Grading, Grading, Grading...

A few days ago, I had a monster pile of grading that looked insurmountable.  Not only had the first few weeks of student work gotten the better of me, I had had a family emergency that meant I was absent for four days in the middle of the very first chapter.

I started out with the best of intentions.  Students would grade their own work, receiving that immediate feedback that would be so useful to their learning.  Nothing would pile up on my desk.  Nothing would come home with me.

Self-grading worked like a charm, but even simply spot checking a few examples and recording the grades piled up on me.  Onto that I added bell work that I intended to grade weekly and a quiz and a test that turned out to be miserable grading experiences because I hadn’t sufficiently planned ahead of time what I would and would not accept as answers.  I thought with math I would be leaving behind those kinds of judgment calls!

After two days of mandatory state testing (allowing me grading time) and a marathon weekend, the giant pile disappeared and I have made new resolutions to keep it that way. 

I don’t remember where I first heard of having students grade their own work.  I never previously thought I could make it work, but my students this year are so wonderful, that they manage it like a charm.  My version of grading works like this:

Right after their bell work, the students pull out their homework and a red pen.  I insist on the red pen and no other writing instrument being available on the desk.  I announce the numbers of five representative problems from the previous night’s assignment. 

First, the students circle those numbers.  If they are missing any of those problems, they mark the spot where it should have been and write -4 in the margin.  At the top of their paper, they write “Missing 4 x ___ = _____” multiplying the total number missing by 4. 

Second, I use an Elmo to show the answers for the given problems in the teacher edition.  The students mark an x and write -1 next to any wrong answers.  They are encouraged to write the right answer in the red pen as well so that they can study from the corrected answer.  At the top of the page, they write “Wrong = _____” and write the number wrong.

The two totals are added together and subtracted from 20 to give them their score out of 20.  I spent a lot of time the first few times reminding them how big a difference skipping problems made to their assignments.  If they do all the problems, their lowest possible score is 75%.  Given that, they are encouraged to do the work, and are not much tempted to cheat on the grading. 

Before introducing the grading the first time, I made a speech reminding students that cheating is not only dishonorable and dishonest, but downright stupid when the cost would be getting a zero and having me publicly announce that I am going to be grading their work in future, while the lowest score they will get if they grade honestly and do all the work is a 75%.  I have not seen any evidence of cheating. 

There are students that continue to misunderstand or incorrectly mark some problems, but these errors really don’t matter much.  Homework, by department policy, is set at 40% of their grade.  Even if they get full credit for all homework, their grade will be determined by tests and quizzes.  The grading system is meant to convince them that trying every problem is worth their effort.  I do have to watch for the occasional student who gives himself or herself too low a score.

After the first few times, the grading became a very quick operation.  I can quickly gauge how well students understand the material by their scores.  Any grades less than 15 indicate that the student did not do the whole assignment.  If I picked the five problems to be representative of the types of problems in the set, scores between 15 and 20 give me a pretty good idea of how well the students mastered the problems given in this set.

That was the idea anyway.  I am only beginning to be able to breathe enough to actually do more than collect papers, record them, and move on.  

Here are some examples:

Student struggling--missed 4 of 5 representative problems

Student not completing assignment.

Student has a pretty good grasp of the material and took notes on the one problem missed.

Student does not understand the grading instructions.  Notice my correction in green.

Notice I have to use green for my corrections, since I told the students to use red.  I remembered too late why the workshop leader where I first learned a version of this grading technique recommended the students use green!

Rather than let the papers pile up in my keeping, I have tried lately to record the grades on my seating chart while the students are still seated and copying notes from the board.  That way, the students keep the work the whole time, and I can transfer the grades very efficiently to the computer.

A very wise person reminded me in the middle of all this that the point is the learning not the grade, so I am trying not to fixate on my process.  Sometimes there just isn't time to grade in class.  There is too much else to do, and for some assignments, I just gave myself permission to give full credit for completion and move on.  Just for the moment, the folders are all empty, and I have that rare and wonderful feeling of being temporarily caught up.