How I Graded 81 Assignments in 6 Minutes

I accomplished this today, and I thought I should blog about it! In my first years of teaching, I didn’t use this time-saving practice. Instead, in those early years, I would have said, “Pass your work to the front of the classroom, please” and then I would collect the work, sort it, grade it, and put it in the gradebook.

I’ve realized that is WAY. TOO. MUCH. WORK. for me to put into grading and entering daily work assignments. And, it takes away from the energy and time I need to spend grading the really important work — the final assessments! Not that daily work isn’t important — it’s just continual practice we do leading up to the final “now, show me what you know” product.

And, maybe I should get rid of grading daily work altogether, and maybe I will be forced to as more high schools move towards standards-based grading — BUT, in the meantime, I will say that my high schoolers LIKE getting points for daily work. It’s motivation for them to complete the practice I’m asking, so I do occasionally like to reward that! I just don’t want the grading to bog me down…

Here’s what I did today to speed up my grading!

1.Students placed their work on the desk, face up.

Today, students set their paper on the desk as they worked on a NoRedInk assignment.

However, in the past, I have also had students lift their papers in the air, and as I “check” them (see step 3), I signal to each student that I have “graded” their paper, and they can put their hand down.

2. I detached my computer and put it in tablet mode.

Technology is NOT a requirement — in the past, I’ve used a blank roster to do a quick grade check. It takes a little longer to type it later into the gradebook, but it still saves me SO much time!

3. In PowerSchool, I put a “missing icon” next to any students who were absent or left their assignments at home.

See picture on the right!

4. I walked around and checked student assignments — THIS IS THE KEY TO SAVING TIME!

Typically, when I “check” these daily work assignments, I glance at the work as a whole, but also, I focus in on ONE or TWO key words or phrases to make sure students are “on track” and weren’t just writing nonsense (my high schoolers are very crafty at times!)

Today’s two focus points I picked were an important highlighted sentence AND one specific note from the margin. I walked from student-to-student glancing at these 2 specific parts of their work.

5. I entered any grades below a perfect score.

Today, I had two students who did not complete the annotation assignment and got partial points 🙁

6. I typed 10/10 for the first student on my PowerSchool roster, and then, I clicked “Fill score.”

See picture on the left!

7. I hit save

BOOM! Grades done in TWO MINUTES! It literally took me two minutes (or even LESS in some classes) to walk around the class, glance at the sheets, grade, and save nearly 30 scores! (I have 3 classes–so that is where the 6 minutes comes in!)

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Again, this method works SO well for me grading daily practice or a quick formative assessment! The students appreciate some daily work points for their effort, and I appreciate the time I can save grading it — saving my real time for grading summative assessments OR relaxing at home 🙂

Do you have any time saving grading tips? Share below!