Grade Faster
Multiple Choice: You may receive a look of disdain for choosing this style of assessment. Rightfully so, this isn’t the best approach to assess student performance, but because of the limitation of time, go with this method more often than not to save time. Make quizzes/tests and maybe even homework assignments multiple choice when you’re overwhelmed. When you’re caught up, look for other methods to assess and grade students. Look into Google Forms and the app Zipgrade to help you grade quicker. Zipgrade will allow you to print out scantrons that you can scan with your phone for an immediate, accurate grade.
Snapshot Grades: Teachers can grade homework assignments with a scale of 100, 75, 50, 25, 0. If students complete the homework fully, neatly, and with effort, give the student a 100. I call this a snapshot grade because the grade is really about effort and responsibility. Or maybe…grade the first 5 questions on homework. Are your students being compliant? Reward them with an easy grade for being responsible. Don’t use snapshot grades all the time, but use this method on homework when you can’t be there to help your students. We should honor students who show compliance and responsibility with a great grade.
Rubrics: Use rubrics as much as possible when grading writing samples. Focus on less and not on every piece of grammar when grading student writing. You can easily create rubrics with AI technology to help speed things up for you. Because I teach English, I focus on a few concepts that were taught during the year. Don’t overload yourself and try to grade every little detail. Rubrics will allow you to select a category with a set criteria. This also keeps grading fair to your students. Essay grading can be maddening and time consuming. How many times students just ignore my comments or toss the assignment into the garbage is “Uber” frustrating. Sheesh!
Toss out: If you were absent for the day or a majority of your students are doing poorly on an assignment. Maybe it was your teaching, or maybe something didn’t go right with the lesson—toss it out. Don’t do this too often or tell the students, but throw out anything that lacks quality. I probably toss out 2 items per quarter to save time and my students’ grades. Note: If students catch onto you doing this, grade everything when you’re absent. Do this to keep them on their toes by grading harder on certain assignments. If you’re using snapshot grades for homework, then every so often grade the entire assignment for accuracy. Don’t let students get comfortable with your grading approach. Keep it spicy.
Grade 3 things per week: Don’t grade every day. I, personally, grade my Do Now assignments, 1 classwork, and 1 homework assignment or quiz per week. Use teacher observations and other forms of assessment to evaluate your teaching. Grading really helps us teachers see how well we are teaching. Before you teach a new concept, think of ways you will assess students quickly in the classroom to gauge whether you need to reteach or provide remedial lessons to reach your learners. For example, I use hand gestures (fingers 1,2,3) and will ask the class a question in a multiple-choice format. Students will place their fingers near their shoulders to avoid embarrassing themselves with the wrong answer. Another technique to assess students quickly is to ask a question to the left side, back, and right side of the room. I think of this as the maestro technique because you’re calling on all sides of the room to participate. Exit tickets could be another strategy to use at the end of class to verify if students adequately understand your teaching. You could employ true/false questions, quick responses, or one-word answers here. Make these quick and not time consuming for you to grade. I would grade these periodically and toss out the rest. Don’t make more work for yourself. Again, exit tickets really just provide a gauge for you to decide if students need more or less teaching on a topic.
Finally, tinker around with these ideas and do what you think is best for your students. Try to make your life easier in the class until you get a great handle on lesson plans and running your class. Check out the following resources that provide answers, keys and auto grading for you to use and save time in the classroom. I will include more math resources in the future.