Grading Homework
Submitted by shabam on Wed, 05/07/2008 - 12:49
Do you grade the homework you assign your students? Some teachers do, and some don't. They each have reasons for doing, or not doing it. I personally believe that if I am going to assign it, I should grade it. But i the students are given a lot of homework, this can be tedious.
When I give homework, I want to make sure that students are understanding it. Some teachers say that they give it a look over when they receive it and that is enough. That can tell you if the class got it, but it does not give you a very fine grained detail into how they are doing as a student. For instance, if I grade the homework, I can put that data into a spreadsheet and see which students are doing well on what. It gives me a lot more data to work with in teaching my students.
Of course, if you are not differentiating you lessons, then this may be less important to you. You may not care that Joey is not understanding the math basics. You may not care the Rhonda does not read the instructions, but just guesses at the work. You may not care about the kind of detailed information you can get by looking over your students work. The notes you take and the scores you give can also give you an idea of which students are meeting the standards.
Yes, this is hard work. But did you go into teaching thinking it was going to be easy? I am working on a database that will keep all the standards I'm responsible for teaching. I can then include my lessons and which standards are taught, and the homework and activities and which standards the students are grasping based on that. With this information that I gather throughout the year, I can then do report cards easily and give detailed notes to the parents. If a student needs special education services, I'll see it sooner and have detailed notes on how they are progressing. I'll also be able to look back and say "hey, my students have already mastered that skill, I'll just give a brief overview of it and move on to the next lesson" allowing me to skip entire lessons.
This is just my opinion, and I'm still a student teacher, so I may be naive. Please feel free to comment and tell me your opinions!
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I have found grading every
I have found grading every assignment an overwhelming task that can take away from the time and energy I have for lesson planning and other equally or more important tasks. What I tend to do is reserve a few minutes at the beginning of the class to go over part or all of the homework as a group. While this doesn't give me as much detail as I would get grading every assignment, it still gives me an idea of how each student is doing and what they are struggling with. Once every week or so I will collect and grade an assignment to get that more detailed perspective, but doing that for every student every night would wear me down after a while.
Jeff, That sounds like a
Jeff,
That sounds like a good compromise. You get the details of grading their lessons without the tedium of grading EVERY thing they turn in. Thanks for the input!
Jason
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