11 Plus Exams Forum

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Oh dear, what next?

I haven't used a red pen since 1986 or thereabouts.

A lot of teachers use green - not for these silly reasons though - red pens are really messy to use!

Have just asked my DD, and apparently her maths teacher 'uses a variety of colours'. Her form teacher uses blue usually. The children normally write in pencil.

I think it is important that the child can tell what the teacher has written so a colour that contrasts is required.

When I was helping adults with maths, I never wrote in red. Quite a few will have had negative experiences of having a teacher cover their writing in red pen. In most cases I could mark their work in front of them and could point out any mistakes without marking the paper, but when I did I used pencil. They could then rework the question and if they wanted rub out my marks if it made them feel better.

If they got stuff right they got a big tick though.

Obviously this works in a 1 to 1 situation like this but much harder for a school teacher with a full class.

I think it is as much about what is written and how, as it is what colour, though I can see red being a bit confrontational.

At my last school, the dept had to mark in pink and the students corrected their own work in green.

At another school, a teacher swore blind that she would never use green as, in her opinion, it was a sign of madness. She went on to name a few teachers who marked in green and I have to say she did have a point.

When I taught literacy I had to change the colour of my marking pen frequently as we used colour coding in the lesson.

I just use whatever colour pen happens to be next to me... and sometimes it is red .
Can't use blue or black obviously.
But it means that my pupils have a lovely variety of green, purple, pink and brown markings on their papers
Hopefully it makes life more interesting ?

Red has high contrast and is used for copyediting mark up. Green is used to query what an author wants/thinks.

With bottom sets I marked along side them and used their own pen, where possible, but I only had 8 in my last group!
With top sets I marked in red as they want to see the corrections. Upper years can be sensitive. The stationery cupboard only had red and black pens!

When I worked in primary I could use any colour I wanted!

In my last school we only used green , that was 8 years ago or more. Now I mark as I go round ( I'm support in class and supply) and just grab first pen I find.

We use highlighters for marking writing, and highlight in green the bits that need work on and pink for good examples of whatever we were aiming for, like use of adverbial phrases.

Personally I can't see what is wrong with red. I don't tend to use it because it is frowned on (and when one's school is in and out of special measures, if it is frowned upon, we don't do it) but look, if a child makes an error, it needs pointing out, in a way that said child can easily spot said error. I think pandering to the sensitivities of children who might be upset to see red pen on their work is starting from the wrong point. We all have to learn to take criticism - my writing comes back from my supervisor with lots of those comments in the margins. Is it any 'worse' in red than green than blue?

And I HATE stickers too. waste of paper, ridiculously devalued by the time you get onto the third 'wow! I ate my tomato today'/'I learned my CVC words' or whatever it is. Grr.

Funnily enough DD has had a piece of work back this week which was absolutely covered in comments. She was quite upset until I went through them with her and we realised that it was all very constructive criticism. Interestingly they were in pencil, which made them quite difficult to read, but I do think it would have looked worse in red!

Let's not forget the POSITIVE comments that the teachers make with their red and coloured pens.

'A+ Excellent' was always my favourite!