Becoming a Consistent Grader (Online Reflection #3)

“Grading students can be a perplexing task” (Smagorinsky 101).

Something that I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is how I want to grade my students, particularly when it comes to essays. Whenever both my mentor teacher and I grade something, such as in class speeches or short answer quiz questions, I have noticed that I always give the students a higher grade than she does. If I gave them a B-, she gave them a C. If I thought it was an A performance, she gave them a B+. Because of this and past experiences, I always though grading was subjective. Depending on who looks over the work, a student could receive a good grade or a bad grade. But, according to Randy Bomer, “[Grading’s] not subjective, but it’s not quantitative either” (182). This somewhat stumps me, so I want to explore the subject further. Is grading subjective? How will I decide to give grades to my own students in the future?

When grading for my Mentor Teacher, I do not use a rubric, as she does not use rubrics. She gives me general guide lines to follow (Did students use MLA format? Did they cite sources correctly? Did they follow the prompt correctly?), but other than that she tells me to assign the paper a holistic score. While this makes grading the essays easier for me, I sometimes feel like I’m not grading each essay with the same intensity and criteria. Peter Smagorinsky does point out that “[w]hile not solving all problems, a rubric of this sort will help you evaluate the portfolios in a fairly consistent manner” (104). One thing I want to strive for in grading is consistency, so I may incorporate rubrics into my grading process for final essays and texts.

Another problem I’ve struggled with while grading student essays is the level at which students write. Because I assume that senior honors students will be writing at a somewhat higher level, when the students do not achieve my expectations, I’m disappointed and it shows in my grading. I think stopping these assumptions will become easier as I have more experience with teaching, because then I will know what each grade level can achieve on average, while at the moment I am unsure of what my students know. My Mentor Teacher and I are both struggling with this right now, as she assumed her students knew how to internally cite sources and use a works cited page, but only one student actually did this correctly.

How can I fix my assumptions and make my students better writers? I don’t want to grade them harshly on the only writing they do; that doesn’t seem fair.

Edutopia proposes that students need to write more and teachers need to grade less. The more students write, they better they will become. Edutopia suggests, “Writing doesn’t have to displace content—students usually learn content better and faster when they write about it. If they’re learning about the Spanish-American War, have them write a diary entry from Teddy Roosevelt. If they’re learning about the Allegory of the Cave, have them create their own allegorical world” (Johnson). If I get my students writing more and more, the practice will help them achieve better on their cumulative essays. This will not only help them become better writers, which is my main goal, but will also help their grades become higher.

All in all, I want grading to become more natural for me, but even more important, more consistent and fair for my students. Smagorinsky points out, “You may have guessed by now that what’s best for students is not always easiest for teachers” (102). I will do whatever it takes to make sure my grading practices are the best for my students, and this may include using rubrics even if it’s not the easiest way to grade or assigning more in-class writing that is more for learning and participation than a letter grade. I will also remember Bomer’s advice: “For most teachers of writing, the most important form of response comes through conferencing, not writing all over student papers” (184). Just because I assign them a grade and mark up a paper doesn’t mean my students will actually learn from that. So no matter how I decide to grade my future students, I will always strive to conference with them as well, so they can take my suggestions and what we’ve learned in class, and apply them to become even better writers than they already are.

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms.

            Heinemann, 2011.

Johnson, Matthew M. “Assigning More Writing – With Less Grading.” Edutopia, 26

Sept. 2017, https://www.edutopia.org/article/assigning-more-writing-less-

grading.

Smagorinsky, Peter. Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry out

            Instructional Units. Heinemann, 2008.