Feedback to Feedforward: designing a Marking Policy for KS3 and the new GCSE

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about how to tweak the KS3 curriculum taking into account the new MFL GCSE specifications. It was great to see that not much change was necessary per se, and the important goal, definitely for my team, was to put into place a rich curriculum targeted to reach Oral Fluency by the end of Y11, where real communication opportunities, international collaboration and cultural embedment in our SoWs were the key foundations, under the umbrella of a common departmental/school vision and what we know of cognitive science.

The next step is to create a clear Marking Policy anchored in meaningful feedback to move forward. It is what I like calling Feedforward.  I wrote about this in a previous post on different ways to provide feedback: Spinning the plates.  I wanted to design a clear Marking Policy that would not require my team to mark books every two weeks for the sake of it but would spell out different ways to provide feedback to students' work/performance in the classroom with the intention to check for understanding while providing clear steps for pupils to move forward. 

Nevertheless, it was important that we all had a common and clear benchmark against which to assess students' work for key pieces of productive work, especially towards the end of a learning unit. For that, I thought it would be a good idea to use the 5 Magic Powers + amount of communication/information given, as a way to help students to monitor their work and for us teachers to mark it:

1. Using more than one tense

2. Giving opinions

3. Giving reasons

4. Using reported speech

5. Using high impact expressions

The idea is to provide 5 points per Power, depending on how well each element  has been fulfilled/mastered in a productive task, giving a total of 25 points, similar to the new AQA GCSE Mark Scheme for Writing, and a further 5 points, in the case of Oral tasks to assess Pronunciation and Fluency. 

One may argue that real communication and fluency is not the sum of a specific list of elements, imposed on us, let's admit this, by the GCSE exam. In fact the new GCSE criteria for speaking and writing is very, very similar to the current one, at least in the case of AQA. I can't agree more, being fluent is more than that.

However, I see many benefits when using this benchmark:

1. We tackle some of the elements that will determine success in the inevitable final GCSE exam. This is vital. If students, as from Y7, are familiar with these elements and these are fully embedded in their language output while being fluent, in the communicative contexts when this is appropriate (we would not use 2 tenses or reported speech to perform a transactional conversation in a shop or a casual chat with a friend), the learning journey at KS4 would be much more approachable.

2. Students LOVE to know that what they are learning is actually something typical of a later stage, it makes them feel clever! ANCHORING IN CHALLENGE like Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby call it in their book Make every lesson count. It is the power of having high expectations, regardless of our students' attainment.

3. In my experience, these powers/elements work because students will always have something to say, which helps with fluency, developing motivation and self-efficacy. This doesn't mean that students speak in big monologues, but will always have something to answer when prompted with questions such as: What's your opinion on this? Why do you think this? and what happened next? 

4. The elements, especially the high impact expressions, are underpinned by real idiomatic expressions, frequency words and common verbs  that native speakers use constantly in their oral interactions: "puede ser" "suele" " puede que" " hace que" "ojalá" "si pudiera" 

Of course, this mark scheme shouldn't be used with all pieces of productive tasks but only with key pieces of writing/speaking at the end of a learning unit, when the communicative context is relevant and allows this criteria. 

When giving levels within the command of a Power: there are 3 levels with points assigned to it.

Let's take the Power: Covering the points of the task + Using more than one tense. 

There are three levels: 

Excellent command of the power, with a clear explanation of what it would be expected for this.

Good command and its explanation.

First Step: You are in the right path to command this power! This allows students to have a positive engagement with their work and a clear pathway of what is required to get to the next level. There's no failure, students just move up level at their own pace. This is important for resilience: Mistakes are the first step to learning!

This is, of course, still a working document, which I would expect to tweak, modify etc.. as the year goes by. This is the link to access the whole Marking Policy with the actual mark schemes for key pieces of writing at KS3, adaptation of the new AQA GCSE mark scheme for official end of year exams and the current GCSE KS4 mark scheme for timed writings and oral tasks for Y10 and Y11. 

Marking Policy example