I am a 7th grade Language Arts teacher. I go back to work in a few weeks, and my stomach is already hurting from the thought of all of the paperwork, especially grading.
I see about 115 students. Each student has 7 different genres that I have to be able to write a piece on and answer reading questions on (i.e. summary, creative story, report, poem, communication, personal narrative, expository essay). Each student must achieve mastery. If they don’t they have to re-do it till they do. That is 805 assignments right there. It takes me an hour to grade 10 papers. Most students don’t achieve mastery, so add a few hundred to that number. This doesn’t include homework, journals, and in-class assignments to get them ready to do their genre pieces. I figured out that the number of assignments I grade easily reaches into the thousands.
Also, they are teenagers! Need I say more?!
On top of that, I know that I am LD when it comes to math. So scoring and keeping track of it and explaining it to my parents is very difficult.
And there is all of the other paperwork that goes along with being a teacher: grade level meetings, language arts meetings, communications with parents, e-mails, etc.
I need help with it all, but specifically with managing the grading. Does any teacher out there have any suggestions?
Thanks!
Re: teachers with ADD and paperwork
My son’s school uses rubrics, and there is peer editing and grading for some papers. Perhaps this helps. Also the parents are kept to a distance. I am a parent of a child with ADD and a specific LD and I had contact with the English teacher twice in the year. Additionally, there is a lot of writing that goes on in social studies. Some of it is collaborative, and some individual. The teacher used a lot of class time to correct papers, hopping from desk to desk as students wrote in class, or did other work that could be done independantly.
Dear Liz,
How i understand. Oh yes
Some teachers believe in peer checking.
There might be cases where one student can check another for specific points.
for eg. One essay to be checked for organization - intro, body, conclusion
or another essay for clarity.
Kids could use rubrics…clarity could be assessed
on a 1 - 10 basis
1 being totally unclear and 10 being marvellously smooth (the kids could make their own rubric on the board and use it)
Then they hand in their papers for your once-through and they’d get them back for correction.
Or…another method is that they write their piece and request you to check them on one point…could be spelling, or grammar, or specific vocabulary.
Record keeping is a little more interesting than usual, but if you keep a page or two for each student, you could record how they do for each date.
Colour coding helps as well
one colour for a certain essay for all students
When you look back, you’ll see at a glance who didn’t hand in what.
Ask around. There are many who’ve conquered this nightmare. Not to fear - it’s only marks. The important thing is that the kids see and read and practice for excellence.
judih