Grading Rhythms that Protect Your Time
I’ve been talking about rhythms quite a bit on the blog lately. Check out THIS POST and THIS POST to see what I mean. A rhythm is a routine that you have in place for your daily or weekly life, so that you don’t have to think about it too much.
A good example is brushing your teeth. You likely do this at the same times every day, and you don’t have to sit there and make a plan for it, because it’s just a rhythmic part of your life. Something that I’ve learned about teacher stress, is that much of the daily work in our classrooms can be made simpler by creating rhythms around it. There’s a full post about how to establish a new rhythm, with some examples of different pain points you may have in your teaching that you can totally solve with this idea.
Today, I wanted to focus on one pain point in particular: grading. It took me a loooonnnggg time to nail down the rhythm of grading. But it is possible to make grading the kind of thing that doesn’t create a plan, or hauling a bunch of papers home that simply end up in the trash. Here are my steps for creating a grading routine that saves you stress and protects your time!
Steps for a Grading Rhythm
Create a rhythm with your assignments.
You likely have already done this. Do your students rotate through the same type of activities every week in centers? Does your homework follow the same structure each week? Do they test and quiz on the same days of the week (for the most part)? If what needs to be graded has this super sporadic pattern of getting done, it will be hard to create a grading rhythms. You can build routines around grading assignments when you know that they will always look the same. There will always be spelling tests on Fridays. There will always be homework Tuesday-Friday morning to review, etc.
Decide what you need to grade vs. what students can grade.
I relied on student-graded work a LOT. There were some things I simply needed to put my eyes on and provide private feedback for. But there were some things that the students could check and review answers for all on their own.
Some of my student-graded assignments were:
Homework. Every morning, I had the answers to the math homework projected on my smart board. Students would unpack, and before they began any morning work, they would check their homework with marker and turn it in. Before I started teaching, I would paperclip the stack together. You’ll see below when I addressed the paper clipped stack, so stay tuned.
Centers. If there was an assignment that had right/wrong answers during centers, I had a folder of weekly answer keys in the room. The students could check their work (again, with a marker) after finishing and turn it in for me to look over later.
Weekly reading tests. This one seems crazy, but I did it. I had a data folder that my kids would log their reading tests with. When testing was done on Friday mornings, pencils would go in pencil boxes, and markers would come out. I would read the answers aloud and students would grade, then color in their data folder graphs to log their grade. Were there kids who tried to change answers last minute? Sure. Were there kids who got away with it without me ever seeing? Probably. But, our weekly reading tests were far from the only piece of data I was collecting for them, so I wasn’t hyper-concerned with the accuracy of these numbers. I knew who they were as readers, and if a student was consistently scoring far higher (or far lower) than I would have expected, I would pay close attention to their testing behaviors in the coming weeks.
Their tests would go in their data folders for me to collect at the end of every grading period, and I would thumb through the copies of the tests and the graphs they colored in. I would use those data folders to quickly enter all of their reading tests for the quarter.
Find pockets of time where you can grade things right there in class.
I graded math tests as they were turned in. The kids would read silently until everyone was done, and by the time we got to the last few kids, I had the answers memorized and could fly through grading. Then I’d end the block by passing tests back and letting them color in their data folder graphs. I gave and graded spelling tests in small groups (you can read about my word work/spelling teaching routines HERE). My favorite grading rhythm of ALL TIME are the reading response notebooks. This was such a game changer for me, and was done in 30 minutes every Friday morning during the weekly reading test I mentioned above. You can read about that in full HERE.
For everything else that needs to be entered/graded by you, pick on day of the week and time of day you will always do it. Put it in your planner so you don’t skip it or forget.
So that stack of paper clipped homework for each day of the week? Decide which day you’re going to come in early, stay a little later, or reserve planning time for grading and enter all of those at once. For the record, I just took a participation grade on homework, so I wasn’t actually looking at the answers. The paperclip helped me keep track of which kids turned the homework in on the day it was assigned, versus the kid who clearly turned it in late, because it was loose in the basket. Other assignments such as writing projects, or things that required a rubric would be saved for this same daily grading block. Other things that were centers that don’t require an entered grade would get a big, colorful star on them.
I have little kids at home, so it should be noted that it was impossible for me to come in early or stay late most days. I had to be very disciplined with my planning time. Tuesdays were a team planning day, Wednesdays were data team day every 6 weeks, and Fridays I was just too tired after all of the in-class grading I was doing. So, I chose Thursdays. I would close my door, and make things look as uninviting to my teammates as possible. And I’d use that 48 minutes to enter as many grades as I could. Anything I didn’t finish would be saved for the next week, but it was rare that I didn’t finish.
And there you have it! My very own grading rhythms and routines. How do you manage grading in your classroom? If your answer is: “I carry it back and forth in a large bag until I reach the point of no return and either throw it away or give everyone a 100”, then I urge you to focus on what you actually need to grade and give the rest to your students, then create some weekly routines that allow you to get it all done within your work week!
