Grading Challenges
It appears it has been a busy week for all of us. As you take on more planning and teaching responsibility, you will agree that teachers spend large amounts of their personal time preparing for teaching. Talk about the grading load and how you are handling it. Emily and Kasia, as a former English teacher that was one of my biggest challenges. Rosie what about your classroom?
Don't forget a high and a stretch. Respond to each other.
posted by Chris @ 10:39 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
The grading load hasn't been too bad in our classroom. We are very fortunate because between Ms. Liff, our student aide, and me, we are able to spread a lot of the work between us. I graded the first two big writing projects, and Ms. Liff graded the third. Her words were, "it was painful." Apparently, our 8th graders have trouble distinguishing between writing a Facebook status update and a professional writing assignment. There were smiley faces in the middle of their essays; we'll just say that. It took her a while to grade those essays because of the amount of corrections she had to make. Hopefully, after addressing those errors the next batch of essays won’t take as long. However, I will probably have to take those home as well.
I can see how it would catch up with you, especially in English. The 8th graders have a spelling or vocab. test every week, usually a writing assignment or presentation, journal prompts, and book reports every two weeks. I am figuring out quickly how important it is to time the assignments just right, so you don’t have to grade too much at one time. Staying consistent with the days of the week certain things are due helps with this. Tests are on Thursdays. Reports are Fridays. And essays are Mondays. Also, Ms. Liff and I pick our battles when grading. For important assignments, we tend to grade harder and look closer at their work. For other things such as journal prompts, a simple check yes or no works fine.
In second grade, grading isn't that big of a deal. We have spelling tests every Friday, but usually use a unit or two's assessments to give the kids a grade on their report card. The grading is very subjective, and the students get a CD (Constantly Displayed) P (Progressing) and N ( I think means not displayed? or No evidence? Monica said she has never had to give one). The report cards are changing this year but that is what we have given on our math assessment as well as our science assessment so far this quarter. There are not many "tests" in our classroom, and we use quite a bit of formative assessment.
In terms of planning, I had no idea how much was necessary for 2nd grade!! I come home everyday exhausted and have spent 11 hours at school more than once so far this quarter. There is so much to do and the list never shrinks! If I take anything away from this experience, it is that you can never be over prepared but you also cannot let this job consume you. Time management is key, and as Kimmie's teacher from last semester, Ms. I says, "You just have to let the balloon go."
A high for the week is that I did my videotaping last week and think I have a pretty good lesson to submit. The autistic student in our classroom had a break down in during the lesson I taped, but I was able to calm him down so I will probably submit that too as further evidence. It will definitely give me more to write about!
A stretch for the week is that I just can't seem to get the student we had trouble with a couple weeks ago to work up to his potential. We have figured out that he is not a very good reader, but he is a very strong math student who could really contribute to the class if he applied himself. Here's to having enough energy to motivate the students who want to make you pull the hair out of your head! :)
Emily- I am sure that with the use of social media these days, kids' work would definitely suffer. A teacher I had last semester talked about a lesson she had that embraced our culture of such open lines of informal communication. She had her students write a note to a friend telling them what they did over the weekend or what they were planning on doing that week. Then she had them revise it as if they were writing to the President of the US. The kids apparently got into it and really tried to enrich their vocabulary by utilizing their thesauruses while doing so. I thought it was a neat idea since she showed that she valued the way they communicate, but made it clear that it isn't appropriate for all kinds of writing. I am sure you guys will get them out of their bad habit!
Emily-That is great that you have and aide to help with the grading! We actually haven’t had any major writing to grade like you have, but the rest of my time here all of the final projects for units are heavily anchored in various forms of writing. Do you guys give a lot of feedback when you are grading their major writing pieces? I’m just curious how your class does it---with rubrics and some comments, or more of a short response type of form?
Rosie-I think I’m in the same boat as you. Wow, I feel like I can’t get caught up. I come home and have 4 hours to get stuff done and get to bed at a reasonable hour, but it never seems like it is enough! I feel like I am having a hard time planning for two different grade levels, but I think planning for different subjects (like you have to) would be very time consuming!
Well, the 9th and 10th grade classes have just adopted the IB grading system in hopes to give them a clearer understanding of how they are doing in a class, and lesson the jump into the IB program. This means that we are assigning a 1-7 in two main categories: Approaches to Learning (which is participation, preparedness, time management, etc.) and Achievement (this is their major projects, tests, essays, etc). The reason for this switch was to distinguish between their actual skill level through the Achievement grade and let the Approaches to Learning be a separate grade (example students might be very bright and do well on tests, but never turn in homework). I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I do know that it has been a struggle keeping track of the Approaches to Learning grades. My mentor teacher and I developed a live Google form that seems to be working well, but the 1-7 scale is hard to assign. The problem I have been finding is that it forces you to clump students into categories. There will be a handful of students in the 5 category, but some of their work is better than the other 5’s but not quite a 6… It feels very subjective at times, and a percentage allows you to give a more accurate portrayal of where they’re at. My opinion might change, but this has been a challenge.
The planning and grading workload has been a lot. I have definitely been taking a lot of work home with me, actually every night. There is always planning, grading, or TPA stuff to do. It has been doable, but it sure takes a lot of time. Having two grade levels to prepare for also has added a bit of work, because we are creating plans for 9th grade classes and plans for 10th (haha that was an obvious statement).
Rosie-I also forgot to encourage you in my earlier comment…I have also been struggling with a student. Keep your chin up ☺ and remind yourself that you won’t always be able to reach every kid. I know you will keep trying as many ways as you can, but don’t get down on yourself!
Can’t wait to see you girls this weekend!! We can have some major debrief sessions as we gallivant about Paris! ☺
Post a Comment
<< Home