If you want students to check their own grammar (or their peers’), you might not want them using websites like these.ĥ. A caveat to this tip is to consider what you want your students to focus on for a particular assignment. Prior to this, my students and I talk extensively about the limitations of these tools-every once in a while, they’re just flat wrong. If you have the available equipment, administering formative assessments like quizzes or exit slips via Google Forms, Edmodo, or Kahoot! can save you oodles of grading time.Īdditionally, you can alleviate the strain of grading by giving students the technological resources to do better work.For example, I will regularly give my students the chance to use grammar checking websites like Grammarly or Paper Rater before turning in their writing. Use technology wisely: Technology can make the lives of teachers infinitely easier. As one of my students put it, it’s the difference between “That sucked!” and “You could do better if you.” Once your students are ready to evaluate each other constructively and kindly, let them, and give yourself a break.Ĥ. Spend time instructing your students about what is helpful, specific feedback versus generic comments or statements that are better left unsaid. It’s important to address expected behaviors as a class before letting students give feedback to their peers. Instead of spending hours grading your students’ work, you can spend 15 minutes of class time having students grade each other. Have students grade other students: Sometimes new teachers forget what an amazing resource students can be. For the next assignment, I choose a different one.ģ. For each assignment I give to my five sections of ninth grade English language arts, I choose a single class for which I’ll spend extra time writing out detailed comments. I like to systematically cycle through the students to whom I give feedback. However, it’s OK to not give feedback to every student on every assignment. And it’s true that good teachers give good feedback. Cycle your feedback: It’s tempting to spend enormous amounts of time commenting on student work. They were surprised at my complaints-rather than grade every assignment, they had only graded one.Ģ. It’s OK to not grade an assignment or to give credit for participation.Īfter teaching a lesson that required students to complete multiple writing assignments, I complained to a fellow English teacher about the hours I had spent reading the work. Don’t grade everything: Depending on the curriculum expectations for your school, you may be in a position to determine what is and is not worth going in the gradebook. We know we need to give timely and relevant feedback, and we know grading is important, but how can we make the process easier on ourselves? These are some tricks of the trade that may help new teachers struggling with grading. Grading is a cumbersome task for all teachers, but for early career teachers it can be debilitating. On the downside, one aspect of teaching that causes more dread than excitement for early career teachers is grading. They’ve embarked on a fantastic journey of meeting students, creating lesson plans, and beginning an extremely meaningful career. New teachers have a lot to be excited about.
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