic school. We take two lessons to prepare students. 4 weeks before the exam, in Lesson 1, we explicitly teach revision strategies specific to RE and get them started practising these on the content of the units featured in the exam. Lesson 2 is to teach a strategy for the most challenging question (an evaluation essay worth 12 marks). 

Clearing the decks

As Head of Department, I carefully plan the assessment points for each year group, spacing them out, so that my team have space to focus on the mocks. We each have two Year 11 classes so this is important. Balancing workload demands, our curriculum intent and implementation, timing and rationale for assessment points as well as timing of whole school data drops are really worth my time despite being very difficult. Ultimately, I want my team to value the opportunity to assess students using the mocks rather than resent the time they take.

Knowing your ‘why’

Mocks are valuable and multipurpose as Dawn Cox explains in her thought-provoking blog. From my class teacher perspective, they are formative and can help me to know students’ misconceptions, gaps in knowledge and weaknesses in exam technique so that I can plan for greater progress. From my Head of Department perspective, they are summative, (albeit for a brief moment in time) in order to inform the students, parents and senior leaders, plan for intervention and put in place access arrangements. Having all of this in mind helps with my focus and keeps me motivated to do my best.

One question at a time

Having understood the implications Wilingham’s simple model of memory (2009) for my students’ learning, I now apply this to how I function in my role as a teacher. I don’t really know why I didn’t do this straight away as obviously, it’s not just students who can suffer from being cognitively overloaded! Selecting one question on the exam paper and then marking all of these, student by student, has meant that I am not taking up space in my working memory as I switch from one question’s mark scheme to another. Benefitting from the marginal gains this provides, I can mark faster and I can be much more accurate too.

Your time is valuable 

Having tried many different ways to speed up the marking process, including awarding myself Malteasers after marking a certain amount, the most effective strategy for me has been using the Pomodoro Technique (Maria Vole explains this brilliantly in her Go Student blog). Again, this is what I would teach the students to do - because it works - so again, I feel silly for not having tried it out sooner. Having put a timer on and set myself a challenge eg 15 questions to complete in that time and then hiding my phone I can be much more productive.

No comment

The whole class feedback method which has been hailed as a workload saviour for teachers (read more in Daisy Christodoulou’s blog) means no comments in red pen from the teacher to the student. In theory, if you are spending 5 minutes handwriting comments on one paper for one student and you teach 2 classes then there are five hours of your life you’ll never get back. Therefore, I still record my comments but, as I mark, I set up a PowerPoint slide for each question and write the comments on there instead. Additionally, this means I am planning meaningful feedback lessons whilst I mark and therefore saving time. Unlike the end-of-unit assessments, I do write their mark for every question on their paper although I do not give grades until the end of the process as explained below. 

Time to Feedback 

The feedback slide for each question will be edited after marking all papers as I reflect on the main issues I found. In this example, I included a structure checklist for students as I noticed many students had missed out on essential structural elements and I wanted to emphasise the importance of including them all. Each question may have a different emphasis or activity bespoke to that class’ needs. 

The mock exam is 4 sections and we deliver feedback over four lessons, section by section. With four weeks between the day of the exam and the data drop, we aim to mark one section and feedback every week. This means workload for my team is eased as the deadline for marking is broken down into smaller chunks. Whilst four feedback lessons seems luxurious when we still have new content to teach, this is hugely important as we can maximise the impact of the feedback. This also serves the purpose of spaced revision of these units which takes the pressure off having to cram in revision lessons in the lead up to the real exams in May.

In the final lesson they get the grade boundaries and work out their grade (nice chance to get some numeracy into RE). We explain that this isn’t too realistic as they only do one paper and it has been made up of our own questions and past questions from different exams. We leave the grade until then because we want their focus on our feedback and making improvements rather than on how they emotionally interpret the grade. 

Students hate it, which is a shame

In every pupil panel session with students, lots of them will say how much they hate the fact that their teacher ‘doesn’t mark their work’. Turns out they like the red pen. However, when the feedback approach is explained fully, they do understand the rationale and agree that they do find it more beneficial. But, often, they still say they don’t like it because ‘it is hard’. This is because, in feedback lessons, students have to think hard to work out which mistake applies to them and work on fixing this independently. So whilst they dislike this process, we insist upon it for their benefit!

Fixing the gaps - in the students’ memory AND in the curriculum

The next stage is to compile a list of common errors or misconceptions and create quizzes for students to repeat as homework (online self marking quizzes of course) or in class as low stakes quizzes. If these can be repeated, if there is time alongside learning new content, then we can reduce the revision time on these units at the end of the year. This process also really helps us as teachers to improve our explanations for the next cohort when we teach these topics. My next steps are to review my set of homework quizzes students do weekly throughout key stage 4 to check all of the common errors are covered.

I am sure this process will continue to evolve as we take advantage of using evidence informed approaches and become more efficient. But for now, this strategy is working pretty well and I hope reading about it has helped you with yours too. Tips and comments from fellow teachers are most welcome!

Cox, D (2023). What’s the Point of Mock Exams? https://missdcoxblog.wordpress.com/2023/02/12/whats-the-point-of-mock-exams/

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School?. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Don%E2%80%B2t-Students-Like-School/dp/1119715660

Christodoulou, D (2019) Whole-class feedback: saviour or fad?, The No More Marking Blog.  https://bit.ly/3uKOZoD

Vole, M (2021) The Pomodoro Technique: How Successful Is This Study Method? Go Student Website https://insights.gostudent.org/en/the-pomodoro-technique