Now do you realise how important senses are?

From reports on senses:

'Senses can make you enjoy life more...'

'How many smells can you think of? Do you dislike them?'

'Smells can make you feel different.'



Look at her. She loves marking. She loves it there, with her anglepoise lamp and frappamochachinolattedecafsoyaskinny. She enjoys every word. Not like me. I hate marking. It makes me feel a tightness in my chest. My back aches. My pen hurts my hand. My handwriting gets worse and worse. I scrawl comments which don't really move the children forward. Anything really worthwhile that I could write would take at least 5 minutes to write, and would take up half a page. I'm a teacher - I'll help with the maths...

30 x 5 = 150 minutes. That's 2 hours 30 to mark my literacy books. Don't think so. Let's get a little more realistic. 30 minutes would be more like it. That's one minute a book. That means that each book gets a trite little comment. The children look for stars and housepoints, and anyone official who doesn't trust me can see clearly that I do my job. What a royal waste of time. I suppose there are those that argue that by marking my children's books I get to see who is doing well and who isn't - no - I find that out by reading through my children's books. The marking? Helps me to flag up every negative. Brilliant.

Favourite comments to write on children's work:

'Well done'

'Good effort'

'You need to read this back to yourself to check that your writing makes sense' (v. popular this one - should read 'can't really explain what's wrong with this, but there is something deeply and consistantly flawed in your writing')




A great example of a comment written in fury:

'CAPITAL LETTERS - HOW MANY TIMES MUST I WRITE / TELL YOU? PLEASE USE CAPITALS WHEN APPROPRIATE !'