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?