Marking – it’s something every teacher becomes very familiar with, very quickly. It can take up a lot of time and will probably form a central part of your workload as a teacher. But how do you prevent marking from getting on top of you? Here are our top tips to help you become more efficient when marking your students’ work:
- Be organised. This is key to making sure your workload is manageable is staying organised. Keep a list of everything you have to do and make sure it is updated every day. Whilst this might take up more time, it will help you so much in the long run.
- Prioritise. Once you have started your list, put it into an order that makes sense to you. You could colour code it so that you know which books need to be marked first, or keep it digitally and re-order it so that the most essential work is on top.
- Know the school’s guidelines. Each institution will have its own guidelines about marking and how it should be done. Discuss these with your department to make sure you have understood them fully and make sure you use them, or you might end up doubling your workload by having to do it again!
- Get the students to help you. Ask them to mark each other’s books, or to grade their own work. This will make it quicker for you than beginning to mark from scratch, and it will help them to get to know the mark scheme, so that they can understand what is expected of them.
- Do some work in school. By the end of the day, you will probably be tired and ready to go home. This doesn’t feel like such a reward when you have lots of marking to do in the evenings. Try to get as much work done in school as you can to keep the two separate.