Cut Down Grading Time with This 3-Step Homework Hack

Students never appreciate working hard on a homework assignment, only to have it go ungraded for days, sometimes even weeks. It’s easy to get behind, but with this 3-step homework hack, you’ll be able to cut down on your grading time and get back to what you do best—teach.

Step 1
A student collects the homework and, on a separate class roster page, marks a check next to the student’s name for an assignment handed in.

Step 2
The papers then go to another student who checks to see that the entire assignment was done. If so, he or she places a second checkmark on the roster. At this point, only papers with two checkmarks are on the roster. All others are incomplete assignments.

Step 3
The third check may be added in a number of ways: If the answers are either right or wrong, a key given to another student might allow that student to correct the papers. Or, papers may be redistributed to the class at large, with no one having his or her own paper, and corrected as part of the lesson.

Now that it’s time to record the grades, you have an easy way to assess each effort. If you substitute the checkmark for numbers 0-3 in your marking book, it will make averaging out a homework grade relatively easy.

This homework hack comes from the April issue of Think Teachers.

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Permalink Reply by Colleen Young on April 24, 2014 at 11:09am

I totally agree that teachers need to spend time teaching and planning their lessons but I must confess I don't like this hack.

As a parent I would not be amused if a child of mine told me they were doing 1 or 2 of the above!

As a Maths teacher - it's a great subject for them to mark in class themselves and I make a big fuss about training them to be Maths examiners - when I take their books they should have fully corrected and annotated work and highlighted parts they want me to look at - and written down any questions for me to respond to. I tell them I am just as interested in their marking and corrections as the original work. This means I spend my time looking at the parts that caused any problems and give constructive feedback on that.