Why sentence-level feedback beats a grade and a comment
Students improve when they can see exactly which sentence worked and which didn't. Here's why sentence-level, colour-coded feedback changes the game.
Most feedback students receive is a grade at the top and a sentence or two at the bottom. It tells them how they did, but rarely where or why. The result is predictable: the same mistakes reappear in the next assignment.
Feedback has to be locatable
For feedback to change behaviour, a student needs to connect it to a specific place in their own writing. 'Your evidence is weak' is abstract. Highlighting the exact sentence where the evidence falls short makes the lesson concrete and repeatable.
Colour coding carries meaning at a glance
Green, amber, and red highlights let a student scan their own essay and instantly see the shape of their performance — which parts landed, which nearly worked, and which missed. That visual map is far stickier than a paragraph of prose.
Tie every highlight to a criterion
When each highlight names the rubric criterion it relates to, feedback stops being one teacher's opinion and becomes a shared, defensible standard. That helps students, and it makes moderation between teachers dramatically easier.
This is exactly how CoMarker works: sentence-level, colour-coded highlights, each tied to your rubric — with you reviewing every essay before feedback is released.