I am teaching 4th grade for the first year after teaching kindergarten for my first 4 years of teaching. I love 4th grade, but I can't keep up with the correcting. I teach at a private school with 37 students in my class. I do have an aide in the morning, who runs off things, gets things together for projects, or anything else I need. She also works with children having difficulty with a concept in a small group setting. I want to do most of my own correcting, but I can't keep up. I have the students correct their homework, so I just have to enter the grade and check it over, but there are still so many other things. Any ideas, routines or suggestions would be appreciated!! Thanks!
first of all, 37 students?! I can't get over your class size! I have had 23 at the most, so I can't imagine keeping up with that many papers! I had a very wise teacher tell me when I first started teaching to decide what is "grading" material and what is not. In other words, it's okay to toss some papers if it was just a practice concept. I felt like I had to grade every single piece of paper that the kids did. So, for example, if you do three pages on multiplication, only take a grade on one of them (usually the last page that you do). The kids, and parents, have NEVER asked "so why didn't I get that paper back?" If they did, I would probably just tell them that it was a practice skill and was for my eyes only. Don't sweat the small stuff.
As others have said, don't feel you have to grade/correct everything!
Yikes with 37!
Sometimes if we check something in class, I have students give themselves a checkmark to show parents that we checked it together (but not to record for a letter grade).
Other times, if I collect something I want to look over, I use the check system that shows I saw it.
You need to start giving some completion grades. 5 point if you did it and handed it in on time, 0 if you didn't. I keep a separate category in my gradebook for completion, it counts towards 10% of their final grade. It has been a huge time saver for me!
I do a weekly spelling pack. On Fridays I collect it. They get a check, minus, or X in a box beside their name. At the end of the 9 weeks I give 1 grade for spelling HW participation based on the number of weeks we do. As they turn it in I put the correct mark on it and send it home.
For regular classwork, independent practice and homework I do a plus, check, minus grade. A plus if it's complete and mostly right, a check if it is so-so and a minus if it's wrong/incomplete. It helps me grade much quicker. Then, I give percentage grades for tests, reports, etc.
I like your idea of the spelling homework. Can you tell me some specifics on how you turn the checks, minus, and X into grades. I will have high numbers next year (around 30) and this might be something I could do.
Also, what do you include in your spelling packet? Do you use the list and/or workbook pages from the basal series or is it your own thing?
I agree with everyone else....you don't have to grade everything. I teach departmentalized math so I have 60 daily homework assignments. I take a completion grade and they check their own homework so they can see their errors. Then I do an in-class worksheet for a grade along with my tests. The in-class worksheet (ICW) lets me know what they can do without the help of parents. It seems to work for me although sometimes even that is overwhelming!
On some assignments/assessments, multiple choice questions can be your best friend. So much easier to grade than trying to figure out what their final written answer is.
I have taught 4th for about 20 years now. When I first started I thought I had to grade everything. I learned after the first year that wasn't good for me or the students. It wasn't good for me because I was driving myself crazy and working way too many hours after school to get it done. Gradually I learned. It's also not good for the students. That's why you have formative and summative assessments. Sometimes you just need to walk around and look to see if students are understanding a concept. Also, you can do problems on small white boards to see if kids need more work on a skill. Everything doesn't need to be on paper. When it is, check in class with the students correcting their own work and don't take a grade. Just put a check mark if they are completing the assignment. No this doesn't encourage students to just put something down either because if you're moving around
I turn the homework/participation grade into 20% of the final grade. I just count the number of times the students got a check mark and how many times we had an assignment and get a grade from that. For example if there were 15 assignments to turn in and the student turned in 13 the student would get an 87 figured into as 20% of their final grade.
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03-21-2011, 05:28 AM
