Grading: Two Thoughts

We started a new unit and there hasn't been much to grade.  I am itching to know what the students know.

Grading papers helps me in two ways.  First, it gives me an opportunity to see what the students are learning and, secondly, it's another way to communicate with students.  Grading 186 papers is difficult work, but thinking about these two things keeps the grading engaging.

What do You Know?

I have determined that informing students to the purpose of an assignment helps them produce work that is complete and thorough.  Over the past two weeks I have stressed that assignments are a tool for me to know what you know; if you don't write it down, I don't know that you know the material.

Over the course of grading I can find weaknesses in the students' understandings and address them the next day.  I can also see where the students are excelling or what topics interest them the most.  Knowing students' strengths and weaknesses helps drive future instruction.

Communication

Grading is also a time to communicate back to students.  It takes a bit longer, but I want to make comments that will help students.  Even if I don't mark points off, I want them to know how they can do better work.  I may refine my ideas on grading, but it seems like the students deserve thoughtful comments on things they spent significant time on.  Unless students are given time to research stuff they got wrong, checks and "-1" next to answers doesn't communicate much to a student.


Today is a good day.  Students are turning in their first assignments and I am looking forward to grading them.

Grading Papers: Knights and Giant Snakes

I was grading papers last night.  When suddenly, a snake!

We had students cross off the last section of a lab.  Some of the students simply crossed out the sections; some scribbled over the questions.  This student drew a snake.

I love my job.

Grading Style: Hard but Fair

There are a good amount of written analysis questions asked of students in our honors biology class, and before I give an assignment, I usually answer the first question with the students.  I outline my expectations and have a discussion before turning the students loose on the rest of an assignment.  When papers are collected, I grade according to those expectations.

Before grading, my master teacher and I get together to calibrate expectations, and then I show her my grading after I've finished a stack.

Despite the hours of grading, I have really enjoyed the process.  I admit that it's frustrating to see students rush through questions and miss major pieces of the question.  I take off points and make comments about what they missed.

I was glad to hear from a student.  He said, "Mr. Davis, you're a hard grader."
"Fair?" I asked.

"Yeah.  But, hard."

I was happy.

Handing Back Papers: A Strategy

Before I ever stepped foot into a classroom, I knew that strategy was key and that I'd need to think through everything.  Little did I know how much this "everything" would entail.  Today I learned that, yes, I even needed a strategy for handing back assignments.

I was eager to hand my first batch of graded lab reports back to the students, and I was interested to see how they would react.  As is the custom of the class, I handed the papers back at the beginning of the period.  This may not be the best method.  There was a sense of frustration in the class and we hadn't even started class yet.  Most of the students did well; the bell curve was toward the higher B, low A range.  But, not all of the students performed as they expected.

The next time we have papers to hand back, I think I will wait until the end of class.  Even if the students did well and their grades met their expectation, there's an element of distraction where the students are eager to review and compare results.

I may have found an even better way.  Despite being graded and recorded, the assignment still has instructional value.

Even though I added comments to their papers, there may be an even greater benefit to explaining answers in class once the papers are handed back.

There is a lot of instruction that happens before and during the lab, but simply because the papers are turned in and the students can't update their answers doesn't mean that the assignment has no further instructional value.  Sometimes that "Aha!" moment comes after a failure; it is often here that the student is ready to learn.

For next time, here's the plan:

• Low-Point Assignments - Hand back at the end of the period and be available for questions.
• Mid- to High-Point Assignment - Make the time in my next lesson plan to spend a few minutes reviewing questions, especially the ones that were commonly missed.

An Unexpected Advantage of an Alphabetical Seating Chart

Our seating chart is mostly alphabetical.  A's in the back, Z's in the front.  When students hand in homework, they're mostly in alphabetical order making recording grades a lot easier.

So, I'm still a fan of an alphabetic seating arrangement and then moving students as needed.

Grading Your Assignments: No, You Can't Use Pink Ink

I've successfully graded two periods of labs!  I have another period to do today, but here are a few thoughts.

• Pink ink is nice...if you're 7.  And drawing unicorns.  Pink ink on a lab report is not nice.  Ever.
  Plus, it clashes with my Stipula Calamo Red Fountain Pen Ink I'm using to grade.
• There is an obvious connection between the quality of the question to the quality of an answer.
  There was another variable that I hadn't considered.  The questions I asked in class are very different than the questions asked on the lab and this changed caused confusion.  There's a middle ground somewhere; I need to be able to ask better questions, but questions on the lab need to be modified to be a bit more user-friendly.
• As I grade the students, I grade my own instruction.
• Writing is a window to the mind.  Mostly.  A majority of students demonstrated a clear grasp of the information; some demonstrated a clear misunderstanding.  However, there were some students that I know understand the content but performed poorly on the response questions.  I think that modifying the questions a bit will help these students communicate what they know.  

Possible Solutions

At the beginning of the year, I do plan on spending extra class time to prepare the students for the year, and even the rest of their education.  I can think of two ways that may help.  First is to show students how to examine a question.  If they understand the question, they can better answer it.  Second is to set expectations for some of the repeated things we'll do in class.  Glitter gel pens: bad.  Bic Blue: good.  One-word answers: bad.  Thorough answers in complete sentences: good.

A Final Note

It seems like students are used to answering low-level questions or receiving completion grades on assignments in the past.  Spending a few periods at the beginning of the year may help show students that comprehension is good, but we'll also need to learn how to analyze, make connections, and communicate their knowledge.

First Grade - 190 Papers!

I graded my first batch of papers!  While students were working on a lab, I graded their assignments.

There were two parts of the assignment.  The first part was a paragraph on five of the major contributors to the thoughts of Charles Darwin.  In each paragraph, I was looking for the name of the scientist, the contribution to science in general, and the specific influence the scientist had on Charles Darwin.  The second part was 10 vocabulary word definitions; this part was credit/no credit.

I took a look at each paragraph and made sure the student had what I was looking for.  It took about 5-6 assignments before I began to get an eye for it and grading got a lot faster.  Eventually, each paper took about 15-20 seconds and I was able to get through each period's work before the bell rang.  The grading time investment seemed to fit the scope of the assignment; 15 seconds didn't seem like a fair amount of time until I thought about the importance and purpose of the assignment.

Assignment Purpose: Independent Practice
Assessment: Low Assessment Value
Literacy Level: Low - Looking for specific pieces of information; less stress on paragraph structure and syntax.  Made marks on several papers with egregious errors but these didn't impact grades.

The only issues I had was with students who simply didn't do the work.  I spoke to each of these students and it was more that the student didn't want to do the work than forgetting to do the work.  This was rather disappointing but not surprising.

I also got to use my new Stipula Calamo Red fountain pen ink I got for Christmas.  It looks sharp!  An "A" looks particularly nice on lined paper.

Also, my Master Teacher is back!  She's not 100%, but I'm glad she's on the mend.

A Surprise Artistic Assessment

Still no master teacher, but we're trekking along just fine.  She'll hopefully be back tomorrow.

Today's lesson:  Finish the Evidence of Evolution video and do a Homologous Structures coloring-page for the remainder of the period.  We had a collaboration meeting this morning that pushed back the school's start time, shortening classes from 57 minutes to 41 minutes.

The video went along without a hitch, and I found that the simple act of coloring not only met with a great deal of approval by the students, but also that the worksheet was a terrific assessment.  My goal was to have the students make the connection from the definition of a homologous structure to actually see and color the homologous structures of mammalian forelimbs.

The students took to the worksheet quickly and began coloring.  I quickly graded a completion assignment and made my rounds to take a look a the students' work.  I was surprised to see some of the students incorrectly coloring some of the bones.  After questioning the students, I realized that they could define the "homologous structures" but they couldn't quite apply the concepts to the diagrams of mammalian forelimbs on the worksheet.

I used students' own hands to connect the diagram of a whale's fin and bat's wings.  Oh, how the lights came on.  Like people who saw the magician's trick, the students made the connection between the definition from the textbook and the bones that they were coloring on the worksheet.

Next time I'll do a better job of including discussions and ask for examples for vocabulary before turning them loose on a worksheet, but I was glad that we did the coloring page.  It turned out to be more of an assessment piece than an enrichment piece.