One grade, thirty books, ten minutes
After a three-picture story task, Ana hands in: 'The girl is go to the shop. She buy a apple. She is eat the apple happy.' The class has been taught present simple for routines and is only beginning present continuous. The school requires one grade per piece, that grade goes home to parents, and the teacher wants Ana, who is shy and has only just started writing voluntarily, to keep writing. She has ten minutes per set of books to mark thirty of these. She needs a rule she can apply consistently to the whole class, not a one-off decision for Ana.
1. Which errors do you correct, and what rule makes that consistent across thirty books?
Read the worked answer
Rule: correct one structure per piece - the one the class has been taught and the child is ready to fix.
- Correct: 'a apple' → 'an apple'. One learnable rule, no ambiguity about meaning.
- Correct: 'is go' → 'goes'. Present simple for routines is the current teaching point, so it is fair game.
- Leave, or note only: 'is eat' and 'happy' used as an adverb. Present continuous has barely started; marking it now gives two contradictory messages about the same verb in one paragraph.
Why a rule rather than case-by-case judgement: with thirty books and ten minutes, consistency is the only thing that survives. Decide the target structure before marking starts, tick it where it is right, write one correction where it is wrong. Everything else stays unmarked - which is not the same as approved, it is simply not this week's focus.
2. How would you word the written feedback?
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Two specifics and one question she can act on.
- 'You told the whole story - I can see all three pictures without looking at them.' True, and it names what worked.
- 'You tried the new -s ending three times.' Recognition of effort on the target structure, even where it slipped.
- 'Find "is go". What does the girl do every day? Write that line again.' One line, one rewrite, no model supplied.
Never write the corrected sentence for her - the rewriting is where the learning happens. Keep the total ink on the page small: a page covered in red stops being read by the child and starts being read only by the parent.
3. A parent asks why the grade isn't higher when she wrote so much. How do you answer?
Read the worked answer
Explain the criteria concretely, using the substitution test.
- At this level marks come from whether a reader can follow the pictures, whether the words fit the topic, and whether the message is understandable - not from the number of words.
- Demonstration: cover the pictures and read the story aloud. If a listener can still say what happens, the writing is doing its job; that is what the grade measures.
- A long piece with repeated errors in one structure does not score above a short clear piece, and that is deliberate: rewarding length pushes children to write more of what they cannot yet control.
Keep it to two minutes and one example. Parents accept criteria they can see applied; they rarely accept 'the system'.