4 Life-Saving Grading Tips for Upper Elementary Teachers

Kirsten 0:00

Hey, there, I'm going to be frank with you and just say it, grading can be a B. And you probably know what that's supposed to be. It's not one of my favorite teaching things, I would rather make copies much more than grade. I hate it because if it doesn't get done, you feel further and further behind. And even worse, trying to track students who are missing assignments or need to complete important assignments. And the more they have, the worse it gets. So it's just this continual cycle of papers and grading is just not fun. And don't even get me started on having more than one class. The more students the merrier, right? No, it's not fun, it makes the grading even more complex. Although it's been something that is a necessary evil, I found just a few grading hacks that have helped me out and makes it less of a daunting task. I still don't like it, but now it's much more tolerable. So I'm going to share with you four grading hacks that are super life saving.

This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm curious to know if you southern teach an educator and mom who is passionate about all things, social studies, I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.

All right, so are you ready for those lifesaving grading hacks? Let me tell you, it's a game changer. At least for me, I hope that you can take some of these tips to heart if you're not already doing them.

The first grading hack would be to not grade everything students turn in. So yes, students are turning in papers, they may have a lot of things that they are doing and turning in. But you do not have to grade every single paper. One thing you can do is, you know if especially if it's something that you did as a class, you can just do a check so that you have seen it that's indicating that you've seen it, we've done it, we've participated together in it. So students can also self check, or you can take it as a completion grade. So if you see that it's complete, you just put 100 or 95. So based on completion, if they completed some of it, you can give them an 90 or 80 or 70 it's just however you want to do that. grading scale, another thing you can do is to do the minimum. So yes, it is okay to do the minimum requirements that are set by your school. And do not let anybody tell you differently. So if you're only required to enter in two grades per subject a week, do those two grades per subject a week, you do not have to do all five activities that you did for the week. So you can physically grade two of them. The other three, you can put checks, or you can have the students check them on their app.

The second grading hack I have for you is to grade only certain parts of the assignment. So you have an assignment that they turned in, but you're only grading a section of that assignment. And this can be great if you're just doing a quick formative assessment, or you just kind of like a little quick check or exit ticket, and you want them to see if they understand a specific skill. So something that I recently did was I had students complete a three page paper on prime and composite numbers. And so I checked for completion on the first two pages. And then it was really the five last multiple choice questions that I actually graded for accuracy. So I made it out of 15 points, because there were 10 little squares. But the last five questions, I actually graded those. So that is an example of how you can grade certain parts of an assignment.

My third tip for you is to grade a page at a time. This works wonders when you have a test with multiple pages. And it's multiple choice. I start with a stack of papers and grade all of page one, and then all of page two, etc, etc. And it's this same five letters or six letters. And I'm automatically looking for those same letters, it's just repetition and it's easier for my brain to break down. Instead of resetting myself after grading 50 questions or however many questions and going on to the next paper, I just look to see a BB DD ABB DD and just keeps going on and on, it just goes so much more quickly. And as I finish on each page, sometimes I will total up how many were missed and put it on that page. So that when I do go back and tally up how many total points they missed, I'm just looking at the bottom where I put minus one minus three. And then I can put the total score on the front of their page.

All right, grading Hack number four, is to have students grade two, believe it or not, students can grade their own papers. Because number one, they like to do it. And also it promotes responsibility and accountability. Another big tip with this is if you have students grade, you want to make sure you actually take their word for it don't regrade after them unless something looks a little off or sketchy or they get a grade higher than what you are anticipating then you can look into it further. But for the most part, if they say they missed five, give them that minus five and put it in the gradebook. So this is something I know might be a little hard to see like, oh, do they really get those five. But if you teach them to be honest with themselves and have integrity and really make sure they are putting down what they missed, then more times than not, I've learned that they will make sure that they put what they actually missed. You can also have students self check with digital self checking activities. And if you're looking to make your own activities that are digital self checking, hello algebra has these resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, where you can buy templates, put in your own problems, put a picture in it, and they can enter in the answers or enter in their answers. And they will be able to see automatically if it is correct or incorrect. And that's just another easy way to take as a grade you can submit it as maybe a Schoology assignment or in Google Classroom. And you can have them turn it in that way.

I also have some reading and science and social studies of mystery picture activities in my own TPT store that are already done for you if you are wanting to check that out. And it's in a bundle. So there's stuff such as types of communities, fast and slowly and changes. And there's a couple of book companions that I have in there as well. So if you want to check that out, you can go in my TPT store. I have a digital mystery picture bundle, and I'll make sure that's linked in the show notes.

All right, well, here's your creative action tip for you. Today, I want you to pick a grading hack to implement this week and see how much it cuts down your time. I've learned that as long as you have a good balance of grades, not too many tests or heavily weighted grades or not too many participation and completed grades, you can actually have a healthy balance of grades that don't take too much time to do, regardless of the number of students in your class.

All right, well, that's all for today. I am so happy that you are tuning in with me. I will see you again next week. Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in the next episode for more teacher tips and strategies.