Are you using the feedback you get?

As a teacher I have a limited amount of time to mark my students work.

In Y10/11 it might take 3-5 minutes per piece, so thats 2 hours per set of books.
In Y12 it take about 10 minutes per piece
In Y13 maybe 15 minutes for a good piece of work.

"Am I wasting my time?" I ask myself.

Why? Well I try to do several things with my marking.

There's the self checking bit:
- I consider how much effort has gone into the work
- I try to work out whether the student understood the priciples they were supposed to learn - i.e. get feedback on their learning
- I hope to understand whether they understood the assessment criteria

Then there's the student checking bit.
- I correct work and identify where your work scores marks: content - k, application - P, analysis - N, or evaluation E
- I give the level the student is working at with the piece of work and the grade the work gets.
- The final and most important bit is my comment in relation to what you have to do to improve - this take the most time to consider. I focus on one area of assessment and try to make the comment of general use to the student for their next piece.

So, if you want to improve you must act on your teachers comments, however they are given.  Then we all use our time more efficiently!

Next - Is music a distraction?

The correct answer is - it depends!

I enjoy alternative rock which is not great to concentrate to, (great to run to or even tidy). If I have simple stuff to do, I perhaps switch on South American or African music, not big beats . It keeps me awake and stops me feeling isolated and promotes an nice atmosphere to work in.

For more involved stuff, I get on with classical music: Brahms strings, Fouré Requiem or Gorecki.  Research indicates that Mozart piano duets work!

So its your decision! You have to work out if you deliver better stuff with or without music, and you have to select music that works for you.

Why do this blog?

Study skills are essential to the effective use of our time.

So we have stuff we want/need to learn, if we use our time better we can do more stuff?

First: The Myth of Multitasking
French researchers have proved you actually can walk and chew at the same time! Wow those French sure know how to spend their reseach grants! But they go on - if you add a third task, things go tits up!

Written
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8622137.stm
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5vRMgw6pk4
Academic Proof
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zuDXzVYZ68&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZHIe0F___o&feature=related