Grading Tips That Will Save You Hours

Teachers are always looking for grading tips that will save them time.  Because grading students’ writing is a lengthy and arduous process, teachers (especially ELA teachers) are always searching for the next, best-grading tip or grading hack.  Unfortunately, many teachers have to take home their students’ writing over the weekend, and they have to spend their Saturday or Sunday grading essays and paragraphs.  You don’t have to do this! These three grading tips will save you hours of work, and you can take back your weekends!

3 Grading Tips That Will Save You Time!

1.You don’t have to grade the whole writing piece. Here is your first awesome grading tip.  Don’t grade the whole essay! When students hand us a writing piece, teachers feel the need to grade the WHOLE thing.  ELA teachers know that it can take 10-15 minutes to grade one essay after correcting the mistakes and leaving comments.

Instead, when you are preparing your students to write an essay or writing piece, explain to them you are only going to grade A PIECE of their essay.  In advance, you can tell them you are going to grade the introduction or maybe the body paragraph.  For your higher-level students, you may not want to tell them what you are grading. Rather, tell them you are going to grade a portion of the writing.  If you want your students to write A LOT, but you don’t have the time to spend grading around the clock, this is a great grading tip.

2.  Make yourself a grading goal. There is nothing like receiving 100 essays in one day.  Shortly, the students are asking if you have graded their essays after a few days.  The students just don’t understand how long it takes to grade one essay.  Thinking about grading 100 essays is so overwhelming for a teacher; however, if you make a daily goal, grading 100 essays doesn’t seem so bad.  For example, let’s just say you received 100 essays, and you want to return them in 10 days. This means you have to grade 10 essays a day.  This makes it so much more manageable when you split up your grading.  If you have to return the students’ writing in two weeks, then you will have to do less per day! Make it manageable to help cut down on feeling overwhelmed!

3.  Use an easy essay grading key. This is my favorite grading tip! When teachers grade writing, the longest piece of grading is making the punctuation, grammar, and spelling corrections.  It takes even longer if the student did not proofread their work.  Rather than correcting and fixing every mistake, use a grading key.  Each number represents a correction.  For example, 1 = spelling mistake, 2 = capitalization, and so on. Instead of writing out the correction each time, you can write the mistake key number.  Then attach the key to the writing, so your students have a reference sheet.  Think about how much time this will save you!

How would you like this FREE, EDITABLE Grading Key? Click right HERE to receive this FREE editable template. This writing grading key comes with two to a page, and it has 20 corrections listed by number.  Of course, because it is editable, you can change any of the blocks to personalize the grading key.  Believe me! You are going to save yourself SO MUCH TIME!

Other Websites for Grading Tricks

• 12 Smart Ideas to Grade Essays
• Grading Student Writing-Tips and Tricks to Save You Time

Other posts you may like…

Teaching Your Students to Elaborate on Their Writing & Thinking

The MOST Effective Writing Strategy & Writing Activity

I hope these ideas are helpful, and that you can implement them in your classroom tomorrow! If you ever have any questions, just reach out to me at englishohmy@gmail.com.