Expect Unexpected Engagement When you try Hexagonal Thinking in ELA

LISTEN TO MY LATEST PODCAST EPISODE:

274: Using Students’ Love of Youtube to our ELA Advantage
  • 00:00

18: Don’t let Grading Papers Drive You Out of Teaching

Share
Tweet
pin it
 
As a teacher, nothing has caused me more of the icky feeling of guilt than formal papers. Guilty that maybe I wasn’t assigning them often enough, guilty that maybe I wasn’t teaching them well enough, guilty that I wasn’t grading them fast enough.
 
Enough.
 
The struggle is real. For English teachers, the grading load can be enough to drive us out of the profession. Writing substantive comments on one paper, much less multiple drafts of the same paper, can take thirty minutes. If you collect one hundred and twenty papers on a Friday afternoon, are you supposed to spend sixty hours grading it over the next week?
 
Impossible.
 

In today’s episode, discover my favorite strategy for cutting down on grading time. With the common error system, you avoid rewriting the same comments over and over, saving yourself oodles of time to actually get some sleep or maybe, train for a marathon.Listen in below, or on your favorite podcast player.

Over time, I began to chip away at my guilt and start to feel good about the way I did formal papers in my classes. I owned the fact that I wanted to teach my students about creative and critical thinking and have them apply it across a range of genres, not just in one style of formal paper. I developed two systems for teaching formal writing that made things very straightforward for me – an introduction blueprint and a very specific way to analyze quotations I called the “Quotation Burger.” And though I never became exactly “fast” at grading papers, I did develop a system to be a lot faster. A system I’d like to share with you today.
 
 
 
 
 
Back in high school I took an A.P. Spanish class, and my Spanish teacher had us all write regularly in journals. Every week she collected all the journals in all her classes. That must have made for quite a weekend of work. The heart trembles. But when she passed them back she always did so with a list she called “Los Errores Del Infierno” (The Erros from Hell!). It was a list of the crop of errors she saw the most often in our journals, so we could learn from that list and hopefully never make them again.
 
So brilliant. I salute you, Señora!
 
I have adapted her system for English papers. Over time it became clear that a huge amount of the long comments I was writing could be classified into ten common errors. By giving these errors each a number, it was easy to simply put a number in the margin of a paper so that the student could look up the fix they needed for that particular error. If every student has a list of the most common errors as the front page of their binder or glued into their notebook or uploaded to the class website, etc., you can save yourself a GIGANTIC volume of comment writing.
 
Where before you might have written: “This is a true statement but it’s not exactly a thesis. Dive deeper, try to find something you can argue with specific evidence from the text to prove your larger point.” Instead you can write, “#1.” Multiple that by five hundred or so comments and you’ve saved yourself enough time to train for a marathon! Sure, you’ll still need to write comments, but you won’t need to repeat the same ones over and over and over. Instead, you’ll be able to dive deep into nuance with advanced students and give some extra attention to struggling students.
 
And still save so much time.
After years of teaching all the high school grades, I can confidently say the ones in the handout above are ten of the most common errors across the board. I’d love to share this PDF with you for your own classroom, so you can start saving your time for more creative pursuits. Just fill out the form below and you’ll be on your way.
 

hey there!

I'm Betsy

I’ll help you find the creative ELA strategies that will light up your classroom. Get ready for joyful teaching!

LET’S BE PEN PALS

Search

BROWSE BY CATEGORY

SEARCH FOR THE STRATEGY OF YOUR DREAMS, OR DIVE INTO ONE OF THESE
POPULAR CREATIVE RABBIT HOLES.

Search

HEY THERE!

Need something great for tomorrow? Head on over to the free resources section.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Ethical AI PBL Unit

3 Weeks of Attendance Questions

Better Discussion Toolkit

50%

Almost there!

Just enter your email address below to register for Camp Creative: Ignite your Choice Reading Program and updates from Spark Creativity.
Don’t worry, spam’s not my thing.
Privacy Policy.