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Unapologetic Confessions of teacher who grades everything on Sunday: Grading takes time...that I don't have.

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Unapologetic Confessions of teacher who grades everything on Sunday: Grading takes time...that I don't have.

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Grading can be upsetting because time management is difficult without the actual available time. Not all situations are the same. I have had situations in my career where I had almost too much planning time, if that is a thing. However, for the last couple of years I have been given 25 minutes of planning time 3 days a week, and a daily 20 minute lunch. With class sizes in my title 1 school being each filled up to almost 30 (one of my 4 sections was 31 last year) I am already doing hours of prep work each morning at 4:30 am.. using different digital tools and apps; organizational methods, to make sure my content is properly digitized and created, labeled with standards, and available for students to access immediately. With this being something that gets me up at about 4 am to be at the top of my game, by 5 pm (commute is 45 minutes) my brain has exploded and I am tired, stressed, usually have a parent or two to call due to a discipline issue/write up in the formal system... mandated items...on top of all of these things, grading would have to take place when I am asleep. If teachers were given enough time to complete grading (we grade on the mastery scale 1-4, and I don't mind it) --the students remain motivated because they receive the data and or feedback (sometimes it is the same) and it motivates them to keep doing their best, or that they will get grounded from Fortnite if their parents check the Schoology assignments and they have a low percentage and missing assignments in their classes. I am very diligent about creating these activities and assessments on the backend for student access, standards alignment, and data gathering...so they are all there, and the parents worry about their kids when they check the grades and they aren't updated. I work by myself with 120 total-- 7th and 8th graders in a high poverty area with a large number of students on IEPs (1/3 on average per group are pulled for services)....making it virtually impossible for me to grade until the weekend, for the most part. This is frustrating because a teacher has to worry about his or her wellness, too. Not to mention side gigs like writing and contract work, parenting, and life---where is the time for grading? For most of us, it doesn't exist. It takes a back seat, and makes us feel guilty.

Samantha Shaffner

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Is how I feel when I am asked about grading, when I have to grade, when my students ask me when I will be finished grading something, and when I assign something that will have to be graded.  NOTHING turns me into an angsty teenager more than someone quizzing me about my grading process.

The biggest thing that I think about as a high school English teacher teaching six sections of core English classes (I don't need to remind you that that is roughly 170 students turning in 3 pages of essays during "essay times" which equals a minimum of 500 pages of "grading")  IS, what does everyone else think I am doing up here?  What do my colleagues think?  What are the parents thinking? What are my admin thinking etc.? And mostly, why won't they leave me alone?

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With a large amount of students, grading writing can be exhausting. I want to make sure that I’m being fair to all of my students based on their work and not how I’m feeling in hour two or ten. I know I can always use rubrics and grading sheets, but I’m wondering what else you might do in order to make sure you are grading the first paper the same as the last paper, as well as being fair to the student in the 5th percentile and the 90th.

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I struggle not only to keep up with the load of grading (thankfully, I'll be down to 3 preps next year), but I also struggle with making the assessments and feedback meaningful for the students, parents, and myself. I want students to have more accountability and ownership for their grades rather than asking why they're not passing if they've turned everything in. They don't grasp quantity vs. quality and completion vs. mastery. I want parents to be able to understand their child's progress, effort, and areas of strength/weakness when looking at the grade book. And I want assessments to better inform me on their progress and understanding in a way that won't seem so overwhelming.

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I feel like whenever you hear the word "rigor" it's because you are being criticized for not having enough of it. That has happened to me. How do I know I'm pulling the best work and thinking from my students? How do I most effectively assess/grade their work in a way that holds them accountable and helps them refine their work? I want to do what's best for my students. I don't want to shape everything I do in order to please AIR test assessors (computers?) or other teachers. That is something I'm hoping to learn more about in this class.
-Adrienne

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I guess I should start by saying that I H.A.T.E.D. my English classes growing up. While I loved to read and write, I absolutely dreaded getting any paper back because it would be covered in my teacher’s handwriting with my mistakes circled and detailed. Any book I might have enjoyed was boiled down to a multiple choice test.  When I was in school it seemed everything was graded for accuracy and my grade was the acknowledgement of what I knew or didn’t’ know. The trauma of the red pen loomed over me into my teaching career as I refused to co teach any high school level English class. I even had second thoughts on getting my Master’s through OWP- writing.. me… never!

However, my fears and experience as a poor (B average) English student, make me a much better English teacher. I don't think of assessment and grades as the same thing and yet those words are used interchangeably. Does every assignment need to be assessed and entered for a grade?  Do you grade each assignment for accuracy? Does every paper need to teacher checked and scored? Do you grade on effort or completion?  Do you grade based on individual student growth? What does a grade even mean? Does an “A” mean that a student has complete and total mastery of the grade level content? But then what happens when the “A” student doesn’t pass the state test or their District standard assessment (we use MAP) shows that they are below grade level? How do you explain this to parents? Can a student pass English because they do all the work to the best of their ability and yet all your assessments show they continue to read and write below grade level?

I hope to explore those questions with you over the course of the next few weeks. I do believe that I’ve found some strategies and methods which have worked for my students. I believe that assessing student should be varied and purposeful. Here are a few ways I use assessment in my classroom:

-          Our students are required to take the MAP, a standardize computer assessment, in the fall, winter, and spring. This provides a report which gives an overall score, Lexile level, and reading level. MAP can further break each student’s score into 5 subgroups including vocabulary, reading information text and reading literary text. By looking at these scores seasonally, we can see which specific areas to target for individual students. We can also see how students grow over time. This does NOT impact a student’s grade.

-          We are also required to give common formative assessments and bring the data to our biweekly TBT meetings. We use a variety of methods for these quick assessments, but all 4 ELA teachers at our grade level are required to ask the same question using the same text. We then meet to see how the students did and share any teacher methods we used which showed success. These assessments are over the common topic or skill we are all teaching and do NOT impact a student’s grade.

-          For a student’s IEP, I use Easy CBM for reading fluency and reading comprehension questions. I use the fluency and comprehension questions which are at the student’s current reading level which may not be their grade level. I give these during an elective class time, not during their ELA class time.

-          For ELA, my co- teachers and I have the same writing philosophy. We expect students to write more than we can ever read. Since writing is a craft, we do not grade everything they are writing. We write for a variety of purposes using a variety of styles. We typically provide all students with a completion grade on each assignment. We walk around the room and look to see that all students have written the amount required and they will receive full credit in the grade book. If we are grading for a taught skill, we ask the student to highlight where they showed that skill in their writing and we only grade that part. We may read the rest, but we only score the highlighted section based on the class created skill rubric.

-          For reading, my co-teachers and I have a weekly reading grade for independent reading. Basically you read… you get the points. Then when working with reading comprehension questions, we use the A-C-E strategy. We teach the students to A-answer the questions; C- cite evidence; and E- explain how the citation proves their answer. During the first part of the year, we simply grade on completion and effort. We use teacher modeling to show how to use the strategy, provide sentence starters, use student answers as models, etc. It is not until the middle or end of the year that we begin to grade students on accuracy of parts of their answers.

One strategy I’ve seen all over the Instagram teacher world is to create a stamp with universal expectations on it. This would save a teacher time from write the same comments over and over.

Something I struggle with is having students take more ownership of assessing their own learning. I would like for my students to be able to check their own work against either the teacher or student model and check their answer without having to ask me too. I would also like to think of a way for students to track their own learning over time. This would be helpful for IEP progress monitoring and progress reporting (which we complete every 4.5 weeks).

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Processing Data From the Assessments... (in time to reteach)

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Processing Data From the Assessments... (in time to reteach)

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Especially when it comes to writing assignments. I have rubrics that I give to each student, a classroom rubric where I tally the points and see where my classes struggle as a whole and then I have all this wonderful data but we have moved on.  And truly I feel guilty for not reteaching the material I know needs retaught  but fearful if I don't stick to the curriculum map. I do try to fit areas that really need retaught into future lessons. Is there a better way? Faster way? Is there a realistic way to collect the assignment, gather the data, process it, and then allow for reteaching?

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1.) How is the state doing as a whole regarding numbers? Are they trending up or down in ELA?

2.) How has the shift to digital assessments impacted student scores? How many years will it take for this method of assessment to be "fair" across schools where teachers have various levels of technology training?

3.) Auto-Grading and essays....is this a good idea? How do the scores look compared to when they were graded by real "humans'? Does machine grading follow the rubric?

4.) OTES generates an SGM based on our value added. How do we use our SLO and vendor scores with our value added data to self-assess?

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Assessment is something I consider my weakest area of teaching. Really, as a younger teacher I get so bogged down with grading that I end up unable to really process what it is that I'm assessing and thinking about how I want to use the assessment to guide my teaching. Instead it becomes: "We need to be done with this, and this grade needs to go in so we can move on". This year I worked on cutting down assessments and starting to change the way I think about assessments and grades. I had some successes but also found that I wasn't assessing enough. Generally I get pretty lost and really want purposeful ways to figure out where my kiddos are.
-Brittany B

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In our district, we are asked to assign letter grades to our primary students' learning.  As a 2nd grade teacher, it seems harsh to give students letter grades in subjects like reading, when they are still becoming familiar with the process.  I would rather give students feedback that shows how much growth they've made.  I want to stop hearing my classes say, "Are we going to take a test after we read this book?"  Do we give grades because it's what parents and teachers understand best?  What's the best way to communicate what our students are learning?
-Carrie

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Are there any purposeful common assessments for reading (1st grade) that have been utilized for a grade wide assessment? My school holds weekly team meetings that are data driven, however we use, in many opinions, pointless assessments that do not show real evidence of student learning. If you have used effective assessments for a first grade level (literacy) standard I'd love to know your resource! -Megan Hiatt

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Sometimes I struggle with getting students to enjoy the process of writing and motivating them when an assignment isn't for points.  One time a student asked, "how much is this assignment worth?" I responded, "personal growth."  I think sadly sometimes students are unintentionally trained in the behaviorism to think assignments must equal points to be meaningful. - Jennifer Bird

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Something I've thought about and worked on the past year is providing my students with timely and useful feedback on assignments. I've noticed that my students tend to only look at the grade and not read any of the feedback I provide, on writing or reading assignments. I've moved toward only giving feedback for writing during the process so students use it and giving only a grade on the "final" product. I'm wondering how other people have navigated this issue with assignments that aren't longer writing assignments.

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As a first-year teacher, something I really struggled with this year was over-grading. I realized about halfway through the year that I was grading at least twice as much as my colleagues and not in the most meaningful way. After this realization, I tried to adjust my grading habits, but students seemed to be less motivated to complete an assignment or activity if it wasn't for a grade. How do you balance grading in a way that is most meaningful for you and your students?

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What type of strategies does everyone use to test students ability and comprehension? -Suzanne

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How do you organize the information you glean from student assessments?
I think many of us use "exit tickets" and the like to gather student understanding and questions. I struggle with trying to keep all of this information (aka "DATA") in a place and format that is useful to me. I've tried a notebook, but it seems unwieldy.

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I liked reading in the textbook about formative and summative assessments. Teachers in my department are expected to use both, but upon reflection, what we labeled a formative assessment may have been more of a summative because students did not have the chance to rethink or revise.

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I decided to take this class because I am feeling not only overwhelmed at times with the amount of writing that I have to grade but also concerned that I do not have enough varying ways to assess my students that allow them to stay engaged but also give me an opportunity to see true learning/understanding. Daily assessments that occur in my classroom are the proofreading bell-work at the start of each class, weekly would be entrance and exit slips, and monthly would be a major writing piece of some sort (to name a few). I have common semester assessments with my freshmen course, but my other courses are solely taught by me, so it makes it more difficult without that collaboration. Some of my struggles each year are varying methods of assessment and also trying to avoid providing feedback to everything of each student's formal essay.

Some questions that I have: what are some simple but effective ways to assess students quickly on a weekly basis, especially when you have classes of 27 to 30? What are some ways to manage grading formal essays?

-Dawn Jessup

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I want to find 'assessments' that are useful in assessing where my students are but realistic at the same time. A lot of pretests for state testing have questions that are kind of posed as trick questions. Questions that only someone who has truly mastered different concepts could answer. To me this is just not realistic for a high school student as these questions are at a degree that I believe a college student with extensive knowledge and a degree could just manage to answer. I want to create assessments that one, tell me where my students are at REALISTICALLY, and two, that help prepare them for the hard end of the year testing.  How can we create assessments that empower are students instead of de-power them due to the high level of rigor we must prepare them for? -Diana B

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I struggle with the concept of "mastery" when addressing standards' based assessment. What does that word actually mean? When thinking about reading standards especially, I find it difficult to know if a student really understands the concept. They might be able to determine an author's purpose with one text, but not another...so much depends on their understanding of the TEXT, first! -- Rachael A

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Our grade level uses common assessments for vocabulary words. We work mainly on prefixes through these assessments. I want to change the assessments and have gotten good feedback from my team that they would be onboard. I want to have a pretest and give those who know the words a challenge list. I also want to combine a few prefixes to give the students a broader experience with prefixes. I am looking for resources to use to either create my own study, or use something already created.
Through our assessments both formal and informal we know they are extremely weak in vocabulary knowledge. Yet, we don't meet that need as effectively as we would like. What are resources other grade schools use for vocabulary instruction?

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My department uses common assessments - assessments used across all of our classrooms. I'm not a huge fan of these...how can I make sure I give a good mixture of different types of assessments and avoid relying too heavily on the common assessments?