Exemplar Libraries

A resource mainly intended for teachers, but also useful for students, English Exemplar Libraries are examples of English writing which have been marked by experts. The exemplars illustrate the marking of particular themes and highlight, with the experts comments, those parts of the text that are good examples of work at a given level, in the opinion of the experts.

These are real, anonymous, examples of student work that have been selected by schools as indicative examples of work at various levels. Central experts, known as moderators, have reviewed the material from different schools and have levelled the marking. The moderators have marked the work to their prestige norm, have highlighted those aspects that are good examples of below average, average and above average for the level, and have included their comments by way of explanation.

In other words, an exemplar library (e-Lib) for a given subject's marking scheme contains examples of 'best' marking with detailed commentaries of how the marks for the traits were determined. In practice, the e-Lib entries will have been doubly moderated, i.e. they were selected by their schools as examples of 'good' marking for submission to the central moderators, who then select the 'best' of these 'good' examples to be entered into the e-Lib.

Alta supports these two layers by providing for central e-Libs, controlled by the central moderators and seen by all schools, and school-based e-Libs seen only by the schools that create them.

An e-Lib may be used in a number of ways:

• it is available to teachers when they are marking, when it may aid decisions about the marks to award and so moderate their marking behaviour
  
• it is available as a resource when training teachers about marking
  
• it may be used to test teachers' marking skills against the 'prestige norm' provided by the e-Lib
  

It is also useful to students, to illustrate how a piece of work is marked, explaining what moderators look for and reward.

Alta Systems (NI) Ltd. Products

» Alta Maths for Schools

» Alta Keys For Maths (for home users)

» English Exemplar Libraries