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Hey friends. Welcome back to the Firstieland Podcast. I’m your host, Molly Schwab, and today we’re talking about what might be one of the worst parts of any teacher’s job, grading papers.
Have you ever had a giant stack of papers on the corner of your desk just staring at you every single day? You know you have to grade them, but the thought of tackling all those pages feels so overwhelming that you keep putting it off and putting it off. Then the pile keeps growing, and it’s kind of like this monster sitting on the corner of your desk. At least, that’s how I used to feel.
So today, we’re going to talk about how to make grading way easier and more efficient, so you never have to take a stack of papers home again. Let’s get started.
Hey there, I’m Molly from Firstieland, a former elementary teacher with over 30 years of experience in kindergarten and first grade. I’m here to help make teaching a little easier and a lot more fun. Whether you’re looking for the perfect read aloud, fresh writing ideas, or simple classroom tips, I’ve got quick, practical strategies you can use right away.
Whether you’re a new teacher or an experienced educator, there’s something for everyone in Firstieland. So grab your coffee and your teacher bag, and let’s get started.
Grading papers. It’s sort of the arch nemesis of teachers. It actually reminds me a lot of laundry. At home, there’s always a never-ending pile, right?
When I first started teaching, I used to bring papers home to grade, and in the beginning, I didn’t really mind too much. But after a while, I realized that I didn’t want to spend my evenings or weekends doing schoolwork. I wanted to enjoy my family, my friends, and my kids.
So I had to figure out a way to get all of my grading, and everything else, done during school hours. Since I taught kindergarten and first grade my entire career, the work was usually pretty easy to grade. It’s not like I had to grade high school English essays or anything like that.
And chances are, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably an early elementary teacher too. So here are a few ways you can save time and get your grading done quickly and easily.
Number one, and I think this is really important to remember, you don’t have to grade everything.
I think sometimes we feel like everything that goes home needs to have a grade on it, or it looks like we aren’t doing our job. But that’s simply not true.
If you’re doing an activity that’s guided by you, let’s say you’re working through math or reading workbook pages together as a class, that’s not something you need to grade. When you take a grade, you’re checking to see if your students have mastered a skill. When you’re doing something together as a group, that’s practice. And practice doesn’t need to be graded. In fact, it really shouldn’t be graded.
Let’s say you’re teaching a new skill on Monday morning. Maybe you’re working on S-blends in phonics that week. On Monday and Tuesday, you’re introducing the skill. By Wednesday, you’re doing some practice games or activities. Then by Thursday or Friday, you’re ready to see if the kids understand how to read words with S-blends.
So everything you do at the beginning of the week is introduction and practice. It wouldn’t be fair to grade that work because the kids are just learning the skill. But by Thursday or Friday, that’s when you might want to take a grade.
That’s the first thing to remember. You don’t have to grade every paper that goes home. At the beginning of the year, I would tell parents that if something came home ungraded, it was because we did it together in class. That way, they understood why some papers didn’t have grades on them.
If you’re working on something together, or the kids are doing a practice page, you can also do what I used to call quick checks. As the kids are working, you walk around, observe what they’re doing, and quickly look at their work. If you see a mistake, you can point it out right away so they can fix it. If everything looks good, you can pop a sticker on the corner of the paper and it’s good to go.
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Number two. If you are going to grade something, one of the quickest and easiest ways to do it is to grade it right then and there while the kids wait.
First grade work is usually pretty simple. Most pages don’t have more than ten questions, so they’re quick to grade. What I used to do was open my grade book on my computer and call kids up in alphabetical order with their paper. I’d grade it, enter it right into the grade book, and then have the kids put it straight into their mailbox.
That’s where they kept their work throughout the day, and at the end of the day, everything from their mailbox went into their take-home folder. Grading papers while the kids waited and entering grades right away usually took about five minutes. And then I didn’t have piles of papers sitting on my desk.
If for some reason you can’t grade the work immediately, it still helps to collect papers in A, B, C order. That way, when you do sit down to grade, everything is already in alphabetical order and ready to go into your grade book.
Tip number three is to grade all your papers first and then enter them into your grade book.
Some teachers grade a paper and then enter it right away. But if you grade all the papers first, you tend to get into a rhythm. You usually memorize the correct answers after the first few papers, which makes the process go much faster. Then you can enter all the grades at once and save time.
Tip number four is for grading tests that have several pages.
We used to give a weekly reading test that had around six pages. When you’re grading something like that, don’t grade one student’s test from start to finish. Instead, grade page one for every student, then page two for every student, and so on.
This makes grading so much faster because you memorize the answers on each page and can move through the stack quickly.
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Tip number five is to pick one day each week to do your grading.
For me, that was Friday. That’s when I gave our weekly reading test and spelling test. I usually tried to take a math grade on Friday too, based on whatever skill we were working on that week.
During my planning time on Friday, I’d finish any grading for the week and enter everything into my grade book. That way, I didn’t feel like I needed to take work home over the weekend.
I usually didn’t send weekly tests home until Monday anyway. That gave me extra time to finish grading if I needed it, and then everything could go home together.
In terms of how many grades you actually need, my rule of thumb was one to two grades per subject each week. By the end of a nine-week grading period, that gave me anywhere from nine to eighteen grades in each subject, which was more than enough to give a solid report card grade.
When you think about it that way, and when you grade as much as you can while kids wait, grading becomes much more efficient and takes up far less of your time.
And then my last tip is just a few suggestions to help you save even more time, especially when grading writing.
Writing is always one of the most time-consuming things to grade. You’re looking for so many things. Did they capitalize correctly? Did they leave spaces between words? Did they use punctuation? Does the writing make sense?
I used writing templates with built-in rubrics right on the front of the page. I had them for narrative, opinion, and informative writing, and each rubric was specific to that type of writing.
When I graded, the rubric was right there to remind me what I was looking for. I could grade each part and then calculate a total score at the end. These were super convenient and also made grading very clear for parents.
Those writing templates are in my TPT store, and you can take a closer look at them at firstieland.com/rubric, or I’ll link them in the show notes.
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Finally, use some type of easy grader to calculate percentages.
I used to have one of those cardboard easy graders that calculated percentages for me. Now there are apps you can use on your phone, which makes it even easier. I believe there’s one called Easy Grade and another called Quick Grade. I’m not sure if they cost anything, but you can also go old school like I did and use the cardboard version. I’ll put links in the show notes.
So there you have it. There are lots of ways to make grading more efficient so you don’t have to stay after school or take papers home.
Just to recap, you don’t have to grade everything. You can walk around and do quick checks. You can have kids line up in alphabetical order and grade work while they wait. When grading multi-page tests, grade one page at a time for all students. Pick one day a week for grading. Use rubrics for writing and easy graders for everything else.
Alright friends, I hope these tips helped. Until next week, remember to make learning feel like play, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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You can find the show notes and links for everything mentioned in this episode at firstieland.com. I’ll see you next week in Firstieland.