When you mark an exam script and it's just.... awful. But instead of scribbling something rude and angry you write "Are you ok? Can I help?"
Then you can have a real conversation, instead of a teenage shoulder shrug and defiance. Apparently their grades are fine in the other topics, they just fell over in the mathematics.
@RosyMaths Our school uses chat as the best teacher-student feedback zone. An exam script gets a bit of written feedback, chat has a bunch of typed stuff. Kids respond way better to chat than anything.
@jellycrystals That's an interesting approach. We have a major problem with gaming and obsessive internet use in the younger years, so we're trying to keep the 11-13yo groups offline as much as possible!
@jellycrystals 100% with you on this!