1- Grading Essays Is The Most Difficult and Time Consuming Job In The Entire School. I Said What I Said!
Few people will ever understand the difficulties, frustrations, and the personal feelings of defeat that can come with grading student essays. You can try to describe it to your friends, but unless they are a writing teacher, they won’t get it. You have to live it! Other teachers in your building believe their job is as difficult as yours. It isn’t! But, you can’t tell them because you will surely lose friends. Sadly, your college professors didn’t prepare you for grading. They couldn’t have because the only way to learn how to grade essays is to grade bad essays. LOTS of them!
It is amid the despair of pouring over ill-written text that you begin to discover what students don’t know. You learn their deficits and their misconceptions. You become aware of things they were never shown. And believe me, in a world where reading test scores seem to be all that matters, you will quickly discover the huge gaps in writing skills. I’m not blaming previous teachers. They are doing what they have to do to survive and answering to the expectations placed upon them. We are all part of a system that is struggling to do our part, but we writing teachers have the greatest calling of all. For without the ability and endurance to write, students will not succeed in college and will struggle to communicate in a world that is increasingly reliant on written communication.
My Journey As A New Writing Teacher
I spent 14 years as a middle school language arts teacher, and even though I am a passionate writer, I was struggling to teach it. I had no curriculum or resources. But, through painstaking trial and error, and grading thousands of horrible (I mean that in the nicest possible way) essays, I figured out how to sequence and teach to get the best results from my students and save my sanity. I learned things that no college professor had ever taught me. I was determined that my students would become, at the very least, proficient writers, and that my students with knack and desire would be great writers!
Here’s What I Learned From Grading Bad Essays
1- Eliminate Subjectivity. It is the unrelenting subjectivity, the constant decision making of grading, that wreaks havoc on your psyche. To save your sanity, you need to eliminate as much subjectivity as you can. To do this, it is vital to teach specific elements and structure and grade only those things. Some people disparage this practice as “formula writing.” Ignore them! Seriously. You’ve heard the saying, “You have to build the box before you can step out of it.” This is especially true with essay writing. While skilled writers can take liberties and deviate from the structure and elements, newbies need to learn them! You absolutely can teach structure and elements without being formulaic. Elements such as thesis statements, hooks, topic sentences, etc. are a given in essay writing, and unless students are specifically taught, they will not know how to develop them. Eliminating subjectivity by teaching elements is beneficial for the writer and the grader!
2- This relates to #1. Students need to know exactly what will be graded, so give them a simple checklist ahead of time. Really simple! Do not bombard them with descriptors written in teacher language. Use the checklist to analyze model essays (here’s a free model essay) so they will see, with their own eyes, that this is not just a random piece of paper, but rather it is the holy grail of their writing journey. Do this with every writing assignment and they will come to expect and appreciate it. Students don’t like to be overwhelmed with subjectivity either. Clear expectations are a gift!
3- Ssssshhhh. They are not listening to you. This seems harsh, I know. But truthfully, students will not listen to you until they need you. It’s not personal. It’s human nature. They need to get their hands dirty and figure out what they don’t know before their brains are receptive to instruction. They need to gain some familiarity with the content before your words will make sense to them. Mostly, they need to struggle a bit so that your guidance will be welcomed. My motto: frontload your lessons with great resources that allow independency, but back-end the lectures and front of class teaching. Start with a quick overview of the checklist and expectations. Know that they are going to forget most of this overview, but that ok! That’s why you’re not pouring your heart into this part. Give them a sample essay and have them use their checklist to highlight all of the elements.
Then, turn them loose writing their first paragraph. After they have attempted to write it, and are a bit frustrated, they will be primed for your instruction and ready to dig deeper into the elements: hook, background info, thesis statement. Repeat for the remaining paragraphs, and go ahead and pour your heart into this part, where it will count!
4- Don’t try to keep everyone in the same place. It’s not fair and it’s harmful to both strugglers and advanced students. Instead, encourage independent learning. One caveat: You will need resources designed to accommodate independent learning, meaning everything they need to learn on their own should be made available: videos, samples, explanations, etc. You will also need to make it clear that this doesn’t mean there are no deadlines. It just means they can move forward at their own pace. My motto to students: “You can go as fast as you want, but you can’t go as slow as you want.” The advantage of independent learning is that your advanced kids will shock the pants off of you. They will go faster and do better than you could ever imagine if you are brave enough to give them trust and space. Again, it’s not personal. They will love you for many reasons, but micromanaging them is not one of those reasons. Perk: You will have more time to help your strugglers and middles.
*Disclaimer: Sometimes advanced students are used to working under their potential because they have only ever been expected to hang with the middle. They might resent not having the freedom to sit and wait
5- The SSF rule. Simple and specific feedback is the truest way to help students improve their writing. Written feedback is best because they will not remember your words. And, here’s the hard truth. You must give them the opportunity to use your feedback to make improvements, which means, you must grade twice. Sorry. If there were a way around this one, I would’ve found it. (Don’t worry, there are other perfectly safe ways to save time and cut corners. We will get to this later.) Most importantly, the feedback should only pertain to elements on the checklist they were given, and each element should be given a score. Without a score, most students will not bother to make improvements. A 0/10 on a checklist element is a big motivator. A 5/10 is also a motivator for most students. If they know they can get 10 more points for adding a thesis statement, they are likely going to do it. Simplify! Only use 3 categories for your checklist: 1-Not acceptable = 0/10. 2-Needs Improvement = 5/10. 3-Great Job = 10/10. A score of 0 means this element is missing or so poorly written that it makes no sense. A score of 5 means this element is present, but needs improvement, (most of your written feedback will be in this category). A score of 10 means this element passes without further revisions. This is simple and students can follow it. If you add anymore categories it becomes confusing for students and overly complicated to grade. This feedback/regrade method was the single-most important strategy that improved my students’ writing. It’s a bit tedious, but if you nail this early in the year, your life will be so much easier, and you can marvel at what an awesome writing teacher you are. Which, by the way, is the most important job in school. (Just don’t tell the math teacher). Students won’t make it through college if they don’t have the skills and the stamina for writing.
Are you ready for some good news? Sorry. I won’t grade your essays. I don’t enjoy that part. BUT…. I can save you tons of time on searching, planning, sequencing, prepping, and printing! Below is my step by step, interactive, thesis-centered argument essay workshop designed for independent learning. This workshop is a collection of years of experience and months of creation, priced affordably so that every teacher can access it! I would gladly give it away for free, but charging a small price allows me to focus all of my time and energy of creating resources, my truest passion!
BONUS! LET’S TEAM UP! This workshop includes video tutorials for every slide. I personally walk your students through each slide giving instructions, tips, encouragement, and explanations. It’s kind of like having a second teacher in the room. This will allow most of your students to work independently, freeing you up for one-on-one instruction and feedback.
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