This year I started marking the kids writing books the way that I had seen other teachers mark in their rooms. After a while, I found that it didn't work for me as it wasn't giving enough ownership to the children. When conferencing with the children I found that they were waiting for me to give them all the answers. They didn't have any responsibility for the errors they had made and were not in charge of making changes. After rereading, "The Writing Book" by Sheena Cameron, I decided to try the wish and tick system again. This way of conferencing takes longer but instead of correcting all the mistakes for the children I instead write some things they need to check themselves. A wish and a tick. One thing they need to fix and one thing I think they did well. Sometimes, depending on the child, there might be more than one tick or more than one wish. The wishes and ticks are added only after the children has had a go at correcting their surface features first (once again pushing the, "this is your writing and you're in charge of it," point). The wishes are always related to our learning goal for the day or to the child's specific goal. It took a while for the children to get used to this system. Some still wait for me to fix everything but they are getting there. For the children who at times have trouble seeing their errors or finding them, I will use a highlighter to show that there is something wrong there that they could fix. I think the best thing about marking this way was seeing the pride in my kids after they managed to fix an error all by themselves. Here are some pictures of books to show how I mark.
