Book Check

Book Checks are aimed at considering the quality of teacher marking/feedback and the level of progress over time. In particular, we use Purple Pen time to allow students to work on their target areas for improvement.


Some students need to recognise that their books are a representation of their potential target grades and areas of strength. Before Parents' Evening, most students decide to complete their work a little bit neater or to give that extra 10% effort but by then it's usually too late. Students need to consider the quality of their notes and their presentation standards every lesson (and for their homework too).


Thinking in respect of ways to communicate the importance of their Purple Pen work and presentation, I've decided to use the following sticker to award students with a pride number...5 being the best! Let's see if it improves the level of care shown towards their books.

10 day, random acts of writing, challenge!

10 DAY CHALLENGE

I've been seeing quite a number of 30 day challenges on the internet lately (thanks to Pinterest). Wouldn't it be great to create a 30 day writing skills challenge for our students? Perhaps we could create a 10 day random acts of writing challenge list. Well then, no time like the present! So here's a challenge list I made earlier. It will grow into a 30 day one soon. I intend to hand it out to my students before the summer holidays.

Download your copy of the 10 day challenge here!

End of Term 3 target setting sheet

End of term reflections!

I decided to create a target setting sheet for  my Key Stage 3 and 4 English classes. I wrote a list of WWW and EBI comments for general reading and writing skills. It's more important to remind our students to question HOW they intend to achieve their targets instead of just identifying their areas for improvement. As a result, I've set up a list of strategies for my students to choose from in regards to how they intend to reach their personal reading and writing targets.

Students simply have to highlight two areas of strength and two areas for improvement from the writing and reading lists. Furthermore, they're also encouraged to re-read their highlighted targets and to summarise them into their own words in the last page of the document.

My students have reacted very well to the sheets as they recognised that there are several ways to revise for English - breaking down the shocking myth that "you can't revise for English!".

Follow the link below for the target setting sheet! :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOKbcWyKF4kbkxrQ0lqbWtZb2s/edit?usp=sharing