Teaching Tuesday: Grading

Grading is probably one of the hardest things about being a teacher. As a secondary teacher, I have 150 students. If they have an assignment every day, that's a lot of papers! Elementary teachers may have less students, but then they are grading all subjects and possibly way more papers. In order to save myself time (and sanity) here are some tips I use for grading more efficiently:

1. Use one paper for multiple assignments. This allows me to look at multiple days of work at one time. It may be more things to look at but sifting through less papers saves me time. My students have daily entry tasks and they put two weeks worth on one paper before I grade it.

2. Grade for completion, not accuracy. Often times on practice work, I don't grade every question for accuracy. If it is something that they can work on with partners, I mostly look for completion because chances are they could have just asked for the answers or copied it. While I think it is important for them to do practice work, the ones who are truly doing the work are getting the benefit and those who aren't will see that reflected on their assessments.

3. Spread out assessments. When I give tests, I try to make sure all of my classes don't take them on the same day. This is something that is harder when you have less different classes, but it's a lot easier to grade tests for half of my students than all of them. I also like being able to give them their tests back pretty quickly so that they can see how they did while it is fresh in their minds.

4. Have students grade their own (or each others) work. I usually only do this on short vocab quizzes but it helps a ton. I put a key on the white board and have them score it based on that. I make sure when I write these that they are multiple choice, true/false, or fill in the blank so that they are easy and don't have much room for interpretation.

5. Have a fun pen. Grading with a special pen always makes it more fun. :)

I do a pretty good job of not bringing grading home and I plan to try and keep it that way. I spend a long time planning and prepping at home, I don't need one more thing to add to that list. Any other teachers out there have some tips for how they stay on top of, or ahead of, their grading?