You are grading the work that students turn in, whether homework, projects, or exams, which takes several hours and can get boring. But it has to be done, just like many other things.
It is important to see how well a class is doing and to give parents an idea of how their child is growing. It also gives students valuable feedback that can help them improve.
Even though grading is important, if you don’t find good ways to stay on top of it, you’ll soon find that your grading work is piling up. On the other hand, if you use a few tactics to deal with it better, you might be able to stop grading from upsetting up your free time and throwing off the balance between your work and personal life. Here are some great grading tips for teachers to help them do the right grading.
7 Effective Grading Tips for New Teachers
1. Grade Daily
Ungraded papers are like laundry. The laundry will quickly become a mountain of filth if not done every day. The task may be kept manageable by grading a manageable amount each day. Even if you commit to doing out for twenty minutes a day, the cumulative effect of your efforts will rapidly help you stay on track. Students get an additional advantage when they are given feedback shortly after completing an assignment, as this allows the ability that they are being evaluated to remain in the forefront of their thoughts at the time.
2. Establish some organizational structure.
Maintain a collection of ungraded papers in a single location convenient for transit and access. Searching for particular assignments will save time if you have them organized according to date, topic, and class. After that, you may start grading the most outdated papers to ensure nothing important is missed.
3. Grade for Mastery
Consider grading students on their understanding of the material rather than attempting to give point values to each assignment or component of an assignment.
The term “mastery” refers to a grading system that employs a four-point scale that opens a new window to indicate whether or not students are displaying a partial, simple, strong, or outstanding comprehension of the subject being discussed.
You can now concentrate on determining whether or not your students are acquiring the skills they need, which will not only help grading go more smoothly but will also provide feedback that is more relevant than an arbitrary % or letter grade.
In addition, you can give each level of the four-point mastery scale a percentage or point value that will be reported as part of your grade.
4. Use Tools
Although grading can be done without tools, it’s always better to use some. Grading tools are helpful as they save time and make this whole process a little easier. For teachers, EZ Grader can be used for basic grading, or a final grade calculator or weighted grade calculator can be used for more advanced grading.
5. Be flexible
If a student comes to you after getting their grade to argue about something, listen to what they have to say and consider it. If the assignment needs to be regraded, it’s best not to do it in front of the student but to take your time and return it.
Even though mistakes will happen, it’s important that your students feel like they can talk to you about them.
6. Allow for grading by peers using a predetermined rubric.
You and your students will find that using rubrics is convenient. They explain the significance of the various point values and serve as built-in feedback for students whose performance levels vary.
In addition, students may utilize rubrics to grade one another’s work for certain tasks. It may not only help speed up the grading process for you, but it will also assist your students in better comprehending what is expected of them.
7. Think About Skipping the Grading of Some Assignments.
It is possible that leaving all or part of an assignment ungraded would seem to be challenging. However, you should rethink your position on the need to assign a grade to every assignment that students complete.
A simple checkbox indicating that it has been finished may be sufficient if an assignment is just for practice. You may also think about “spot-checking” an assignment, which involves grading just a small number of practice problems in a subject like mathematics or grammar to indicate whether the student understands the material.
How to make the grading process less difficult
Choose the Best Time & Place
Please find the time of day when you are most productive in grading, and then make that your routine. For example, you could do this when you first wake up in the morning, when your mind is clear, after your workout, or when you get home from work and have time to think.
Finding the time of day when you are most productive might take trial and error, but things will be much easier for you in the long run if you commit to doing this task in a certain amount of time.
You need to find the best place and time to do your grading. You want to be in a place with as few interruptions as possible to go with the flow more easily. This will let you work faster.
It could be in your classroom, home office, or a quiet corner of your favorite restaurant. The important thing is that you can be alone and focus.
Break It Up Into Pieces That Are Easy To Handle.
If you think it is hard to focus when looking at a big pile of papers or exercise books, break them up into smaller piles first.
Even though this seems like a simple thing to do, it will protect your mind from the flood of grading material. It’s a simple way to trick your mind into thinking that the work at hand is easier than it is.
It is a great suggestion to list what needs to be done first and grade that before separating the papers into smaller piles. This will make things easier. You could also sort them by how hard they are, starting with something easy to get you going.
Reduce Mobile Phone Interruptions.
Mobile is always there, but it’s especially true when grading student work, even though your phone may be an important tool. There’s no way around the fact that grading is never-ending.
And with Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, your phone is the best thing to do when you’re bored. But it would be best to let yourself get distracted because you’ll have to get back on track each time. It uses up your brain power and makes grading take much longer than needed.
Some of the worst offenders are messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Slack. Every message you send could get a reply, and you always feel like you have to answer or respond, which creates a time-consuming loop.
Next thing you know, you’ve been holding your phone for ten minutes straight, but your list of things to do hasn’t changed. For this purpose, you use an app like Anti-Social or Cold Turkey that blocks access to these sites at certain times.
You could also turn off your data and tell anyone who might need to get in touch with you right away to call you or send you a text message.
Conclusion
According to one research, the amount of time spent grading papers might be an unexpected challenge for new teachers. According to the study, teachers spend an average of 5 hours each day on this task.
However, grades for students are necessary for both the provision of feedback and the promotion of students. Given this, it will likely be of great use to both new and seasoned teachers to acquire the skills necessary to grade tests and essays efficiently.
In this article, we discussed grading tips to help all teachers. In addition, we also learned how to make grading easier. We hope this article helped you, and you will use these tips for grading in the future.