Reasons why I have trouble grading quickly:
- Even though I've come a long way over the years, I have to be honest that I am a slower reader than most of the people in my profession. I just read an essay slower than my peers because of my dyslexia.
- I have trouble focusing in on just a couple correction areas. Its either all or nothing with me. I can easily grade and mark nothing, or I find myself needing to stop and mark everything.
- A contributing factor to the above is that my previous job had a very cumbersome common writing rubric. It had thirteen indicators, including writing process and grammar and spelling. Eventually, I learned to par it back, and that helped, but when I had to use the whole rubric just making sure I was being fair about thirteen areas took a while.
- Some of my grading troubles is procrastination. I prefer the planning and executing aspects of teaching. I would much rather read YA novels or trade books, organize my classroom, or create handouts than grade most of the time.
- The volume of work coming in was also a problem. Even if many students failed to turn an assignment in, I could have anywhere from fifty to ninety essays in at a time. Also, I tended to give many assignments of varying sizes.
Ways to work on this weakness:
- One of my concerns is how to reduce the amount of grading when I use writing workshop. My idea is that I will focus mini writing lessons on assessable skills that I will look for in student writing. To give plenty of time for students to understand concepts and give practice time, I anticipate only a few skills per time span students would spend for each writing piece. I would then focus the covered skills, and possibly one or two others (a review skill or maybe writing process). This should make the grading of pieces more manageable. Then, at the end of the quarter, I could use a more in-depth rubric to review the students best work. Maybe a choice of three pieces? Revision would be expected, so that would be on the rubric. Theoretically, since I would have read all the pieces before, grading them again would go more quickly. However, I should NOT include a very detailed standard to assess that would require lots of close reading (such as general grammar or spelling where I must mark all the mistakes). The question would be how do I keep students going all quarter? A minimum number of pieces or pages?
- Assign more small assignments. I am excited about this idea also because it will be a MUCH better teaching tool. Previously, I would get so bogged down in grading that the results couldn't guide my teaching or help students improve in a timely manner. Giving more frequent, informal, small assignments would allow me to whip through them quickly getting a picture of what needs to be adjusted perhaps even daily.
- Stagger assignments by class period. Previously, I had all classes that were the same level turning in big assignments at the same time. I need to find ways to stagger due dates so that I am not overwhelmed. This could also include incentives for turning in large assignments early.
- One thing I think I do well is use rubrics. I create a rubric along side the assignment directions to guide my instruction and the students. When the rubric is well crafted, it makes grading move much more quickly.
- Use more often simple grading scales such as check / check minus or the smiley face scale I once created (probably even more relevant now with texting). Sometimes it is as simple as yes, the student got it, or no, the student did not. Other times, it is more about checking in with a class than individual assessment.
- Put more responsibility on the students to fix errors instead of doing it for them. When applicable, leave errors unmarked and let the students find them. Instead, make notations on the rubric, such as "missing thesis statement" or "no citations" or "errors with quotation marks." With errors like punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and basic sentence structure, I could make a cut off of marked errors, then stop. Maybe, I mark the first ten errors in these areas (unless they are part of a FCA) and then grade accordingly or ask the student to resubmit. Just thinking about this in context of some papers I've received in the past makes me feel liberated!
- If it does not break school policy, make exam scores reflect long term work (such as a final essay) and collect them before exams begin to provide more grading time. Work given during the exam period should be fast to grade (items with one right answer) or unnecessary to grade (reflection). Reduce or halt new incoming assignments as complete final exam essay. Progress scores determined via conferencing.
- If use a quarter rubric, devise a system to keep track of individual scores by standard. Can the scores be categorized in the computer, and then display chosen to sort them? (Ex. old system could group quizzes or HW together in a row).
Easy to grade assignments:
- Observations
- Short written work (notes, exit notes, reflections, graphic organizers, post-its, etc)
- Informal writing (journals, notes, reflections, reader response, letter essays)
- Discussion participation
- Self assessment rubrics (participation, anything else??)
- Conferences
- Quizzes
- Timed writing
- Presentations
- Worksheets (ex. grammar pretesting or practice)
- Surveys
