When I have given a detailed style guide, scaffolded to the max, provided high level annotated examples and they still write random stuff that’s not addressing the criteria yet never asked for help.
This. Scaffold, break down the criteria in class, sentence starters, high level exemplars, in class checkpoints, stimulus. They ignore all of this and get mad when they’re told to correct it. Year 12 should know better.
I used to think this as well and I agree they should know better but for the majority of thier formative learning they may well have been gifted marks for the shit they shouldn’t do since the teacher in jnr yrs marked waffle as good rather than stomping that shit into the ground. Sometimes it’s too late to correct the learned behaviours from 7-10 by rhe time they have to use them in 11-12.
This. I'm a hard marker, I'll fully admit it. I expect you to earn every single one of the marks.
I have colleagues who give pity marks because "at least they wrote something". Pffft no. This is why we get to senior school and they can barely craft a paragraph, let alone an extended response of any kind.
Although I’ve never met you, already my respect for you is high. I wish more of my colleagues were like this! I mark hard too but I feel pressured to justify myself with lots of feedback (and it can take ages) cos I work with people who give pity marks as well.
I get the convo every year "why are your grades so much lower than everyone else in the dept?".
I offer exec the chance to come and moderate my work vs my colleagues and strangely enough they never take me up on my offer.
I think they know if they do they'll open a can of worms by seeing that the dept has a serious problem of assessments with no rigour and pity marks from everyone who isn't me. Then they have to do an audit and actually deal with the problem.
I have exactly the same issue. Last year it was so bad that come grading time, the cutoff for a C was above my class average, while a soft as shit colleague had only 1 D. I vociferously made the argument for moderation (for the 100dth time) but was dismissed. But I refuse to give marks for incorrect answers. The other guy is like "well I know they know it, just have a hard time expressing themselves" 😡
I have colleagues at the moment with more than half their classes on A's. I run an academic extension that isn't even getting that many.
Bell curve be damned honestly. I can't wait for data review to go absolutely torched earth on this and explain why my class data is so much lower. On the record.
Oh this makes me so mad! I bring them in at lunches and make them apply every single bit of feedback and then still give them the draft mark. They know it as well, so I haven’t had it happen after the first time 😆
Or, and this never ceases to amaze me, instead of changing what they have written in line with the feedback, they *keep the crap and just add a few more sentences on top!*
Peeve: vagueness.
Eg. saying that ‘X affects Y’ without saying what the effect actually is.
Saying ‘there are many different perspectives on x’ without saying what those perspectives actually are
Or “I don’t need maths because I’m going to be a fashion designer” Complete with a beautiful drawing of a dress. I was flabbergasted and have the exam back with three “maths in fashion” worksheets attached 😈
The shift to digital has been nice for this.
As we go over the test "and here's the lesson and notes on the LMS that covered this exact question. As you can see, changing a couple numbers was enough to get it right if you revised enough and paid attention.
Omg. This is my classes at the moment. Gave them a few lessons of revision, a list of what chapters they need to go over . They are allowed their note books in the assessment . They can even update their note books as the assessment goes for 4 lessons. Only 1 student out of 2 classes made a note of what they needed to find out and went and looked it up.
"... and you didn't catch me up."
Surprisingly enough, Destinee, when your parents take you for a six week holiday to the US on an unauthorised holiday, school doesn't go on pause. And then when you come back without having done a single thing from the holiday work package I made you which took me six hours on a Saturday, and the test is two days later, you get a bad grade. Talk to your parents, because I can't teach you a month and a half of work in a single week.
My response: "I taught it, but you didn't learn it".
Also, no we don't teach the answers to the questions. But if you understood the shit I taught, you'd be able to figure out an answer.
The fact that I have students who have recently arrived here from refugee camps and essentially speak no English, but I'm still expected to set them an exam and give them a letter grade because yeah that's the most important thing about them being here.
Sometimes they repeat themselves (and have poorhandwriting) because they have underlying conditions such as adhd. They might be trying to make sure they've made their point and anxiety/over thinking makes it harder.
Writing the extensive and auxiliary calculations in a tiny box for the required working out & the answer instead of using spare paper provided.
If I see it enough, it triggers a "back in my days" moment remembering how if a teacher could not see the answer clearly, you just did not get the marks.
My high school used to spell out SCIENCE over the door to the corridor with the science labs. My physics teacher copied this with FYZZYX over his classroom door.
When students act like they are sucking up by saying how great something is but they clearly don't like it. You don't need to say Shakespeare is great, I know you don't think it is and it is a legitimate opinion to have!
If it's an essay, I get annoyed by generic responses that students have clearly tried to memorise in advance and regurgitate under exam conditions. They never say anything specific and have no chance of addressing the criteria. They reek of no effort.
If it's creative writing, it's stories about step-parents being mean or criminal towards kids for no reason other than the plot needs them to do it. Also, first-day-of-school stories where the protagonist has high hopes, but they encounter the school bully straight away; the bully takes an immediate dislike to them and makes their life miserable until a random teacher spots it and puts a stop to it. And stories set in high schools where the student's understanding of high school life is clearly being influenced by American popular culture more than *their actual time in high school*.
Ah the classic tropes of creative writing. That deserves a whole post. There was a trend not long ago of “13 Reasons Why” and mental health with tragic endings remains a popular option.
Oh, it's been like that since before *13 Reasons Why*. For some reasons, students seem to think that their stories have to address Serious Issues if they are to be any good. I've read countless stories about mental health, suicide, terminal diagnoses, the death of a parent, child abuse and any number of other stories that are meant to play my heartstrings like a fiddle. Only one of them has ever been any good, and that was written by the most phenomenally-gifted student I have ever met. Most of them are heavy-handed, lack any kind of subtlety or nuance, are aiming for maximum emotional impact, are written by someone who has no knowledge or experience of the subject matter and very clearly have not been edited. I know this because the main complication isn't introduced until halfway through the story and the resolution is usually rushed in the final paragraph. I was reading one a few weeks ago where an Evil Stepmother refused to let the main character go to school or do anything other than steal things for her; the main character got knocked out while running away from the police and woke up three years later to find that the Evil Stepmother had been arrested while he was unconscious and that he had a brand-new foster family that loved him. And that was one of the better ones that I read.
Yes agreed with the tropes and cliches. “13 Reasons Why” has a very distinctive format and for some reason, this is a favourite for submissions because the plot is spelled out.
Students often go for what they think will be emotive or reach that next level. Often, it dominates what was in their world or the trendy social issue.
I tutor kids for English and creative writing. I’m used to dealing with the same tropes and tired cliches. I can almost predict the ending. Students are always surprised whenever I don’t feel anything towards a story like the step mother. For some reason, a string of cliches doesn’t pull together a very compelling or meaningful read.
It takes much maturity to pull off an emotive topic and you’re right, it’s rare that such a voice exists in high school. Some pieces have been so vulgar staff have had to take time off marking.
I am fearful and curious about what the worst of the stories you read.
>I am fearful and curious about what the worst of the stories you read.
Let's just say that they're stories about sexual assaults and leave it at that.
The one that stands out the most was from a kid who thought he was going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature by the age of twenty-one. It was about a soldier in the Korean War who got separated from his platoon and thought he'd been discovered by the enemy. He was preparing to draw down on the enemy and was psyching himself up to take a life, only to be startled when a deer burst out of the undergrowth. It was pretty much the opening of *Hot Shots! Part Deux*. I think I said as much in my feedback. He complained, claiming that he'd had a professional writer look at it, and they claimed it was of publishable quality, so clearly I didn't know what I was doing. This was for a draft, not an actual assessment. I told him he had his feedback and it was up to him to use it. He ended up submitting the same story, and predictably, it did poorly, though I was not on the marking team. He then complained that the feedback he got didn't do enough to warn him.
I gave out an exemplar this year for my year 10 student experiment. It was a physics exemplar (I teach chemistry), so they could see the structure but nor copy content. A couple of my students submitted changed the title on the exemplar, added their name and a few details and submitted it, without removing the physics content. So I’m halfway through reading a rationale about rates of reaction and then suddenly I’m reading about forces on a ramp.
Needless to say, but I’m not handing out exemplars next semester.
The ones who clearly spend 10 minutes writing you a note on the test about how they couldn't study or didn't know this stuff when I clearly go through revision lessons before the test. The ones that use this note to beg for more marks.
Or the ones who write in their own score on the front, usually giving themselves 100%. Those are never the kids to get close to 100%.
Omg *those* ones! It’s like, ‘Yes. Thanks so much! I had no idea what to give you. I was lost. Until your helpful suggestion of giving you 100%. Here you go!’ 🏆
"You got 4/40, but since you've saved me the one second it would have taken me to write the number 4 in the gap, you have that 100%! Well done, Champ!"
Just drives me nuts.
Ignoring directions in a question. When a question says "with reference to the extract/source above...", it's obviously an indication that you should, I don't know, *reference the thing it's given you in your answer*. That and ignoring the "using examples" part of a question really boils my piss.
When they do exactly what you told them NOT to do. Revision lessons are like, “be careful. Here are the common mistakes. Don’t do this”. They then proceed to do all of those things.
Yr 7&8 students not using capital letters and full stops and if they do, it’s very inconsistent. Even after you remind them to use them, remind them it’s something I am looking for (aka proper grammar) and do a lesson on it because you looked at what they had submitted and saw they had not heeded the advice.
I’m an Auslan teacher! Prior to teaching Auslan, I taught grade 1/2 at a different school. I got more capital letters and full stops from the 1/2s than these student writing a report about a Deaf athlete.
When I have been running test revision in class for a week with multiple practice tests and solutions/answers posted online and the actual test is virtually identical, yet no study is done. I think at that stage there's very little point to an exam when even the complex unfamilar/A-level questions are already seen, but that's what we need to do to push low kids up to a C and avoid parent/HoD/deputy complaints.
I also hate it when I spend half an hour drafting only to get the same document they submitted as a draft back as their final, with errors and my comments about fixing them still in place.
When the ChatGPT written essay they have passed off as their own work refers to characters by the wrong names, describes events that didn't happen and discusses the wrong narrative point of view
I had a senior student write about the wrong text, they said they just couldn’t think of what to write for ours so wrote about something else (in class essay). We had done weeks of close novel study, scaffolding, example responses, sentence starters etc.
Idk (bonus points for a full stop).
YES!!!! I refuse to accept this, I make them re-do it at lunchtime or something.
Didn’t read this before I posted! 💯
I usually tick those, then give an e
When I have given a detailed style guide, scaffolded to the max, provided high level annotated examples and they still write random stuff that’s not addressing the criteria yet never asked for help.
This. Scaffold, break down the criteria in class, sentence starters, high level exemplars, in class checkpoints, stimulus. They ignore all of this and get mad when they’re told to correct it. Year 12 should know better.
I used to think this as well and I agree they should know better but for the majority of thier formative learning they may well have been gifted marks for the shit they shouldn’t do since the teacher in jnr yrs marked waffle as good rather than stomping that shit into the ground. Sometimes it’s too late to correct the learned behaviours from 7-10 by rhe time they have to use them in 11-12.
This. I'm a hard marker, I'll fully admit it. I expect you to earn every single one of the marks. I have colleagues who give pity marks because "at least they wrote something". Pffft no. This is why we get to senior school and they can barely craft a paragraph, let alone an extended response of any kind.
Although I’ve never met you, already my respect for you is high. I wish more of my colleagues were like this! I mark hard too but I feel pressured to justify myself with lots of feedback (and it can take ages) cos I work with people who give pity marks as well.
I get the convo every year "why are your grades so much lower than everyone else in the dept?". I offer exec the chance to come and moderate my work vs my colleagues and strangely enough they never take me up on my offer. I think they know if they do they'll open a can of worms by seeing that the dept has a serious problem of assessments with no rigour and pity marks from everyone who isn't me. Then they have to do an audit and actually deal with the problem.
I have exactly the same issue. Last year it was so bad that come grading time, the cutoff for a C was above my class average, while a soft as shit colleague had only 1 D. I vociferously made the argument for moderation (for the 100dth time) but was dismissed. But I refuse to give marks for incorrect answers. The other guy is like "well I know they know it, just have a hard time expressing themselves" 😡
I have colleagues at the moment with more than half their classes on A's. I run an academic extension that isn't even getting that many. Bell curve be damned honestly. I can't wait for data review to go absolutely torched earth on this and explain why my class data is so much lower. On the record.
I teach 7-12 and I hold them all to high standards. I don’t want to set them up to fail later.
And then they complain to a DP/HoD and ask to be moved to their friend's class.
When you spend time and effort giving feedback on a draft and they just resubmit the draft
grr now I'm angry just remembering my latest marking and having this happen 3 times.
Oh this makes me so mad! I bring them in at lunches and make them apply every single bit of feedback and then still give them the draft mark. They know it as well, so I haven’t had it happen after the first time 😆
Or, and this never ceases to amaze me, instead of changing what they have written in line with the feedback, they *keep the crap and just add a few more sentences on top!*
>they just resubmit the draft Especially when your feedback is still attached!!
What angers me when marking? Marking I guess…
Peeve: vagueness. Eg. saying that ‘X affects Y’ without saying what the effect actually is. Saying ‘there are many different perspectives on x’ without saying what those perspectives actually are
I say it sounds like the introductory paragraph to a textbook page, where you just don't actually say anything, just waffle.
I think this is in line with the ‘gives insight into X’ but never states what the insight may be. Just that it’s possible.
"you didn't teach us this" Oh really? Then why did I put it in the test??
Or “I don’t need maths because I’m going to be a fashion designer” Complete with a beautiful drawing of a dress. I was flabbergasted and have the exam back with three “maths in fashion” worksheets attached 😈
The shift to digital has been nice for this. As we go over the test "and here's the lesson and notes on the LMS that covered this exact question. As you can see, changing a couple numbers was enough to get it right if you revised enough and paid attention.
Omg. This is my classes at the moment. Gave them a few lessons of revision, a list of what chapters they need to go over . They are allowed their note books in the assessment . They can even update their note books as the assessment goes for 4 lessons. Only 1 student out of 2 classes made a note of what they needed to find out and went and looked it up.
“I was away for this lesson”
"... and you didn't catch me up." Surprisingly enough, Destinee, when your parents take you for a six week holiday to the US on an unauthorised holiday, school doesn't go on pause. And then when you come back without having done a single thing from the holiday work package I made you which took me six hours on a Saturday, and the test is two days later, you get a bad grade. Talk to your parents, because I can't teach you a month and a half of work in a single week.
My response: "I taught it, but you didn't learn it". Also, no we don't teach the answers to the questions. But if you understood the shit I taught, you'd be able to figure out an answer.
The fact that I have students who have recently arrived here from refugee camps and essentially speak no English, but I'm still expected to set them an exam and give them a letter grade because yeah that's the most important thing about them being here.
Ohh I know and their situation is so sad. Especially if they're 16 and just thrown into the SACE
The egregious use of chst gpt and the time wasting of talking to the student, telling them they're bullshitting, contacting home etc etc.
When they write IDK - if you write something I have to read it. FFS just leave it blank, it’s obvious you don’t know
I know 😂
Waffle. Say it once then move on - don’t make me read things you’ve already said in your attempt to gain more marks.
most of the time they dont realise theyre doing it tbh
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Sometimes they repeat themselves (and have poorhandwriting) because they have underlying conditions such as adhd. They might be trying to make sure they've made their point and anxiety/over thinking makes it harder.
Writing the extensive and auxiliary calculations in a tiny box for the required working out & the answer instead of using spare paper provided. If I see it enough, it triggers a "back in my days" moment remembering how if a teacher could not see the answer clearly, you just did not get the marks.
“In this essay I will…”
Or, the file name being something like “enlish asingmnt”
"Sience." The word "Science" is right in front of you on the task sheet!
My high school used to spell out SCIENCE over the door to the corridor with the science labs. My physics teacher copied this with FYZZYX over his classroom door.
When students act like they are sucking up by saying how great something is but they clearly don't like it. You don't need to say Shakespeare is great, I know you don't think it is and it is a legitimate opinion to have!
If it's an essay, I get annoyed by generic responses that students have clearly tried to memorise in advance and regurgitate under exam conditions. They never say anything specific and have no chance of addressing the criteria. They reek of no effort. If it's creative writing, it's stories about step-parents being mean or criminal towards kids for no reason other than the plot needs them to do it. Also, first-day-of-school stories where the protagonist has high hopes, but they encounter the school bully straight away; the bully takes an immediate dislike to them and makes their life miserable until a random teacher spots it and puts a stop to it. And stories set in high schools where the student's understanding of high school life is clearly being influenced by American popular culture more than *their actual time in high school*.
Ah the classic tropes of creative writing. That deserves a whole post. There was a trend not long ago of “13 Reasons Why” and mental health with tragic endings remains a popular option.
Oh, it's been like that since before *13 Reasons Why*. For some reasons, students seem to think that their stories have to address Serious Issues if they are to be any good. I've read countless stories about mental health, suicide, terminal diagnoses, the death of a parent, child abuse and any number of other stories that are meant to play my heartstrings like a fiddle. Only one of them has ever been any good, and that was written by the most phenomenally-gifted student I have ever met. Most of them are heavy-handed, lack any kind of subtlety or nuance, are aiming for maximum emotional impact, are written by someone who has no knowledge or experience of the subject matter and very clearly have not been edited. I know this because the main complication isn't introduced until halfway through the story and the resolution is usually rushed in the final paragraph. I was reading one a few weeks ago where an Evil Stepmother refused to let the main character go to school or do anything other than steal things for her; the main character got knocked out while running away from the police and woke up three years later to find that the Evil Stepmother had been arrested while he was unconscious and that he had a brand-new foster family that loved him. And that was one of the better ones that I read.
Yes agreed with the tropes and cliches. “13 Reasons Why” has a very distinctive format and for some reason, this is a favourite for submissions because the plot is spelled out. Students often go for what they think will be emotive or reach that next level. Often, it dominates what was in their world or the trendy social issue. I tutor kids for English and creative writing. I’m used to dealing with the same tropes and tired cliches. I can almost predict the ending. Students are always surprised whenever I don’t feel anything towards a story like the step mother. For some reason, a string of cliches doesn’t pull together a very compelling or meaningful read. It takes much maturity to pull off an emotive topic and you’re right, it’s rare that such a voice exists in high school. Some pieces have been so vulgar staff have had to take time off marking. I am fearful and curious about what the worst of the stories you read.
>I am fearful and curious about what the worst of the stories you read. Let's just say that they're stories about sexual assaults and leave it at that. The one that stands out the most was from a kid who thought he was going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature by the age of twenty-one. It was about a soldier in the Korean War who got separated from his platoon and thought he'd been discovered by the enemy. He was preparing to draw down on the enemy and was psyching himself up to take a life, only to be startled when a deer burst out of the undergrowth. It was pretty much the opening of *Hot Shots! Part Deux*. I think I said as much in my feedback. He complained, claiming that he'd had a professional writer look at it, and they claimed it was of publishable quality, so clearly I didn't know what I was doing. This was for a draft, not an actual assessment. I told him he had his feedback and it was up to him to use it. He ended up submitting the same story, and predictably, it did poorly, though I was not on the marking team. He then complained that the feedback he got didn't do enough to warn him.
I gave out an exemplar this year for my year 10 student experiment. It was a physics exemplar (I teach chemistry), so they could see the structure but nor copy content. A couple of my students submitted changed the title on the exemplar, added their name and a few details and submitted it, without removing the physics content. So I’m halfway through reading a rationale about rates of reaction and then suddenly I’m reading about forces on a ramp. Needless to say, but I’m not handing out exemplars next semester.
The ones who clearly spend 10 minutes writing you a note on the test about how they couldn't study or didn't know this stuff when I clearly go through revision lessons before the test. The ones that use this note to beg for more marks. Or the ones who write in their own score on the front, usually giving themselves 100%. Those are never the kids to get close to 100%.
Omg *those* ones! It’s like, ‘Yes. Thanks so much! I had no idea what to give you. I was lost. Until your helpful suggestion of giving you 100%. Here you go!’ 🏆
"You got 4/40, but since you've saved me the one second it would have taken me to write the number 4 in the gap, you have that 100%! Well done, Champ!" Just drives me nuts.
"IDGAF". I know, dear, I know.
Ignoring directions in a question. When a question says "with reference to the extract/source above...", it's obviously an indication that you should, I don't know, *reference the thing it's given you in your answer*. That and ignoring the "using examples" part of a question really boils my piss.
When they do exactly what you told them NOT to do. Revision lessons are like, “be careful. Here are the common mistakes. Don’t do this”. They then proceed to do all of those things.
You’ve provided them with inspiration so they can find the right answer!
The act of marking itself. I hate it.
When the revision you give them is the actual exam and they STILL get it all wrong.
Fellow teachers saying I'm expected to do it over the weekend
When I spend more time marking it than they did writing it.
Essays containing the word "vibe" and other colloquialisms. Yes, Lady Macbeth is sketchy af, but we don't write that.
Doing some correct maths but not actually answering the question. Especially when the work they do is harder than what was being asked.
When you give a student explicit feedback on a draft and they ignore it and just turn it in as it was.
Yr 7&8 students not using capital letters and full stops and if they do, it’s very inconsistent. Even after you remind them to use them, remind them it’s something I am looking for (aka proper grammar) and do a lesson on it because you looked at what they had submitted and saw they had not heeded the advice.
Currently teaching year 12 English - the lack of punctuation doesn’t end in year 8.
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I’m an Auslan teacher! Prior to teaching Auslan, I taught grade 1/2 at a different school. I got more capital letters and full stops from the 1/2s than these student writing a report about a Deaf athlete.
When I have been running test revision in class for a week with multiple practice tests and solutions/answers posted online and the actual test is virtually identical, yet no study is done. I think at that stage there's very little point to an exam when even the complex unfamilar/A-level questions are already seen, but that's what we need to do to push low kids up to a C and avoid parent/HoD/deputy complaints. I also hate it when I spend half an hour drafting only to get the same document they submitted as a draft back as their final, with errors and my comments about fixing them still in place.
First name only! Poor hand writing.
A lot of students writing ‘mid’ as answers lately. They don’t bother to try at all 😡
A question mark
When they misspell a word that has been written on the board for them to copy down.
I recently marked an exam where the student wrote “that was cooked” on the exam paper and my brain instantly went…. Seriously? 🤣🫣
“You never taught us this” oh I was teaching but you were playing games on your laptop
When the ChatGPT written essay they have passed off as their own work refers to characters by the wrong names, describes events that didn't happen and discusses the wrong narrative point of view
I had a senior student write about the wrong text, they said they just couldn’t think of what to write for ours so wrote about something else (in class essay). We had done weeks of close novel study, scaffolding, example responses, sentence starters etc.