Ten Time-Saving Tips That Maximize Feedback and Learning

Increasing class sizes, adopting new standards, and rigorous, new teacher evaluation requirements all add to the daily requirements of today's teachers.

With limited time, teachers are constantly looking for ways to maximize their efforts; ways of getting the most bang for the buck. 

Knowing feedback is integral to the learning process, teachers can save time without sacrificing feedback's value by using the following strategies.

Ten Time-Saving Grading Tips That Maximize Feedback

1.     Selective commenting. Focus on only a couple of things per essay

2.     Minimize your writing/comments. Require any student who scores below a B to see you (before/after school, during non-teacher directed class time, etc) and/or rewrite and/or defend their writing

3.     Color-coded grading in which you use different highlighters to signify different look-fors or another system (*, circle, underline)

4.     Peer editing

5.     Group work in which the students collectively start the writing process and work together to improve their own writing

6.     Have students write online (blogs, discussions, etc) and comment on each others' posts

7.     Have students grade their own work using the rubric. This is tremendously valuable in so many aspects (metacognition, feedback, increase understanding, time-saver, etc).  

8.     If students disagree with a grade (and because feedback may be limited) give them 48 hours to defend their paper to you. Limit their defense to a couple of minutes.

9.     3-column grading. Using a class or teacher created rubric (column 1), students grade themselves according to the rubric (column 2), and the teacher records his/her grade in third column. Using this method, the teacher can more intently focus on areas where the student and teacher disagree.

10.  Comment rather than correct and grade.

 What suggestions do you have?