I am a newly qualified teacher of maths and history in a selective 11-18 school. I find it impossible to keep on top of marking pupils’ work and I can only see the problem getting worse. An exhausted plea for help!

A

You cannot mark every single piece of homework and classwork in detail every week. This is not expected, or shouldn’t be, and is not an efficient use of your time. Marking books is an opportunity to have further conversation with your pupils, but a meaningful written dialogue takes time.

As a rough guide, if I have a class of 32 pupils it takes me two hours to mark homework and check classwork. This works out at about four minutes a book.

You should speak to your head of department and colleagues to see what they do to keep on top of it.

Here are some timesavers:

* Pupils mark their own classwork where possible: you read out the answers and they mark their work in a different colour pen. While pupils are doing this walk around the room glancing over their shoulders to make sure they’re not cheating. Make a mental note of those who have a large number of crosses as they clearly haven’t understood the work. This way pupils don’t feel exposed for not understanding.

When the books are handed in check that pupils have been marking correctly. Sample a few questions, and where there are glaring misconceptions write a correction or ask them to see you next lesson for help.

Sign the bottom of each page and put the date at the end of the classwork for that week. This demonstrates to parents that you are monitoring pupils’

work (if someone is absent you can also identify which parts of the work they missed). Also, if you find little work has been done between one week and another compared with the other pupils, then you can invite the pupil to explain.

* Get pupils to hand in their books in alphabetical order via the register - this also gives you a check on who is completing homework.

* Have homework in a separate place from classwork, for example classwork at the front of the book and homework at the back, or have two separate books.

* Letting pupils mark each other’s homework occasionally is useful for them to see how marks are awarded, similar to marking their own.

* Sometimes set homework where there is little or no marking, for example get them to write descriptions of everyday objects, such as a pencil - “hexagonal prism about 15cm long with a cone at one end that is about 1cm high”. Pupils can work in pairs to try to identify each other’s objects.

* Set a team investigation to be marked by the class. Each team presents their work as a poster. All the posters are displayed on the wall. Provide a set of criteria for pupils on a proforma with scores ranging from 0 to 5 and ask pupils to complete it with comments. These provide useful feedback and lots of discussion.

I hope this reduces your workload. Remember that the most important part is to teach.

Q

One of my A-level students finds it difficult to remember that tan q = sin q cos q. She quite often writes it upside down, this causes difficulty when she is trying to prove trigonometrical identities using tan q. Have you any ideas on how to remember the formula?

A

One way I have found that works, though it isn’t very mathematical, is using sheep and cows. Let sheep be sin q and cows be cos q. Ask your student why you can’t have cows on top of sheep. Because the sheep will get squashed. Here is a cartoon you can show her.

Wendy Fortescue-Hubbard is a teacher and game inventor. She has been awarded a three-year fellowship by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to spread maths to the masses.Email your questions to Mathagony Aunt at teacher@tes.co.ukOr write to TES Teacher, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1W 1BX