Grading
Progress Report grades are due tomorrow at 9 AM. I spent a few hours on Saturday working on the grades, and the greater portion of today grading as well. Luckily, Alexia was willing and eager to help me grade as well, otherwise I would be up until the middle of the night getting all these grades done. I'm convinced that English is the hardest subject to grade, at least down here in the valley. I tried to put comments on all of the papers, circling spelling mistakes, crossing out unnecessary words, putting in all the correct grammar markings, and giving comments on the papers. Normally, you wouldn't think that this would be a big deal. However, the majority of my students do not know how to write correctly and spell phonetically, or not at all. Sometimes I would just circle words because I didn't recognize them in English or Spanish. Those made it quite the challenge to understand the essays. Fortunately, these were just rough drafts, and it is the start of the semester.
I'm quite nervous though. If it took me THAT long to grade a few weeks worth of work, and the student essays were between 1 and 2 pages a piece, how long is it going to take me to grade their much longer assignments?
All I know is that I'm tired, I'll update more tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have pictures later this week.
Oh, and next time the students write drafts, I'm having them peer edit.
Any ideas or suggestions from all you other teachers out there in internet land?
4 comments:
I hated progress reports...mostly because it was a 'fake grade' that teachers could use as a real grade to get us in trouble with our electives. What a pain.
Advice: don't assign long papers :)
Hey Mark,
As I killed time on Facebook (procrastinating from work), I found the link to your blog on your page.
Thought I could give you a couple tips. Don't grade for anything you haven't explicitly taught (i.e. spelling, punctuation). You will kill yourself correcting every mistake. Plus, there is research out there that shows students don't pay attention/actually learn from teacher marks. In fact, a marked up paper just makes them overwhelmed and lose confidence--especially our (I mean your :)) kids. This is one of those areas where you have to forget how you were taught. I went through the same thing.
Instead, focus on content/ideas during the first drafts, and then focus on grammar, etc. during the 2nd or 3rd draft when you've explicitly taught a few key skills. The emphasis again is on a few. Spelling is a huge hang-up. Teach a few high-frequency words every so often (month?) they commonly get wrong, and then hold them accountable for only those.
When a student attempts a more challenging word, but gets it marked wrong, the next time they will just choose an easier word and not take risks.
The overall emphasis should be on the process of writing, not the product (i.e focus on growth, not perfection).
Hope this helps. Feel free to call on the weekend if you want to talk through this more.
--Lauren
Hi, Mark!
I wrote a long comment, and then previewed it, and it got erased! Don't know what I did, but I am not going to preview anymore!
I liked your idea to peer edit the rough draft next time. Also I liked Lauren's comments to look for general content and flow--this is tough to do, though, when you can't even make out what they are saying! Do you have them write an outline and work in groups on reading their outlines? Kids are pretty good about noticing when the outline doesn't make sense.
I also liked Lauren's idea for spelling words and tests once a month. But good luck on that!
Glad you got your grades out; hope the kids are ok with their marks!
Love, Mother
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...Scroll to the very last picture, and you'll understand.
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