Posted December 2004: Kathy Paxton-Williams offers tips for making grading manageable for you and meaningful for students. See Dorothy Zemach's From A to Z column, "Grader's Block," Essential Teacher, Winter 2004 (pp. 16-17).
To make grading manageable for me and useful for students, each week I pick a new focus for correction, say, spelling or a grammatical point. Every day, the intermediate- and advanced-level students in my class do an activity called 5-minute writing. I write a question on the board (three of my favorite sources are McFarlane & Saywell, 1995; Nicholaus & Lowrie, 1996, 2000), and the students must either answer it or write about another issue for the first 5 minutes of class in a spiral notebook I hand out at the beginning of the year.
Once a week, the students pick a 5-minute writing to edit, revise, rewrite, and turn in. I grade only the focus area for that week. By zeroing in on only one point, I get a good idea of each student's writing style, I don't get bogged down in correcting everything, and neither the students nor I get frustrated by a large number of corrections.
The students save the writings I have corrected to refer to when we meet throughout the year for individual help. For example, with one student I would correct the weekly focus plus subject-verb matching, and with another I would correct the weekly focus and spelling.
More Grading Tips
For more grading tips, see these online sources:
- "Grading for Optimal Student Learning" (Zlokovich, 2001; http://www.psychologicalscience.org/teaching/tips/tips_0101.html): This article offers good food for thought about putting the learner at the center of the grading process.
- "Responding to and Grading Students’ Work" (Columbia University, n.d., http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsas/cs/tch-rce/pages/tch-manual/sec/resp-to-and-grading-std-work.html): Part of a teaching manual, these guidelines are oriented toward college students but apply to students of other ages as well.
- "Teachers Learn From Looking Together at Student Work" (Dunne, 2000, http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr246.shtml): School reformers say the way to improve education and accountability is to improve how teachers and students look at student work. This article in Education World examines two collaborative approaches that teachers are using.
- Tips for Grading Group Work (McKinney, 2004, http://www.cat.ilstu.edu/teaching_tips/handouts/tipsgroupwork.shtml): McKinney, of the Center for Advancement in Teaching, has some good ideas for managing students who are working in groups.
- "Tools for Teaching, Grading Practices" (Davis, 1993, http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/grading.html): This article looks at the many purposes for grading and offers some useful strategies.
References
Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. (n.d.). Responding to and grading students’ work. In Teaching resources: Teaching manual. Retrieved September 23, 2004, from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsas/cs/tch-rce/pages/tch-manual/sec/resp-to-and-grading-std-work.html
Davis, B. G. (1993). Grading practices [Online version]. In Tools for teaching (pp. 282-287). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved September 23, 2004, fromhttp://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/grading.html
Dunne, D. W. (2000). Teachers learn from looking together at student work. Education World. Retrieved September 23, 2004, from http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr246.shtml
McFarlane, E., & Saywell, J. (1995). If ... (questions for the game of life). New York: Random House.
Nicholaus, B., & Lowrie, P. (1996). The conversation piece. New York: Random House.
Nicholaus, B., & Lowrie, P. (2000). The conversation piece 2. New York: Random House.
McKinney, K. (2004). Tips for grading group work. Retrieved September 23, 2004, from http://www.cat.ilstu.edu/teaching_tips/handouts/tipsgroupwork.shtml
Zlokovich, M. S. (2001, January). Grading for optimal student learning. APS Observer, 14(1). Retrieved September 23, 2004, from chttp://www.psychologicalscience.org/teaching/tips/tips_0101.html
Kathy Paxton-Williams (kathyp11@aol.com) teaches ESL at Grant High School in Portland, Oregon, in the United States.