Grading Game Changers: 6 Ways to Grade Differently This School Year [Episode 196]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:01]:
So far this Back to School season, we’ve talked about increasing inquiry in our classrooms back in episode 194. And last week I shared my interview with Secondary Science Simplified listener Amanda all about her super effective parent communication strategy last week, episode 195. So go back and listen to those if you haven’t yet. But I have to make sure every Back to School season I feel like we talk about grading. I know so many of you find it hard to try new things when it comes to grading, but you constantly feel overwhelmed by it. And so I really want to encourage and equip you this school year to maybe do things differently. And so in this week’s episode, I’m going to share six grading game changers that I really think could switch up your entire school year and how you approach grading and honestly, then that impacts your ability to have work life balance. So let’s dive into it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:58]:
This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers, love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually, actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode, Grading Game Changer Number one we have to start with this is I want to encourage you to kind of revisit your grading philosophy. I first addressed this in a ton of detail earlier this summer in episode 189, True Life. I grade everything and thus I have no life. So if you did not hear that episode, you need to go back and listen because I really get into this a lot more.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:58]:
But even if you have listened to that, maybe you’ve never even thought of a grading philosophy at all. Maybe you’ve just kind of never taken a minute and thought intentionally, like, why do I grade the way that I do? You know, why am I doing this? And so whether that’s visiting your philosophy for the first time or revisiting it, I want you to take like 30 seconds. Even if you need to pause this podcast right now and think about why do I grade? What is my grading philosophy? Because I think once you establish your why, that’s the first grading game changer. Because then that’s the lens through which everything else you do and everything you decide to grade and how you decide to Grade, it will be filtered, okay? So pause and consider that. But if you’re ready for my answer to the question, I’ll share with you my grading philosophy. Again, I’ve shared this several times, but in the most detail back in episode 189. But I believe grading serves two purposes. One, it informs you of where your students are so that you can adjust your instruction accordingly.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:59]:
And two, it informs them of where they are so that they can get remediation. You know, they can get more help if they need it. So because of that, because I believe those are the two purposes, then everything that I grade needs to be actually read by me. I need to see a lot of stuff here if I’m going to put a grade on it. Okay? I need to give quality and clear feedback when I do. And then I need to grade in a timely manner. It needs to be. They need to see that feedback while it’s fresh in their minds.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:31]:
And so these are kind of the principles through which I then filter and make my decisions about what am I going to grade, what am I not going to grade, how am I going to grade it, that kind of thing. So I want you to take some time, consider what is your philosophy, what’s your why? From there, after all of that, you know, philosophical discovery that led me to grading game changer number two, which is I stopped assigning homework. You can hear all about this in episode 96, why I did it, what all the results were, you know, how it worked out. But I genuinely think not assigning homework was a game changer for students, but also for me. One, from a grading management point, I wasn’t able to actually read all of their homework and give them good feedback. So I’m like, why am I giving them grades for work that I’m like, literally not getting to? 2, back to my philosophy. I wanted to be able to immediately discuss their homework because always their homework was like just reinforcing practice. So I wanted to be able to talk about it right away to make sure they got it before we moved on.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:31]:
And so I wasn’t able to get their homework back in time. So why am I even, like taking it from them? Okay, so I stopped doing that. Also, the really surprising thing that came from it, spoiler alert. If you don’t go back and listen to episode 96 was I found it incredibly motivating from a classroom management perspective for my students because I told them, like, everything we have on the agenda today, you should be able to get done in this class period. You should not ever have homework in this class. But you, if you do not apply yourself and actively engage, and if you’re, if you’re wasting time in this class, you will have homework because you will not finish what you are expected to do. So I’m going to build in class time for all of the practice and all of that. If you stick with me, you’ll get it all done and then you won’t have to finish anything later.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:14]:
That was a huge game changer for me. That’s why it’s number two. Okay. Which led to game changer number three. These all kind of build on each other was just collecting less stuff in general to grade. Again, I’ve addressed this a lot of times, but particularly in episodes 95 and 97, which I’ll link in the show notes. But the starting point there was when I stopped assigning homework. That’s one less thing I was collecting.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:38]:
And once I kind of stopped taking up as much stuff, it helped me then, like, let go of like, am I going to collect all these different things? And I started getting really strategic about what I was going to collect and grade. Okay. I basically only. I collected and graded one thing per prep per week was how it kind of worked out. That might be a lab, it might be an inquiry. It never was an inquiry activity. It might be some sort of reinforcing activity, maybe a project, maybe a test. But I was not collecting work to read through more than that because that’s all the time I had to go back to my philosophy, actually read it well and provide quality and clear feedback.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:15]:
So I started collecting way less. So number one, revisit your philosophy. Number two, I recommend not assigning homework. Number three, collect less stuff to grade. And then number four, go over work differently. Like I said, one of my main tenants of my grading philosophy is like wanting them to get feedback ASAP because it needs to inform me and or it needs to inform them. Ideally, everything would inform both of us, but I just cannot put my eyeballs on every single thing. It just.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:44]:
It just cannot happen. So that means I’m not going to take up as much stuff. But it does mean we’re still going to go over it. We’re not just going to, like, do work and never talk about it again. We’re going to go over it right away as a class. And this contributes to that discussion culture I talked about two weeks ago in the episode about, like, discussion is just such an integral part of my class. And so you have to be strategic about how you’re going over it. I Had a teacher ask me over email earlier this year.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:09]:
You know, oftentimes the students will do an activity or do some practice, and then I’ll go over it. I’ll just, like, draw popsicle sticks with their names on it. Cause y’ all know I love that. And then she said, we’ll talk about it. But sometimes students just wait for the answer instead of working through them. And how do I prevent this? Okay, so that’s where, like, how you go over the work in class matters. So again, I’m a huge fan of checking things for completion. I don’t like to force.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:33]:
I don’t like for students to be motivated by a grade. But I do find that, you know, it can be helpful if you’re like, hey, I’m going to check it for completion. That at least gets them to get something on the paper. And then we’re going to go over it. It does help with the motivation, but we’ll be talking a lot more about motivation next week on the podcast, so stay tuned for that. But in terms of going over work and making sure they’re actually doing the work and not just copying the answers as you go over it, here are a couple ways I do this. So first, I do exactly what this teacher does, which is oftentimes I will spot check that they’ve completed something. And then I draw names and have them cold call the answers.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:08]:
And what I’ll do is like, I’ll say, hey, what’d you get for number three? They say it, and then I’ll say to the whole class, raise your hand if you got the same thing. Raise your hand if you got something different. And then we kind of talk through it from there. We see what parts maybe if it’s a quantitative problem, what do we need to work out? What do we need to not. Okay, so that is one way I do like to go over things. As I mentioned two weeks ago, if I ask a student, if I say, hey, Ansley, what did you get for number three? And she’s like, I didn’t get it. You know, you have some options here. One thing I always say is like, okay, respond with a question.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:39]:
What do you. What? What what? Do you need help understanding where? Are you confused? Or I can say, hey, where did you get stuck in the process? Let’s work it out together. Or sometimes, if I’m short on time, I’ll put Ansley’s name back in the cup and I’ll draw someone else and she’ll come up again because we’re going to work through everything. So that kind of helps to take a little pressure off students, too. So that’s one way you can go over things. Another way is, especially if it’s a quantitative problem, you know, like, you’re working through a bunch of acceleration calculations. I like to divide my whiteboard up with lines, and then I’ll just number them. Like, let’s say there were five practice problems.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:09]:
So I’ll put, like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I’ll draw popsicle sticks and say, like, okay, you know, Jeff’s on number one, Raekwon’s on number two, Ainsley’s on number three, et cetera. And then they can go up and write out their work all at the same time. Then they sit down, and then I go up there, and we kind of walk through it together, and we make corrections as needed. And so this really. I found this works really effective with making sure students are actually doing the problems at their desks when they’re supposed to be. Because then they know, like, if my name gets called to show my work for this, I need to have something in a copy up there, as opposed to, like, solving it live, if you will. And then the other reason I really like it is if a student’s really stumped up there, that’s fine.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:49]:
Like, this is a teachable moment. And, like, we partner with them as a class. And I’m like, okay, let’s say, like I said, Ray gets up there and he’s like, I’m totally stumped. I did not get number two at all. I can’t believe you drew my name for number two. How could you do that? I say, don’t worry about it. Go sit down. I’ll call you up here in a minute.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:04]:
When we get to number two, I’m like, hey, Ray, come up here. You’re going to be the scribe. You’re going to write everything down. I’m going to. Now, we’re going to talk through this as a class, how we would approach this problem. For me, I use a strategy called radar that I learned from my old science department for how we approach problem solving. We walk through radar as a class, and I’m just telling Ray what to write down. So this keeps Ray on the hook, but it takes the pressure off for getting it right.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:26]:
And then it becomes like a class. Like, we’re working through it together. Another way you can go over work is if you have a set of, like, mini whiteboards. You can pass those out and have students write their answers. This works great if you’re just doing like practice problems with like multiple choice or you know, a fill in the blank thing with one word answers or quantitative, of course, you just write the final answers. And then I’ll say, okay, for number seven, raise your, Let me see your answers. They show em. And then I say, ooh, okay, we need to go over this or not that or whatever.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:51]:
I like doing that as well. And then the other thing I like to do when it comes to collecting paper, so I did mention, like, I collect one thing typically per week. Now sometimes I don’t have time to grade the entire thing. Rarely for a lab will I grade every single section of the lab. Oftentimes I’ll pick like I’m gonna grade just the graphs or just the reflection questions or whatever. But that doesn’t mean, first of all, I don’t tell them which section I’m going to grade because I want them to just try their hardest on everything. And second, then maybe I’m only going to read and provide feedback on this one section. I’m going to give them really good feedback on this one thing.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:24]:
But then when I pass them back out, they will swap with a neighbor or I’ll pass them out and I’ll give them different students ones and I’ll have them just kind of mark up each other, say like, hey, now let’s look at everyone’s graphs. I want you to mark up this part and that, I think that really motivates students too, to make sure they’re doing work and like actually trying because they know someone’s going to see it and see whether or not they even like wrote something down. So those are just different ways you can be going over work differently that doesn’t require you to collect every single thing and read every single part and grade every single part. Now my fifth grading, Game Changer applies to all the ones I just said, and that is constant vigilance. Okay? You need to always be watching. As I mentioned in my classroom, there was not homework. I stopped assigning that. I’m collecting way less Game changer number three.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:13]:
And we’re going over it often as a class. That’s Game changer number four. Okay. And I have different strategies for that. So how do I make sure they actually do stuff and write stuff down if they know that I’m not going to collect it and they know that we’re just going to draw names and go over it and they can just kind of guess or say, I don’t know when their name gets drawn, that’s where Game changer number five Comes in constant vigilance. You’re not ever looking at your phone during the class period. You’re not sitting down and grading tests from another class during the class period. It’s constant vigilance, okay? You’re getting your steps in during the class period.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:42]:
That’s what you’re doing. You send them off to work independently on something, as you should. Maybe you’re doing a two minute typing in of attendance. You know, maybe you’re prepping like one tiny thing for like three minutes for a lab, but the rest of the time you’re doing laps. You’re poking around, you’re looking at people’s papers. You’re hitting the front of their desk with a meter stick. Or maybe that’s just me to get them awake and alert. You are making sure that they are working.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:07]:
You are constantly listening. Okay? My kids always used to say I had supersonic hearing. They’re like, I cannot believe you heard heard me say that. And I’m like, I’m always listening, even if you think I’m not listening. Okay? You have to be paying attention and tending to them, if you will, to make sure that they’re doing their work. Like, if, if the only work you’re requiring them to do is in your classroom, then you need to be present and making sure they’re actually doing that work and getting it done. I understand some of you are like, but I get so much done while they’re like working on a project or working on a lab write up or working on graphs. I get that.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:40]:
But if you can be constantly vigilant in your classroom, then you’re not gonna have to grade as much because you’re seeing that they’re all trying and doing their best and you’re able to go over it in class. That’s going to reclaim you some time later. So your planning period could actually be used for planning or grading. Like the one thing you collected that week from that class, Constant vigilance. That’s so important. And then grading. Game changer number six is prime times, y’. All.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:04]:
I feel like this is one of those things where it’s like some of you are like, can you stop with the prime times? I can’t stop because it’s one of the most important things. It’s one of my greatest contributions to the Internet. I feel like our prime times, if you don’t know prime times is or what I. I think the first five minutes of class are the most important part of the class period. It sets the tone for the rest of the Class prime times are my, like number one daily assessment strategy. It’s how I check in with my students every single day. Like I said in my grading philosophy, I want to lay eyes on work by students every single day. But I cannot physically collect work every day.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:37]:
I just cannot do it. So prime times are the solution. And then it’s also a classroom management technique. It sets the culture for the first five minutes of how I expect them to come in, put their heads down, work in silence. It just, it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. I talk about it in detail in episode number four, so I’m not going to rehash that again. But I love doing prime times. And if you don’t, I highly encourage you trying it at least this first quarter and seeing how it goes.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:03]:
So a primetime is just going to be like three to five very short questions you put on the board based on what they did the previous class period to check in and make sure they are staying up and understanding things. It has to be short because they need to be able to do it in five minutes. And you should be able to like read through every single students in under five minutes in that class period. Because I always collect them. Then we go over the answers up front. Then when I send them off to do work independently of some sort, this is the one time I’m not going to be constantly vigilant because I’m going to do my quick 3 minute check through and grade them. And then I actually tabulate a score at the end of the week that goes into the grade book out of 25, because I do five points per day. A lot of people are like, how do you keep them from cheating? And da, da, da.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:45]:
I let them use their notes on these. These are open notes. Because this is not about memorization. It’s just a way for me to check. Like, are you with me? Am I with you? Are we all on the same page here? And so I let them use their notes and if I see them cheating, then we take away notes and they have to do it by themselves. So one of my refrains is, use your notes and not your neighbor. And most of them realize that their notes are more trustworthy than their neighbor is. That makes them not, you know, want to copy their neighbor.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:10]:
So do your primetime because then you’re still going to be checking in with students daily. And it frees you up then to not collect all this other stuff from your students. And all of these six grading game changers work together. Like, because I’m doing prime times, then I can collect less because I’m collecting less, then we’re going to be going over work differently. I’m going to stop assigning homework. Like these all kind of build into each other. So I highly encourage you adopting one or all of these strategies this school year. I really believe they’ll be game changers for you.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:41]:
So today’s Take Home Challenge is first and foremost, you can’t even consider adopting any of these practices unless you know your grading philosophy. So let’s start with evaluating your philosophy. Like why do you grade? Ask yourself that question. I want you to write it down, I want you to put it into words, why you grade, and then let that inform the decisions you make in terms of what you’re collecting, how you’re grading, what’s for accuracy, what’s for completion. And then I recommend committing to, you know, at least one of these six things this year. And I mentioned a ton of episodes where I go into more detail about these six things and I didn’t want to be redundant, just rehashing all of those. So please check out the show notes if you want more information on any of those points. All of those other episodes I’ve already mentioned where I talk about these things are linked there, so you can find the show notes@itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com Episode 196 if you have not left a review for the podcast yet, today is your day.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:35]:
I would love to hear from you. You can do that in Apple podcasts. That’s where 96% of you are listening to podcasts. It’s a great place to do it. I would love it if you’d leave a five star rating and write a review. I just love to read your words and I want to especially encourage you to leave a review today if you are ready to grade differently this school year. Alright teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscienceclassroom.com challenge to grab your Classroom Reset Challenge.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:08]:
And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you teacher friend.