Lighten Your Grading Load

I assign one major project, paper, or speech per month per class, and I’m often asked how I keep up with the grading load. While there are many ways to keep up with the paper load, I tend to rely most on allowing students to choose their due dates.

I print out a sheet with due dates spread throughout the month and draw names from a hat to determine who gets to choose their due dates first. Within five minutes everyone has chosen a due date, and I have a schedule for keeping track of student work without being overloaded.

However, this system requires discipline.

I am often praised for my organization and diligence, but my real secret is portioning out my workload. Since the students choose their own due dates, I only have to assess 4-5 papers, projects or speeches per day.

Why would I assign everyone the same due date when I can’t score 30 papers in a day (or 60 or 90 if multiple classes have the same due date)? I can’t. The papers sit there, I feel stressed with an overflowing in-box, and the kids wait for feedback for days on end.

Instead, I score 4-5 major items per day, provide immediate feedback, and don’t feel the same level of stress i once did. Plus, the students like choosing their due dates because they can look at their schedules and determine how their activities, sports, and other classes impact their workloads as well.

I feel like this system allows me to feel less stress and students to feel empowered to determine in making their deadlines. For me this works. But, it does require consistent discipline and a steady workload each day.

Does anyone do anything similar?

There Are Idiots Among Us

If the accusations are true, it will simply prove that there is moronic behavior everywhere. What was he thinking? 

From the Mouths of Babes

Check out this test (at the end of the article) written by an 8th grader. The innocent often speak truth. Click here for the test and article.

Novel Bookmark Idea

I’m starting a new novel with my students on Monday, and I like to give out a reading schedule for each book. Instead of a typical placeholder, I like to do two things with the bookmark.

First, I print out a daily schedule of readings with the date and the pages to be read for that day. This means the students enter class having read those pages, and I have scheduled activities for the period.

Also, on the back of the bookmark, I will have the major themes listed down the paper slip (or the students list them). When the students identify an example of the theme in the novel, they can jot down the page number next to the theme. This is a quick and easy way to allow students to set a (minor) purpose for reading and to help students make a list in preparation for in-class writings. Plus, this doesn’t really interfere with the students’ reading process (which is a major complaint I hear regarding “during reading” study guides).

Any quick and easy ideas you use?

The ABCs of Learning

Every high school student knows his ABCs, and that’s a good thing since those very ABCs are a good tool in allowing kids to learn in fun ways. A number of assignments I use require the basics of the English language, and here are a few I’ve used recently.

1) I had one of my classes choose a Greek/Roman myth to read outside of class while we read a play in class. Once the students choose their myth, they must retell the story using 26 sentences. The first sentence starts with a word beginning with an A, the second sentence starts with a word beginning with a B, and so on through the alphabet. I also require that the students include a citation for their source material, and the 26 sentences must be free of any errors. Not one grammar, spelling, punctuation, or content error is allowed.

They have 26 days to get the assignment completed perfectly for 100 points. Any error reduces the score to 50 points. One correct sentence a day doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Plus, the kids can turn it in to me for correcting as often as they wish. I put a check mark at the end of a line if I find an error, and the students’ job is to find and correct the error. I stop marking errors after I find a third one. It’s rare that a student does not get it done perfectly in that time.

2) I put students into groups of four and have the students write their ABCs down the left side of a page as if numbering the page. Then I give the students a word such as “said” or “good” or “bad” or “sad” or some other overused and simplistic word; they write this word at the top of the page, and I give the students 15 minutes to write down as many synonyms as possible for the given word. I sometimes make this a competition with candy bars to the top group, but I always collect the students’ lists and have my TA compile their lists into one master list which gets hung on the wall. They then have a master list of better words than the given simplistic starter word.

3) I have the students in their groups of four letter their page (as in #2 above) at the conclusion of a novel of study. Then the students are to write down any characters, traits, themes, locations, or other terms related to the novel that they can (all of which is written by the letter which begins the word). For example, after reading Julius Caesar, the students may have a partial list started like this:

• A: ambition, alliteration, attack, Antony, allusion, antagonist, avarice, Artemidorus, allegiance, apostrophe
• B: Brutus, beloved, betrayal, blood, body, bias
• C: Cassius, Casca, Cinna, Crassus, conspiracy, coronet, commoners, Calphurnia, compromise, chaos, Cicero, connotation, constancy, climax

Again, the students turn in their lists, my TA compiles them, and the students have a massive study guide, one they generated without needing me to create it for them.

Bill Maher vs. Michelle Rhee

The comedian versus the reformer. Who woulda thought that the comedian would get the upper hand in the education debate? Well, a lot of people, actually. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert do it regularly.

However, Bill Maher softly debunked a few of Michelle Rhee’s favorite talking points and refuted her anecdotal evidence with research and data.

Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post has a good synopsis of the conversation between Maher and Rhee. Check it out. It’s worth your time, especially if you like reading about Rhee’s faux reform agenda being exposed once again.

Wanted: The Best and Brightest?

My home state, Washington, was often seen as a progressive and enlightened hotbed of education ideas; however, my state is quickly becoming much like the rest of the education world with pseudo-reformers hijacking the conversation and the direction. Even Democrats, who once supported educators, are beginning to move away from protecting and supporting organized labor in general and teachers in particular.

Currently, numerous bad bills are making their way through the political system.

• One bill that moved out of the Senate and into the House would allow principals to arbitrarily place teachers in a “displaced” category and then fire them.
• Another bill out of the Senate and into the House would rate schools on an A-F basis, but is solely determined on standardized tests (further strengthening the testing stranglehold on education).
• One other bill would move everyone’s pension monies (for those under 45 years of age) into 401k plans rather than leave them in the pension system.

Other bad bills are working their way into being potentially wide-sweeping and far-reaching law. Some even attempt to micro-manage how districts use their money–the same money being cut by the state–by requiring some students to have mandatory tutoring or summer school. Another example of this micro-managing is a bill that would force districts to bring back suspended students (even violent ones) into the school setting before their suspensions are up or counseling is completed.

In my state salaries have been frozen or reduced in each of the last three years.

I’m not saying what is happening in my state is different or worse then yours, but what we’re seeing is an education environment with:

• frozen or lowered salaries,
• salaries that do not pace or match other fields,
• more expensive health plans which cover less,
• potentially riskier retirement plans,
• eliminated professional development days,
• more duties and responsibilities, and
• raised expectations of performance with fewer resources.

But, we want the “best and brightest to choose” education as a pathway. Why would they choose education? When my students ask me if being a teacher is a good job to consider in the future, I hesitate and am not sure how to answer that question. If I had kids of my own, I would not advise them to enter the teaching ranks.

If university graduates really are the “best and brightest,” they would never consider education.