Swap margin comments for three-minute conversations
You write for an hour; they read for a minute, if at all. Three minutes of live marking does what the margins never did.
Oct 5, 2026 · 1 min read
Margin comments are the most expensive feedback you produce and the least likely to be processed: written after the work mattered to the student, read after the grade has said the only thing they were listening for. Wiliam (2011) argues feedback only works when it causes thinking in the student. A short live conference forces exactly that, because the student has to respond in real time and writes the action point in their own hand.
In practice
- Run conferences during independent work: three minutes per student, five or six per lesson, on a visible rota so everyone gets one within two weeks.
- Structure it: the student names their strongest and weakest part first, you probe one point, and they write the action themselves before leaving.
- Mark the rest of the stack lightly, read and tick; the conference is the feedback, not a supplement to full margins.
- Keep a one-line log per conference. Ten words per student becomes the sharpest record of the class you own.
Quick takeaway: three spoken minutes outwork thirty written margins.