Yep, we all know that adjusting to remote teaching has added countless hours to all of our work days. Grading has taken on new levels of time and energy, and we have lost the opportunity to provide formative and participation grades while circulating a classroom. For those of you with 150+ students (like myself) reading and leaving valuable feedback on every single assignment can feel not only impractical, but borderline impossible.
Whether you have been teaching online for years (like me), or this is your first digital teaching experience, we can all learn tips and tricks to speed up our grading processes. Here are a few features that will make your life easier, and your workday shorter, while giving you the seemingly impossible ability to give ALL of your students at least one grade per day.
Google Classroom Rubrics
It was a no brainer for me to list this as the number one feature that can help make your teaching life easier. When you create an assignment in Google Classroom, there is a rubric button on the bottom of the right column of your assignment options where can create a rubric for your assignment. Once you give it a rubric, you can grade the assignment by quickly clicking the rubric categories that the student earned, instantly providing clear feedback and automatically calculating a grade. You can even re-use past rubrics to save time.
Rubrics can be created in Google Sheets or directly in Google Classroom. I would recommend creating them directly in Google Classroom, because I find the Sheets template to be finnicky and not intuitive to use - But try both ways and see what you like best!
Best Practice: I create general rubrics that can be used over again for certain types of assignments. For example, I have one "Exit Ticket" rubric that I re-use everyday that I assign an Exit Ticket. The students are provided with consistency, and it allows me to quickly give them a grade for every assignment to hold them accountable for their classwork. For more significant assignments, such as an essay assessment, students receive a more specific rubric and grade.
"Comment Bank"
The next major time saver when grading is the "comment bank." As we read through student assignments, we all know that certain comments just keep coming up. In my AP World class for example, I feel like I write on nearly every essay: "Make sure that you clearly explain how this evidence supports your thesis statement." It can be exhausting...
So, you could re-write the same comments over and over, or you could copy and paste them from one student assignment to the next.....But that can be time consuming and frustrating. Instead, add them to your "comment bank." After you post the comment on a student's work, click the three dot menu and choose "Add to comment bank." Next time, you will just need to type part of the comment, and then you can click to instantly add it into the student assignment.
"Suggesting" Feature
Take advantage of the Google "suggesting" mode when grading student work, especially written assignments. By typing into a student document while "suggesting," students will see what you have written in a green font, and have the option to accept or decline your suggestions. This saves a lot of time when grading written assignments, as you can correct grammar, spelling, misused words, etc. without leaving an individual comment for each one. I also use this to provide sentence starters to help students recognize how they could elaborate on their paragraphs, or add additional information. A common one in my classes: "This evidence supports my claim because..."
When you open up a student assignment to grade, you will automatically be in "suggesting" mode. If you are not, you can change your mode in the top right corner of the document. A final note - I would recommend explicitly mentioning how these "suggestions" work to your students, so that they are aware that your suggestions are another form of feedback on their assignments.
"To Review"
Finally, if you are not already using your "To Review" list (formerly "To Do"), definitely consider adding this to your daily routine. This provides you with a clear view of exactly what needs to be graded, and allows you to stay on top of assignments submitted late, without constantly looking back at old assignments in your classroom streams. You can also filter this view by class.
Best Practice: Mark all assignments that did not receive a gradebook grade OR cannot be made up as "reviewed" by clicking the three dot menu on the assignment. Keep all of the other assignments viewable in your "To Review" stream until the end of each marking period. Periodically check this page (I check it at the end of each day) and quickly catch up on outstanding assignments. Doing this regularly means that when the end of the marking period rolls around, you are all caught up, saving you time and stress as you finalize your grades.
Well, I hope that these strategies help to save you some time in the classroom! If you have any questions, I am always happy to help - Leave them in the comments or send me a message. Happy grading everyone :)
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