Did you catch my “One wish” post on Instagram? I asked if you could have a fairy godmother fulfill one teaching wish, which would you pick. The overwhelming response? Grading. You’d have a fairy godmother do all of your grading for you! It actually kind of shocked me. I was all about the $500/year classroom fund option, to be honest! Anywho, I thought I’d share some of my tips on how to make grading more manageable!
| 1. Do not grade everything. DO NOT. Don’t do it. Giving them feedback doesn’t improve their language skills and it sucks your time right out of your preps. Choose wisely what actually matters to grade and is accurately measuring their proficiency. 2. Completion grades – Did they do it? All of it? Check. Done. Not done? No check. Moving on. 3. Autograding resources – I love Google Forms, Edpuzzle, Quizizz, Boom Cards, and Señor Wooly for many reasons, but one of them is definitely that I don’t have to grade them by hand, and those I do are fast to grade. 4. Entrance/Exit tickets – An assessment does not have to be 100 questions long to get an accurate measure of the student’s ability. Check out my post here for some more ideas! 5. Split them up or spread them out – Try and space out your big assessments among your levels, or split them up into a few smaller assessments given throughout your unit. |
| I’ll be the first to tell you, I still get overwhelmed by grading sometimes, but those tips have helped me keep it under control and manage the stacks of papers. |
