I’ve written and spoken passionately about the need for us to think better about grading and feedback. When feedback isn’t fast, it’s a triple loss. Our quality of life decreases as we drag papers around with us for weeks. The usefulness of the feedback decreases because our kids, when they get the work back a week or […]
grading
How to Motivate Students to Turn In Their Essays Without Using Brownies
There is nothing more depressing than spending your weekend grading 125 essays. Scratch that. There is. The only thing more depressing than spending your weekend grading 125 essays is spending your weekend grading 75 essays because the other 50 didn’t turn them in. That’s Lynsay Fabio, one of our many colleagues in the great field […]
Fast Feedback is Effective Feedback: Here’s How to Do Better
If we want our kids to become good at things, we need to give them feedback. It’s not grades that make a student become a better writer or speaker or knowledge-builder — it’s feedback. (I do work in a system where we use grades, by the way — I don’t spend much time thinking or […]
Grading ≠ Feedback, and Sometimes You Don’t Need to Do Either
Until we get smarter about grading, feedback, and when to use which, we won’t meaningfully increase the quantity and quality of writing our students are expected to do. Teachers are already stressed, already pressed for time, and if every time they hear “increase writing volume” they see stacks of to-be-graded papers in their minds, then […]
Things I Believe about Grading Systems
There are a million debates about how or whether we should grade, and many people smarter than me have spent thousands of words explaining and advocating and rhetoricizing for all kinds of philosophies and systems. No matter what system you use — standards-based, traditional, 3P, no grades at all — I’ll just put out a […]