What is the Problem with Marking Criteria?

(They are a plan of attack)

You know how, when you moderate as a department, teachers often disagree on marks? You know how some of your students just get a grade you can’t believe, either much too low, or much too high? You know when you try to do peer assessment, and students don’t have a clue what grade to give?

There is a common cause. Marking criteria are abstract. Totally open to interpretation. So open to interpretation that Ofqual’s research shows English is the worst marked GCSE nationally. Senior examiners only award the same grade as other examiners 50% of the time.

The solution, for another time, is comparative judgement.

But for now, I want to propose another solution. Success criteria which are not abstract, but concrete. Success criteria which are clear and simple things to do - no ambiguity, no need for interpretation.

This is an extract from my book, The Full English, to explain what I mean:

Plan of Attack for Literature

Sadly, we are stuck with an exam system. A plan of attack is the name I give to a strategy which works for that question, every single time. Here are some examples:

The extract question for 19th Century texts and Shakespeare:

1. Take the subject of the question, and write a plan of how it changes/develops chronologically over time in the text. (e.g. How does Dickens develop Scrooge’s views/ a sense of fear/ a sense of compassion for the poor etc)

2. Include 2-3 author’s purposes to showing this change.

3. Include 4-8 moments where changes or developments occur.

4. Check the extract – it will overlap with at least one of those changes – identify the quotations which will help you write about this change.

5. Write the essay chronologically, and include the extract where it is relevant to your argument.

6. Always write about the ending, because this is where authors always reveal their final, changed viewpoint, or that of their characters.

For example:

Starting with this extract, explore how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in A Christmas Carol.

Write about:

• how Dickens presents what Scrooge is frightened of in this extract (which is the introduction of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come)

• how Dickens presents Scrooge’s fears in the novel as a whole.

Plan/Thesis Statement:

Dickens uses Scrooge’s fear of the ghost story to amuse, not shock. He wants his readers to enjoy the ghost story, and the redemption it produces. Then he wants Scrooge’s fears to prompt his readers to fear that they are insufficiently like the reformed Scrooge, and too much like his earlier self, caring too little for the poor, disadvantaged and humanity beyond their own families.

Changes/Developments

1. He focuses on society’s fear of the poor in the attack on the workhouse and the twisting of Malthusian economics shared by his readers.

2. He focuses on Scrooge’s childhood fear of poverty and loss of fatherly love, and allows Scrooge to heal this through the Ghost of Christmas Past

3. He focuses on the fear of death of the disadvantaged – Tiny Tim is Scrooge’s turning point

4. He deals with society’s fear of the poor, reflected in the undertaker, charwoman and the laundress, to show that their poverty is created by people like his readers.

5. He tries to encourage a fear of revolution if poverty is not dealt with, through the figures of Ignorance and Want. (His previous novel, A Tale of Two Cities, was set during the French Revolution).

6. He uses the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come to focus on his readers’ fear of death and changes this to the fear of not making a difference to society while alive. (This will include the extract).

7. The ending of the novel, where fear is banished because of Scrooge’s transformation which allows him to reject the laughter of those cynics in society who would mock him for his generosity to the poor.

Now we can see that “starting with the extract” would completely ruin this chronological argument. Conversely, planning it chronologically has led to a multi-layered analysis of Dickens’ purpose. You can also see how starting with the extract would also encourage students only to focus on the fear produced by the ghosts – in my view a very limited understanding of the text and Dickens’ perspective.

(Obviously my plan is not indicative of the detail a student would write in their plan in the exam. However, it is indicative of the detail students would practise during lessons when being asked to think through a chronological plan of attack to particular questions).

N.b. It would satisfy the exam criteria if the answer is not written as an essay at all. Students might simply write two sections, one on the extract, and another on the novel. The exam is simply not a good test of literature. But because this approach will always lead to a weaker answer, and usually lead to students having little sense of the author’s purpose, I refuse to teach this method as my plan of attack.

Your job is to find a plan of attack for each question. There are two caveats here:

·       The plan has to be as simple as possible.

·       The plan should fit with your expert view of what it is to be successful at English regardless of the exam system in place at the time.

For this reason, I won’t set out plans of attack for the poetry comparison or the reading questions of the English language exams. I used to do this, but it is type 2 teaching.

Plan of Attack Description and Narrative

Here is one for the description question. It can be found in my Guide to Story Writing, and my Ultimate Guide to Description, because this method allows students to craft a description which can also double as a story:

1.      Zoom out, to get a bird’s eye view of the setting.

2.      Zoom in to focus on a particular detail.

3.      Zoom out to show something that has changed in the bird’s eye view.

4.      Zoom in to focus on a particular detail.

5.      Zoom in to focus on another detail.

6.      Zoom out to focus on a final change in the bird’s eye view.

This can be simplified further by asking students to describe the weather in point one. Indeed, many schools (with type 2 teaching) train their students to write about the weather at the beginning, because this can be prepared in advance and memorised.

Or it can be simplified by asking students to think of each of the 6 points as a video camera which will record for 10 seconds – they simply record what they see. (This is very close to type 1 teaching).

I have now abandoned this sort of method, (as type 2 teaching) because I’ve looked at how real writers write longer descriptions in books. They simply approach the description as a journey through a scene. All students can understand what a journey is from models/worked examples. To get an idea of how this reduces complexity, here are two examples.

This one is for the zoom method, with the added sophistication that details are treated as recurring images, ideas, or motifs:

Model Answer: Wings

Zoom Out – flock of geese

The V followed its normal trajectory, the lead swapping as though by telepathy, in a strange choreography which had developed over millions of years without planes. Perhaps why the lead bird did not notice the Airbus, rising towards it. Perhaps that is why the flock followed blindly, faithful to the goose in front, as the engines rose to meet them like a greeting on a warm summer’s day.

Motif – symbol or image – guitar

At the window, Lisa sat, cradling her new guitar. She was eight years old, and going to Nashville, to join her father at last. He had given her this red guitar as a present, and a promise that he would teach her to play like an angel. Her eyes turned to the window, registering the silent disaster as the birds met the engine on her left-hand side. Something was wrong with this picture, and she thought she heard the guitar begin to play.

Zoom In – face stewardess

The stewardess with the blond hair, and the tired eyes, fed up of passengers asking her question after question, trip after trip, felt it first, as though she were a Jedi knight feeling a disruption in The Force. She smiled, realising that her boyfriend would be surprised at the Star Wars reference. But something was wrong. This wasn’t turbulence. There was a disruption in the Force.

Motif – music

In slow motion, the theme tune played. Dum dum dum, dum – de - dum. An image of black boots and a black helmet appeared. Instantly, she knew the symbol for what it was. She suddenly realised why he was called Darth, a short syllable away from total blackness, eternal blackness, the coming blackness.

Bart was playing on his phone again. At sixteen he knew better than to have the volume turned up, so that the middle-aged couple next to him could hear his appalling music leaking out of his ears, in a slow trickle that had built up to a flood, drowning them both in unexpressed anger as the flight wore on. How the music had droned. The wife saw the geese first, and some part of her brain, the reptilian part she knew, suddenly kicked in. Anger rose in her like fire, no like petrol thrown on to a fire, and flames of rage, huge and overwhelming strobed the back of her skull. She turned to the boy, placed one hand on his earphones, and prepared for what she knew was coming.

He looked into her eyes, and watched her lips move: “we don’t need no education, we don’t need no…” But he would never know what she didn’t need.

Zoom Out- space eyed view, God

Who was it who gazed down silently at the scene? The pilot looked up, as though in prayer. He had felt it too, and knew the procedure, the checklist that he and his co-pilot would jump into, the years of training kicking in. But he feared this would not be enough. He looked up, hoping for a sign.

Only the clouds gazed back at him. Lisa noticed them too. Fluffy, like a child’s drawing. Unreal. But they looked down with indifference.

In seconds the entire flock was gone. The engines roared with flame, and triumph or rage, it was impossible to tell. The clouds looked on sightlessly, without care.

Motif

The stewardess turned toward the flash of red. Lisa had lifted her guitar, and was taking it out of the case for the very first time.

564 Words

What to learn from this description:

1.      The 6 changes of camera angle always work, because they give you different perspectives.

2.      Because each camera is filming action which is happening over the same 60 seconds, you won’t end up writing a story. (Although, the brilliant structure 6 Cam gives you, with the motif, means that you will always be able to submit it as a story if you wish).

3.      Because the cameras are filming within the same sixty seconds (or even shorter), they easily build up to a climax, which is the ending. You don’t have to plan it in advance.

4.      Start with a contrast, as this automatically presents a crisis or conflict. The whole camera structure makes sure that each shot is a contrast to the last.

5.      Camera angles allow you to think in moving pictures, which make it easier to think of similes and metaphors.

6.      Give your character’s backstory quickly, so we know their thoughts and some history.

7.      Try to start each sentence with a different word.

8.      Slow down time with adverbs – notice they appear in my ‘slow motion’ paragraph.

9.      Enjoy writing, using allusions. You should spot The Simpsons, Star Wars, Pink Floyd.

10.  Have a circular ending, referring back to the motif you started with.

11.  Twist the reader’s expectations at the end. It is more tragic if the girl has never played her guitar before.

12.  End it just before the death. Let the reader add up two plus two.

13.  Having a motif will always give your story structure. In the days when every newspaper published short stories, a writer who got stuck might follow this advice, “just introduce a man with a gun.” But, as we know, we are trying not to kill anyone! Our equivalent is the motif. It gives your story structure, and as you keep going back to it, it will give you a focus for your ending.

(Bold means these count double, as they are also in the 16 marks available for AO6 Technical Accuracy).

Although I am very happy with this technique, some students have found it needlessly complex. There is too much to the plan of attack, whereas simply asking them to place a video camera in six different places in the scene would be much simpler for students to follow. It is almost impossible to misconstrue.

If you want to be brilliant English teacher, you’ll like The Full English

If you want to find out how to get great progress from students in any subject, you’ll like The Slightly Awesome Teacher

If you want to pass Ofsted with flying colours, you’ll like The Unofficial Ofsted Survival Guide

If you want a quick guide to How to Improve Your School, click here