Tips for Effective

Grading
Abstract: As a society, we are constantly
changing and discovering new things.
Ways to effectively grade students is
something that can always be improved
upon. How a teacher grades their students
can affect how they learn and develop.
Keywords: Grading, Grading Zone,
Guidelines, Grading System, Learning
Introduction
Grading can be one of the most
time consuming, stressful, and overlooked
jobs a professor has to do. How a
professor grades their students is a way to
effectively communicate a student's
mastery of the subject matter (Brown,
2004). This is why, grading is also one of
the most important things a teacher must
do.
It is very common for teachers to
spend three to ten hours a week on
grading, depending on the time of the
year, or the specific assignment due. This
is a lot of extra time you are spending
during your free time. Since there is so
much time needed for graded, we need to
decide what to grade them on and how
much that specific assignment counts
towards their overall grade. This is up to
the teacher as an individual, no one truly
knows what you want your students to get
out of the subject except you.
Finding Your Grading Zone
New teachers usually tend to
underestimate how much time is spent on
grading. In the article, Getting a Handle
on Grading, the author Michael Romano,
describes his first teaching experience. He
would time himself and add that time to a
Microsoft spreadsheet. At the end of the
year, he tallied up the hours and the total
was three hundred and thirty hours spent
on grading. Thats almost fourteen entire
days filled with just grading! His second
year of teaching, he did the same thing,
this time, he was more aware of the time
he was using because he made it a goal to
cut his percentage by ten. At the end of

the second year, his total hours were two

hundred and six hours. He was able to
bring his percentage down by thirty eight
percent (Romano, 2010)! Think about how
much time he could have saved his first
year of teaching, if he had only done the
same thing.
Romano later goes on about finding
your grading zone. He make the
reference about how teachers always tell
their students not to do their homework in
front of the television (Romano, 2010).
Well, how many teachers do that same
thing? Most likely, a lot of them. For some
teachers, it could be other things; perhaps
you cant grade your papers right when
school gets done. Maybe you cannot grade
efficiently early in the morning, or when
other people are around. These things
vary tremendously from person to person.
The goal is to find which time works best
for you to sit down, without any
distractions and grade.
Being aware of how much time you
spend grading stuff is important, but there
are other things specifically involved with
how to grade that is important as well.
Some scholars argue that effective
feedback takes place best in one-on-one,
face-to-face conferences (Stern, 2006). In
many cases this is so. What better way for
a teacher to grasp how each individual is
looking at the assignment? The student
also has more opportunity to really ask the
professor any lingering questions they
might not feel is important enough to
ask in front of the class. Unfortunately in
reality, this just is not a practice
completely possible. Teachers don not
have the time to sit with their students
individually and discuss each and every
assignment. That could take hours, and
teachers only have a limited amount of
time with their students as it is. In Diana
Kroll's article, Cooperative Problem
Solving: But What About Grading? She
states that using cooperative groups for
classwork is a lot easier than assigning
grades for that work (Kroll, 1992). This
means that although one-on-one time is
very beneficial, students working with
each other helps them become better
problem solvers. Many teachers believe
that they have to collect every homework

assignment they require their class to do.

Despite what others might tell you, you
do not need to collect everything you
assign (Romano, 2010). For those
assignments that are due every day, many
teachers grade the homework by either
being done or not done. However, this can
be either good or bad depending on the
student and how seriously they take the
assignment. Another practice could be
weekly quizzes to test the students on
their knowledge of the homework
assignments. Take the quiz questions
directly from the homework, then the
students who take their homework
seriously will do well on the quizzes. This
will also motivate those who do not take
homework assignments seriously.
A common practice that professors
use is peer reviews. This is when students
come together in groups to evaluate each
others papers in a critical way. Usually the
teacher provides them with questions they
must answer while reviewing their peers
papers. It makes students look at things
differently, like they are the teachers.
They are looking at it from different
angles, meaning when they return to their
papers, they will look at those differently
as well and figure out what needs to be
fixed. Another positive to peer reviews is
students can work off each other and get
different ideas. Perhaps when someone
added a comment to someone elses
paper, it gave them a new idea to add, or
discuss with that student who suggested
it. Wouldnt it be a good feeling to have
your students leave class still talking
about the assignment?
Forming Guidelines
Creating guidelines for your
students is critical when it comes to
grading. Most professors have a syllabus
or grading system for their students, so
they are aware of what is due, when its
due, and how much it affects their grade.
Grading systems are intended to be fair,
useful, informative, timely, and influential
so grading is carried out competently and
the results can be used with confidence
and communicated effectively to students,
parents, guardians, and other
stakeholders (Brown). With grading

systems comes the task of the teacher

figuring out what the student will have to
do in order to be considered
knowledgeable enough in that specific
subject. After that, the professor needs to
consider the late work policy and the
policy on zeroes. Are there multiple
opportunities for students to demonstrate
mastery? Do the grades reflect mastery or
nonacademic issues? These are just some
of the questions to ponder when
developing a "fair" grading system
(Brown, 2004). All of the questions Brown
brings up in his article will determine how
much effort students will put into the
class. Say for example: a college professor
does not have an attendance policy. A
student can come and go as they please,
maybe even only coming in to take exams
or quizzes. By doing this, the student
would not be learning as much as they
should. Brown continues his argument by
saying, Beware of traits that do not
measure learning. Work that contributes to
a final grade should include tests, quizzes,
daily assignments, and projects. Such
items as attitude, ability, and behavior
should not affect the grade because
grades should reflect the level of student
achievement in each course. If
nonacademic items are allowed to
influence the grade, grades will be in
danger of being strongly influenced by
opinion as opposed to work that can be
graded objectively (Brown, 2004). The
way a student is graded should not be by
their ability or skill with a specific thing.
Some students tend to do better on
homework than tests. Others prefer exams
to papers. Having a good weighing system
will help those students if one of these
things are their shortcomings. Perhaps
make homework assignments twenty
percent of the final grade, quizzes are
thirty percent, tests are 40 and
attendance is ten. With that, the students
who are bad tests takers will still have a
chance to get a decently good grade in
the class. Not every student is going to be
good at all of these things, especially if its
a subject they are not skilled in to begin
with. It is important for a professor to take
these factors into account when creating a
grading scale, otherwise they could

unknowingly be grading their students

unfairly.
Summary
Grading, though very challenging
and time consuming, is important for any

References
Brown, Joseph. "Grade-A Perfect." Principal
Leadership: Middle Level Edition 5.2 (2004): 28-32.
Web.
Kroll, Diana Lambdin, Joanna O. Masingila, and Sue
Tinsley. "Cooperative Problem Solving: But What
About Grading?" The Arithmetic Teacher (1992): n.
pag. Web.

teacher and their class. Deciding what to

grade your students on is imperative to
how they develop critical thinking skills, as
well as their learning process. The way
you grade your students and how you
grade their work is up to you. You are the
teacher.

Romano, Michael. "Getting a Handle on Grading."

The New Teacher's Toolbox 77 (2010): 14. Web.
Stern, Lesa A., and Amanda Solomon. "Effective
Faculty Feedback: The Road Less Traveled."
Assessing Writing 11.1 (2006): 22-41. Effective
Faculty Feedback: The Road Less Traveled. Web.