Welcome to School Stickers, today we’re sharing 6 ways in which you can cut back on the time, stress and effort when marking through your pupils work.
1. Mark as a team. Whether you have a good friend in the same department or you work on opposite sides of your school, get together with colleagues and mark together. You’ll all end up spurring each other on, with less distractions and you might even find you get more done in the time you allocated than expected. You could do this a few days a week for one hour after school or as often as needed. It’s a great way to share the strain and not feel so alone under marking pressures.
2. Invest in some stamps. At £14.95 our stamps are a pricy outlay however you’ll get so much from them and save crazy amounts of time, you’ll wonder why you didn’t get them sooner!
Stamps save you from having to write out the same messages over and over again in pupils books. Our stamps are also self inking which means you don’t need to worry about messy ink pads, you’ll get 100,000’s of impressions before the ink starts running out.
With over 50 different designs and messages to pick from as well as specialist stamps for all subjects it’s easy to find your perfect marking tool. As an added bonus we can add any text of your choice such as your school or teacher name or even a message at no added cost!
3. Write all of your feedback sideways. This means you’ll always be able to spot who is and isn’t reading their feedback and you can give a gentle nudge to those who don’t turn their heads sideways.
4. Reward Achievement. Give pupils a sense of achievement for getting a concept right, it won’t just reward them, you’ll also feel great once you see the sparkle in your pupils eye. Everyone loves a sticker, it doesn’t matter if you’re 5 or 55, you’ll feel a sense of achievement seeing a shiny reward waiting for you.
They also mean you don’t have to write out reward messages over and over.
5. Utilize self and peer assessment. For some of your it will be a requirement that you’re already doing this but to those that haven’t given it a go it will save you marking pieces of work completed in class.
You’ll find a whole host of material on self and peer assessment on our blog alongside some great marking stickers designed specifically for this purpose.
6. Set yourself targets. Do you want to mark your whole classes books in one hour? Spend two minutes on each book and 5 maximum on an essay? Make these decisions and see how much you can get done. It’ll spur you on and you’ll be less likely to procrastinate and give up.
Are there any ways you manage to make your marking less stressful or even enjoyable? Let us know in the comments below.
