Marking compositions is rather tedious and time consuming, especially since I have a tendency to go back to the marked ones to check for consistency etc. After some trial and error I managed to come up with system that worked for me. First I will go through each question, writing down what the questions requires and some possible answers that I think students might provide. Following this, I will then take six student’s scripts that I know falls under the good, acceptable and poor category. After marking these six scripts, and providing a grade for them, I will then use it as a basis for my marking for the entire class. This is in order to standardise and allow for marking consistency with minimum biasness and errors on my part.
The students would have a marking rubric that they know I base my marking on, showing the breakdown of marks for both language and content. The student’s rubrics is based on the marking rubric that was provided by the school, but it was further broken down by myself and approved by my cooperating mentor, in order for the students to easily understand what is expected and required in their free writing. The rubric follows the O’level requirements closely, in order to train the students to be aware and look out for not only their content but more importantly their language since they would be weakest at this point in that.
Free writing marking is one of the most fun and yet hair raising activity and this is especially so for my normal academic students who are very creative and can provide the most amazing and some fantastical story line. That, combined with their poor grammar and vocabulary makes for hilarious yet stressful reads. Although it was mentioned above that a set of rubrics was provided for the students, it is also one that it largely helpful for the teacher, since in my case, I have a tendency to rationalise to myself whether or not the student deserves the particular grade awarded to them, or do they merit a few extra points for effort etc. Before I made use of sampling marking, I went through every set of scripts at least 4 times, and each time scrutinising and rationalising, and also correcting inconsistencies that I had indulged in. An easily understood set of rubrics also allows the student’s to have a clearer understanding of what they should look out for in their free writing component.
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Interesting tactic. What I did instead was to mark all the papers without giving any numerical grades. I then separated them into different bands before allocating the final numerical grade. This way, I only had to read in depth once and simply scan for my own comments the second time.
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