Give me an A!

Okay, here's the down and dirty truth:

I loathe grading. 

EEEEEEK! I can just hear the over-achievers (especially those that attended MU with me) start to stir and cry: 

"But [insert my first name here], you're supposed to love grading so much that you brag about how late you stay up each night marking your students' work with precise and constructive feedback!"

Well, dear friends, that's just not the case. I've developed an anecdotal record-keeping system that helps me assess my students' progress, determine what my next instructional steps will be, and assign grades for each quarter. Personally, I think the formative assessment style is much more effective when it comes to student growth. Using anecdotal notes, I can identify a weakness and attack the academic problem long before it becomes a poor habit (i.e. only using the beginning sounds to decode a word). 

The problem I have with grading is that by the time I sit down to grade something, the student already moved on to something else and already forgot about the assignment I'm grading. Many times it's my fault--I wait too long to grade something. Hours, days, weeks, they just move so quickly when I have a stack of ungraded papers on my desk. I'll pick one up and think: "YIKES! How did I let an entire week pass and I haven't even touched these with a red pen yet?" Other times, the assignment was completely snooze-worthy and no one--not me, not my students--are chomping at the bit to assign or receive a grade. 

Now, before you mentally assign me a "horrible teacher" grade because of this particular post, hear me out. 

Over the years, I'm realizing a few things about grading: 

• Summative assessments (the kind you receive grades or written feedback over) are important and useful. They can help you assess your students as well as your performance as a teacher. 
• Grading is more effective and timely when your assignment comes with a scoring guide. Your students  can approach the assignment with more direction and you can be more deliberate and focused with your grading. 
• When you spend your time creating interesting assignments (and corresponding scoring guides), you won't mind grading them quite as much. Create assignments that allow for your students' personalities and talents to shine through--you might even look forward to assessing the final product!

Okay, so my suggestions are totally cliche and expected, but here's the final (and most important) piece: 

• Start small. Think about the one assignment that gives you trouble each week. (For me, it was the weekly book report. Totally snooze-worthy after 5 months of the same format.) Change up the format of the assignment. Create a rubric. Make the assignment more open-ended but then place higher/stricter expectations so it doesn't backfire. 

Ultimately, my goal is to have a nice balance between summative and formative assessments in the the classroom. My new book report assignment and scoring guide, which I started today--is just a step in the right direction.