How to Grade Papers Quickly and Efficiently

Grading papers is one of the most time-consuming aspects of your job as a teacher, so if you want to be efficient and have a life of your own outside of work, you need to focus on it. English and journalism teachers face perhaps the biggest challenge because most everything is written as an essay. Fortunately, experienced teachers have figured out how to solve this problem.

Instructions

How to Grade Papers Quickly and Efficiently

1. Set clear and realistic goals for the assignment. Sadly, students are not good readers, so put your requirements in a list form, and be sure to explain each item on the list to your class. Be realistic. Ask for a thesis statement, paragraphs that support the thesis, and good grammar. That will challenge your students more than enough, but it will also give you very clear grading tasks.

2. Cast aside your overly high expectations. By all means encourage your students to be the best that they can, but when you are grading, set aside your disappointment if they struggle. They are in the class for a reason; they need to learn through practice. Kill them with kindness.

3. Grade only those aspects of the paper that you have listed in the assignment. If you did not say that you were going to grade on documentation, don't do it. It's very easy to be sidelined by the strange things that beginning writers do. Focus. If you have hundreds of papers to grade, look for the thesis, examine its support and mark grammar flaws.

4. Mark patterns of grammar errors, not every single flaw. You are not a proofreader. You are not obligated to edit the paper. You do need to show the student the kinds of errors she is making consistently. The first time that you see an apostrophe error, mark it and label it. Thereafter, simply underline it. This saves time and it makes the student think a little bit while still giving him guidance.

5. Have students grade their own papers by exchanging with one another. This is not a perfect system, but students are capable of detecting flaws in assignment, and letting them do so helps them to develop as writers. They will also see strengths that they can learn from.

6. Schedule easily graded assignments during early and mid-week, and collect more complex assignments close to the weekend. Get them done as soon as possible in the weekend, so that you can have recovery time later in the weekend.