two stars and a wish

Is it what you do or the way that you do it?

2018-11-26T16:29:29+00:00January 23rd, 2016|research|

Alex Quigley has just responded to my post Two Stars and a Bloody Wish! with the revelation that it works for him and others: Using a ‘Two Stars and a Wish’ model ironically meant that many teachers were writing more concise comments and spending less time on marking than before. Rather than proving a waste of time as David Didau suggests, it was saving time for many (teachers weren’t beholden to two wishes each time and there was seldom ‘lavish praise’). Well, good. If using a particular marking structure does actually save teachers time then who am I to criticise? Alex goes on to say [...]

Two stars and a bloody wish!

2019-11-06T19:39:23+00:00May 3rd, 2015|leadership|

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them. Jean de La Bruyère We are held hostage by our superstitious belief in the mystical power of marking to cure all educational ills. It won't. A teacher inscribing marks in students' exercise books is every bit as mundane as it sounds; in my 15 years in the classroom it rarely resulted in much. But that's not really why we mark. We mark because it's the right thing to do. Because not marking is worse than marking. This is the marking fetish. [...]

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