If you're taking papers home with you on the weekends to grade, or spending hours before and after school trying to update your grade book, I have great news for you- grading doesn't have to be so time-consuming!  By rethinking the way you assess, you can take the hassle out of grading.  Here are some tips to help you manage the grading process:

**Does this assignment measure a skill or concept I need to know if students are mastering today? (Some assignments are just given for review, and others will assessed after a few more lessons)

-Look over 3-6 papers from each assignment you are not grading to see if students are getting it.  You can choose randomly or view selected students’ work (I would choose low- to average-performing students- I know certain students almost always master what I teach, and certain others very rarely get it the first time, so I pick students in the middle range).  Look over those papers for common mistakes or excessive errors to see if you need to reteach- if things look okay, stamp them as follows:

-Use a ‘Read But Not Corrected’ stamp for those papers you choose not to grade.  Placing a check mark at the top of a paper which has errors on it can send the message to students and parents that you are not checking work or that you are being careless.  A stamp like this one (purchased at a craft or teacher supply store/catalog) prevents that misunderstanding.

-Have student helpers stamp papers for you.  If you have a teacher-led assignment in which every students’ paper is correct, or there are no right answers because the questions are subjective, give the stack to a student to stamp for you. The child will not see anyone’s grades so there are no confidentiality violations.  It’s an easy, fun job that saves a lot of time for you.

-Don’t grade homework assignments!!  If you give two assignments per night, say spelling and math, and you have 25 kids, that’s 50 papers to grade every night, or 250 a week!  Shave hours off of your grading time by collecting homework and recording whether or not it is completed.  If it is, they get a 100; if it’s not, they get a 0.  Simple as that.  You could also give a 50 if the work was begun but incomplete.  Remember, some kids have a lot of parental support at home, some have none, and still others have people who do the entire assignment for them.  Homework is NOT a true measure of what a child knows and in my opinion, is not worth the time it takes to grade.  If you don’t believe this, compare the classwork and homework grades of the kids in your class.  You will probably find that some get A’s on things completed at home but mysteriously ‘forget’ how to do the work in class and on tests.   Grade only the work you see being done right in front of you, in class.

-Don’t grade work done with a substitute teacher.  The fact is, if you aren’t there, you don’t know if a child copied the work, was allowed to work with a partner, received excessive help from the sub, or was given no help at all even though you would have helped if you had been there.  Students do not turn in work of the same quality when you are not present, just like with homework.  Chalk it up as practice work, give it a ‘Read But Not Corrected’ stamp, and send it home.

-Have students grade their own papers.  I don’t advocate them switching papers, although some courts have allowed this practice legally, because if I were a child who got a bad grade, I would not want my peers to know. But, having children correct their own work can be a great experience. Have students put their pencils away and take out a crayon to grade.  Let them know that anyone caught with a pencil out will have their paper taken away and graded by you, and if they are caught changing any answers, they get an automatic zero with the paper photocopied and sent home with a note for parental signature.  (I had a very sneaky class one year and had a ‘Grading Monitor’ walk around the room as an extra pair of eyes while we graded- s/he was student who typically got A’s and I would grade her paper myself later on).  I like this method not only because it saves time, but because students get immediate feedback as to what type of errors they are making. When they self-correct the same type of assignment repeatedly, they can also see improvements or stagnation in their progress over time. Sometimes I like to have students reflect in writing before they grade:  How well do you think you understand this material?  And afterwards reflect on what they learned by grading it using one or more of the following prompts:  Did you understand as well as you thought you did?  What parts of the assignment were easiest for you?  Hardest?  Is there anything you need your teacher to help you understand better?  On a scale of 1-10, how well do you think you understand what we learned?

-Grade papers while students are working on them.  I know of a teacher who assigns two papers, the most important one (to be graded) first, and a lesser or reinforcement paper to be completed second.  Students work independently or with her circulating around the room, then she calls them to her desk as they finish.  The teacher grades the paper with the student watching, often asking him or her to make corrections if needed.  She records the grades right then and there, and students work on the second paper (which just gets a check mark) when they are done.  This method saves the teacher time, provides individual assistance and feedback to kids, and ensures that grades are recorded right away without a stack of papers piling up.   I often do this in a  similar manner, having students show me their work when they are done so I can point out errors and reteach as needed.  Afterwards, I give them a fun practice page or activity to complete while the others finish.

-Give students the answer key.  In the back of our math textbook, there are five short practice tests that my kids do right before state testing.  I gave them an answer sheet that provided space for all of the test questions.  Each day for one week, they completed one of the practice tests independently.  Whenever they finished, they came over to a table where I had 5 photocopies of the answer key I made.  They used blue pens to correct their work, then came over tomy desk to show me how they did.  I addressed any mistakes they made and send them back to their seats.  At the end of the week, I collected their answer sheets and recorded all 5 grades in my gradebook.

-Collect grades for multiple assignments at one time.  This is an especially useful strategy for grading assignments in workbooks when children aren't supposed to rip the pages out.  It works best when you need the grades for formality purposes and don't need them for information on student progress. Collect the workbooks and record grades all at once for several assignments by flipping to the page numbers that students completed.  You can even have students fold down the corner of the pages to help you find them more easily.  This process is much more efficient than collecting workbooks or journals after every single assignment.

-When grading multi-page assignments, grade the first page for each student, the second page for each student, and so on, rather than grading the entire test for one student at a time.  This is an invaluable tip that I learned years back and am so grateful for.  When grading one page at a time, you tend to ‘memorize’ the answers, making it quicker to spot errors.   If there are a lot of problems on each page, write the number the student got wrong at the bottom of the page, such as –0 or –3, and then after you have graded the whole stack, go back through and count up how many the student got wrong by looking at the minus-however-many that you wrote at the bottom.

-Grade papers with easy formats.  Multiple choice, fill in the blank, and matching are the obvious choices, but there are lots of other ways, too:

For long assignments or those you plan to use for several years, make photocopies of bubble sheets (like those used on standardized tests) and have your students fill them in instead of writing answers paper.  Place a blank transparency over a bubble sheet answer key you have made and mark the correct bubbles with permanent marker on the transparency.  When you are ready to grade students’ papers, place the transparency over the students’ paper and count how many bubblles don’t match up between the students’ sheet and the answer transparency.  I grade my students’ Scholastic Reading Inventory tests this way and can get through an entire class set (45 questions each) in less than 10 minutes. 

For circle the correct answer/ multiple choice papers, have students write their answers on a separate sheet of paper.  It is much easier to grade this:

                            1.B

                            2.D

                            3.A
than it is to flip through the question paper and find the answers that students circled.  With this method, you can also re-use the same test year after year and save on photocopies.

 Give color-by-answer assignments.  Print out coloring sheets from the internet or use coloring book pages.  Write a problem in each section and make a key.  For example, you could write a math equation in each section (if the answer is less than 10, color it blue, 10-20 color it red, etc.)  or write special terms or vocabulary words (color nouns yellow, verbs green, etc.,/ color words with two syllables purple, three syllables blue, etc./ or color only the words that are parts of a flower such as stem, leaf, etc.).  The possibilities are endless.  Kids LOVE these, and you can grade each paper within seconds simply by looking to see if the colored page looks like the answer key you made or a correct student sample. 

-Give less pencil and paper work!  Use wipe-off boards for instant individual assessment and feedback during lessons.   Use centers, discussions, group activities, and other activities to see what kids are learning.  Yes, you need documentation of how kids are doing, but not on every skill.  Focus on the state mandates and use non-written assessment methods for other concepts and skills.

-Use accurate student papers instead of making answer keys.  After the first quarter, you have a pretty good idea of which students will have all the right answers on their papers.  Using a high-achiever's paper is much quicker than making an answer key, and if you photocopy the child’s paper, you can save  and use it again the following year.

-Use an EZ Grader. This little device allows you to have any number of problems or questions in an assignment and calculates the grade.  This prevents you from having to choose easy numbers, such as 10, and making each question 10 points each.  Having 27 questions, or 34, is no problem.  You can buy these for about $5 at teacher supply stores, or download one here.

-Don’t let papers go ungraded for more than a week, tops.  (Easier said than done!)  However, more than once I have been in the middle of grading a tedious math worksheet when I realized I had already tested the kids on the material.  What’s the point of grading the practice classwork?  It was too late for me to assess whether or not they were getting it, and because I never provided them feedback on what they did, it’s possible that a number of them had used the assignment to practice incorrect methodologies.  It was a waste for them to do the assignment, and a waste for me to grade.

-Choose your color(s) and type of marks for grading and be consistent.  I use red exclusively. It stands out quickly and makes it clear to parents and kids what I have written vs. what they have written (my kids often correct their own papers using crayons and colored pens). Red is the traditional color, and I think that some of us as adults are kind of 'scarred' from seeing red marks on our papers as kids. However, a young child hasn’t had those types of experiences and therefore has no negative connotations. I also red ink with my stamps, so the kids associate red with positive messages, as well.  Some teachers avoid the whole mess by using green or purple, and that's a good option, too.  Lots of corrections can be intimidating in any color, so it's important to focus on what types of marks you are making on the paper, as well. For example, I don't make circle or make big X's over wrong answers, I just draw a small slash through the problem numbers.

-Don't feel obligated to write the correct answers next to wrong ones when grading. One teacher I know writes the correct answer for every single error a child makes. That’s great  for the kid and parent, assuming they bother reading what she wrote, but it takes her a half an hour to grade a ten-question spelling test!  If you want to help out a particular child whom you know would benefit, it would be worth your time to write the correct answers on his/her paper. Another teacher I know circles the correct answers and leaves the incorrect ones alone for a child who is very sensitive about his work.  This helps build his confidence and makes marks from the teacher a good thing (the more, the better!) rather than a bad thing.  I love this concept, but again, I wouldn’t do it for the whole class because it is too time-consuming.

-Use a computer grading system.  I was hesitant to start this method because I thought it would be a pain to have to record the grades and then enter them in the computer.  However, if you back up your files by emailing them to yourself or saving to disk, you don’t have to keep a paper grade book at all!  When you enter your grades in the computer, you can pull up a child's average at any point (such as when a parent calls) and it saves immeasurable time at the end of the quarter.  All you have to do is print out the grades and transfer them to the report card.  Hopefully one day soon, they’ll have a system in which grades can go right from the grade book to the report card automatically!  (By the way, I don’t enter my homework grades- which are all 0s or 100s- until the end of the quarter.  I mark whether or not assignments were turned in on the social skills/ work habits sheet I use for weekly evaluations.  At the end of the quarter, I simple go through and count up how many assignments were missing. If there were 42 homework assignments given in a quarter and a child did not turn in 3, they get a 39/42 and the computer automatically translates that into a letter grade and percentage out of 100.  I use that same homework grade for every subject, from reading to math, rather than differentiating with a homework reading grade, homework math grade, and so on.  For me, homework is homework- the child is either doing it or not, and it will impact their grades in all subjects equally.  I very very rarely give social studies, science, or health homework, so this ensures I have a homework grade in those subjects, anyway). 

-DON'T GIVE PERCENTAGES, JUST LETTER GRADES! Not every school district allows this, and not all teachers like the idea, but this will save you soooo much time!  Essentially, instead of having to calculate the exact percentage a child earned, such as 84%, you just write "B" on the child's paper and in your gradebook.  This makes it much easier to glance over your gradebook and tell how a child is doing overall and also to see how well the class as a whole scored on a particular assignment.  At the end of the quarter, average the letters out mentally (what grade did the child get most often), or if it isn't immediately clear, assign each letter a point and average that way (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1 point).  If your report cards don't allow for plusses and minuses to be given, this makes even more sense.  Grading isn't rocket science in elementary school- your kids aren't counting on that quarter of a point to boost their GPA and get them into Harvard.  Don't make your job unnecessarily difficult.