How to grade LABS & ESSAYS same-day!
Wow! The stats for last week’s “Are you Grading Student Work On-Time” went through the roof! Thank you for your continued interest. Today is a follow-up to that post for anyone who assigns lab write-ups or essays (Science, ELA, Social Studies, etc…) and wants to learn the secret and steps of same-day grading.
On-Time (or Same-Day) grading is an big adjustment for most teachers. Even though it is easier than how you currently grade labs and essays and will take you a fraction of the time to clear piles of work off your desk, some will still reply with the 6 most harmful words to teacher success, “That’s not how I do it!” I cringe when I hear this. When teachers say, “That’s not how I do it!”, what they’re really saying is I don’t want to change.
Get over it. Nobody likes change, but change is the only thing that improves our lives. Without change we will never improve!
I was also delighted to receive a “rebuttal” from a dear friend and colleague whose opinion I greatly value. She had a slightly different take on the matter. She emailed me that, “Basically, I do agree that (while) tests and quizzes should be handed back and gone over the next day… I disagree with your take on labs. I believe in reading the entire lab report - top to bottom and grading each piece. Yes, it will take more than a day. But since I went over the whole lab the day it was due; the class should understand what they should have learned. I certainly tried to get all labs back within 3-4 days – again, when you have 4 Regents classes of 34 kids each that is tough.” Also, just because you will “take more than a day, to go over the whole lab, and take 3-4 days to return them”, does not guarantee that students will “understand what they should have learned.” In fact, 4 days later is as good as a year to kids, so get the work back ASAP! Work smarter, not harder!
I responded to her personally, but here is my rebuttal as this is such an important part of collecting reliable data.
Grading written assessments (labs, essays, etc....) is a subjective art at best. Give 10 science teachers 10 labs and you will get back 10 uniquely graded labs. Right or wrong, all teachers grade differently. As an educational practice management consultant, it is not my job to change how you grade (nor should it be), just as a health-care practice management consultant’s job would not be to advise doctors how to take patient notes or perform physical examinations. My job is to “to identify and quantify specific issues related to practice management and to implement solutions to the problems I discover.” My job is not to teach you how to teach, but to provide solutions. Here is how to effectively grade student work.
Having taught both Earth Science and Chemistry for many years, I understand the volume of NY state-required Regents labs (1,200 minutes or 29 labs) that must be completed and graded. If you are teaching 5 sections of 30 students then this is 150 labs that must be graded, recorded, and returned to the students the next day every week! Over 4,000 every school year! It is daunting to say the least, but they must be graded so that students:
derive maximum benefit from the laboratory exercise content,
learn how to write excellent formal labs,
and realize immediate (same day) feedback that is needed to
gain closure on the material so they can prepare for the next topic and
set goals for developing better skills at writing formal science labs.
How do we accomplish all of this, while obtaining the maximum Return on Investment (ROI) from both the students’ contribution as well as your time and effort? If you are a middle or high school teacher whose students were never taught how to correctly write up formal labs, and you grade every nook and cranny of each lab, it is a lot to absorb, process and make necessary corrections to next week’s lab for the average student - as well as a ton of work for you. So, stop grading just to grade! You could grade labs soup to nuts all year and they still might not get it right. Science teachers, you know this is true. You are overwhelming them - and yourselves, too. So how do you get the most bang for your buck when teaching/grading this “must have” lab-writing skill? Here is your solution!
To begin with…
Students will hand back a wide range of results when writing up labs. A few will get it right away, some will get some of it, but most will need time to assimilate everything it takes to write a high school/college level lab. It will take time, but even 6th graders can learn how to do it! There are only a few parts to a lab and if we tackle them one by one your kids will do great, learn lots, and remember what you taught them forever!
If you are a science teacher, labs will eventually pile up on your desk. And if you don’t like seeing those piles of labs, how do you think the students feel about all the hard work they just put in gathering dust on your desk? Or having admin see all this ungraded work when they pop in to say hi? Follow these steps and those days are over!
I am not concerned how you grade so much as when you grade. I want you to have all work graded same-day and back to the kids the next time they have you, rather than have student work become "desktop paper-paperweights" that have zero relevance for the kids. This holds true for all student work.
(* For ELA, Social Studies and other teachers who assign essays, the process is similar, so read this post and see the fix for essays at the end.)
Lay the foundation.
You start the “lab year” by showing students how to do the lab and how you want it written up. You must provide them with an “exemplar” to work with that will be taped into the cover of their composition lab notebook. They must have this! (Contact me at schoolgoalswork.com and I’ll email you a sample general science “Snake Charmer” lab exemplar.) Your script will be as follows: “This (the exemplar) is how I want your completed labs to look. It’s a lot to get right the first time, so each week I will choose one part of the lab that I will grade using a fine-toothed comb - in detail - and the rest I will grade holistically. What this means is that I will be reading and grading the entire lab, but most of my corrections will be on only one section at a time. The challenge is that you will never know what part I will be focusing on, so you will need to do your best on all sections. Don’t worry. You will not get it perfect right away – no one does. But to help you as much as possible, I will have your labs graded with grades online the very same day you hand them in - same day! - and will pass them back to you the next time we meet. Then, while they are still fresh in your mind, we’ll go over the part I focused on while you take notes in your lab notebook. I’ll read out some of the best, and not so “best”, to give you an idea of what I am looking for and in a very short time you will be expert lab writers. You’ll be as good as any high school senior – maybe better!”
Choose your battles.
Start the year by choosing one part of the lab to tackle first. I always start with the Hypothesis. If you are a science teacher, you know that if they don’t learn to write a solid Hypothesis, they will never write a great formal lab. (The same holds true for ELA teachers and the Thesis Statement!) Now pick apart the Hypothesis. I tear into it so that by the time I finish there is more red (yes, I use a red pen) on the Hypothesis than Mel Gibson saw making Braveheart! Make very detailed notes but then grade the rest of the paper holistically. Holistically meaning make a note here or there about the Graph (“Switch the axes!”) or the Procedure (“Number the steps!”), but don’t go overboard (just a couple), so when they get the labs back their focus will be solely on the one section graded in detail.
Now, tell them what you want next week.
After returning labs, hold back a few of the best/worst. Read out loud only the section graded in detail from these few while having students take notes in their lab notebooks. This is where you may regret having given away your ELMO 😉 as it is very helpful for students to see what a best Hypothesis looks like. This will take a few minutes each week but will be time well spent. Call it your Do Now, if you like. 2nd Week? Focus on the Hypothesis again. It might be fresh in their minds but they won’t expect this. For the 3rd Week, pick a different section to focus on. Don’t go in order - keep them on their toes! (Oh yeah, and get that ELMO back!)
Review labs every week and have students take notes. Jump around sections to grade. They’ll do as good a job as possible on the entire lab never knowing where you’ll strike next! Remind them to use their exemplar as a reference. By the end of their first marking period, they will have a notebook full of notes on each part of the lab - and how to do them correctly. This is a year-long, but necessary, process. If you do this the right way in 6th grade, students will carry this skill with them forever. And after all, isn’t that our goal?
Remember, you are working with teens whose attention span has experienced a cell phone beatdown. It is a fraction of what it should be, so you must rebuild their endurance slowly, but consistently. Don’t overload by expecting them to get the whole idea right away. Take it step by step and they will get it!
This is also a more equitable method of grading. The grade will be based 99% on the part where you focused your corrections. Most young students are just not ready to absorb dozens of changes and make subsequent corrections right out of the box. Also, by concentrating their grade on one section at a time, they can more easily identify the chief problem. Make sense?
With this system, you can grade and record the grades for an entire class (maybe two) in one prep leaving you very little to do when you get home. And don’t forget to upload all grades! By the end of the year they will be writing up labs as good as (or better!) than what you see by most high school seniors. All while your grading load will be reduced exponentially.
ELA Teachers
Use the same scripting, only tailored to essays:
“This (an exemplar must be provided) is how I want your completed essays to look. It’s a lot to get right the first time, so each week I will choose one part of the essay that I will grade using a fine-toothed comb - in detail - and the rest I will grade holistically. What this means is that I will be reading and grading the entire essay, but most of my corrections will be on only one component at a time: Introduction, Body, or Conclusion. I might just focus on your Thesis Statement! The challenge is that you will never know what part I will be focusing on, so you will need to do your best on all sections. Don’t worry. You will not get it perfect right away – no one does. But to help you as much as possible, I will have your essays graded with grades online the very same day you hand them in - same day! - and will pass them back to you the next time we meet. Then, while they are still fresh in your mind, we’ll go over the part I focused on while you take notes in your notebook. I’ll read out some of the best, and not so “best”, to give you an idea of what I am looking for and in a very short time you will be expert essay writers. You’ll be as good as any high school senior – maybe better!”
I know ELA and Social Studies teachers do not grade this way. It is change and it is new, just as Google Drive/Classroom, Smartboards, EGBs, or Zoom meetings were all new to us once upon a time. What I am saying is try this. Change is good. This works!
While some students want to see every mistake they made, for most seeing every mistake can be a bit deflating. But showing them single changes that need to be made, one component at a time - it gives them hope! This way they can more easily remember the necessary changes (and gaining closure) for one part (ex. Thesis Statement), while being able to focus on the next part (ex. Conclusion).
Work smarter, not harder. Think outside the box! Try this hybrid approach to grading labs and essays. Explain to your class how you will grade (bullseye one part, ballpark all others) and see if this doesn’t help you get more done in less time… with better results. Let me know how it works for you.
That’s it. Fast student work turnaround plus reliable data. Wouldn’t it be great to have this as a PD (instead of “How to make an effective Do Now?”) Principals, what do you think? Looking for more helpful PDs? This is what Management Consultation is all about – providing Real Professional Development to Professionals!
This is School Goals Work! Call me! 631-664-7885
Website - schoolgoalswork.com and Email - schoolgoalswork@gmail.com
I welcome all comments and questions and would love to have any of my former students who recall my method of writing up our Friday Formal Labs comment below!