How to Grade Homeschool Papers

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Laura from YoungWritersWorkshops.com and I'm going to talk about how to grade home school papers. In a home school setting, you're working, obviously, with children that you know well and there's not a real need for an objective or numbers based grading scale, because you probably won't be giving quarterly or semester grades. So, a good way to approach grading is using a Rubric. And a Rubric is a scale that assigns a number to what an ideal piece of writing or work would be and then there's a number for increments below that. So, for example, a piece of writing that exhibited all of the things you were looking for, tone and penmanship and format and voice. And, if there was a piece of writing that exhibited all those things, that might be a five; a four might be one that had all those things but just wasn't quite there in terms of format or voice. So, if missing one element, it might be a four and so on. You can find examples of Rubrics online and it will really help you to get the idea. And this is something you would talk about with the kids and they would help you create a Rubric each time they had an assignment. So this is a good way for them to know what exactly you're looking for in each assignment. So, as you grade, you might say, this paper is a four out of a possible five and you would then follow up with feedback about what it was that they could have done to achieve a five for the paper. This is a really inclusive way, a way to include the kids in the process and they'll really understand what's expected of them and have a really clear model to follow of what they're shooting for. Now, with more straightforward assignments such as a worksheet or math problems, you grade the paper by using an answer key and marking the number correct out of the possible number. So those are some ideas about how to grade home school papers."