Effective Grading and Marking Strategies to Save You Time

If you’re a teacher, that probably means you’re very used to lots of marking!

Grading not only shows students where they are with a piece of work, errors they’ve made and areas that they’ve achieved well in, but it also helps them with grasping a subject area; although, we understand it can often take a lot of time and sometimes feels like you’ve too much marking to do.

Well… we want to help! Take a look at some of our effective grading strategies and marking ideas below to help you reduce your grading and save yourself some time:

1. Schedule grading time

If you teach multiple subjects, grading could become tricky and time-consuming to keep on top of. Completing grading without an organized method can lead to wasted time as your work schedules can easily overlap into other activities you have going on throughout the day.

To help you save time, you could consider scheduling set times throughout your workweek to complete grading, by mapping out assignments, projects, and tests on a calendar.

2. Student self-grading

Another effective method of grading is to encourage students to work together in pairs or small groups to evaluate each other’s work, such as, homework, drafts and quizzes.

This will show that you have confidence in your students to identify areas that need improvement, and will help to build confidence where they can offer their peers advice to help build their knowledge. Once this is complete, you can quickly review the feedback and answer any questions students may have.

3. Set a threshold

Sometimes, you may come across an assignment where a student hasn’t demonstrated what you’re looking for to reach the objectives of the topic. If this occurs, it may be best to speak to the student, make sure they understand the objectives and then ask them to relook at the work they’ve done and offer pointers for improvement.

This helps you, as it saves time having to mark the same piece of work from the beginning, but also the student, as they’ll know the areas they need to focus on to meet the objectives. Don’t forget that communication and collaboration are key to academic success and effective grading strategies!

Have you explored our suite of solutions? They cater for many teaching and learning needs and can help you save time with grading. Explore them today!