Time Hacks for Teachers - H - Have Fun

To grade like a COACH, we'e seen, you need to constantly assess students and give lots of oral feedback. You should also always be a coach, even on test days. And by using creative assessments, which have all these other features built-in, you will begin to save large amounts of time each school year.

One last aspect of grading like a COACH is to have fun. I stopped coaching sports when I started my Ph. D. program. Once I'd finished my degree, I decided going back to coaching wasn't for me. I had just done it because the school needed help, not because it was something I really wanted to do. But I have friends who coach, and for them, they do it because they love it.

In fact, I joked with a few of them that my degree pays more than their coaching, but they would much rather coach. It makes them happy. They love the game, the interactions with the players, and watching kids become better and better. Sometimes those kinds of things are harder to see when it comes to grading.

As I began using the strategies outlined in Grading Like a COACH, grading truly became one my favorite things to do as a teacher. I began to have fun with it. I was able to really see what kids knew, challenge them to move forward, and because it was one-on-one, build better relationships with them.

Once again, I want to challenge you to try these techniques and see if grading like a COACH, not only saves you time, but helps you find more enjoyment in grading. Let us know how it works for you.

Time Hacks for Teachers - C - Creative Assessments

As I said before, this post will bring together the ideas of using oral feedback, always coaching and constantly assessing. I'm going to use the concept of a summative test to illustrate creative assessments, but when we use the word creative, really, the sky's the limit.

Suppose I'm covering a standard with five strands, as I've used in prior posts. And, suppose my summative test has four questions per strand (yeah, like that ever happens). Because I'm constantly assessing, not ever student really needs to answer all twenty questions for me to finish assessing their knowledge of the standards (See figure 1 - If you haven't read Time Hacks for Teacher - C - Constantly Assessing you might want to go back and read it.)

figure 1

Obviously, it could get a little crazy on test day if I'm telling Kaylan, "Okay, you only neded to answer questions 6-10 and 16-20," but I'm telling Jared he needs to answer 1-5 and 16-20. Even if I don't tell the kids anything, and let all of them answer all the questions, then I only grade the ones they need it could be confusing (not so much if I set up my test like I talked about in Time Hacks for Teachers - O - Oral Responses Give Immediate Feedback - see figure 2)

figure 2

But I found an even better way to alleviate the confusion. I began giving oral test. I know, I know, that takes longer, and I'm supposed to be saving you time. So let's address how I went about it first, and then look at how it actually saved me time.

My tests were posted on my door the day of the test, and were usually just diagrams, equations, pictures or paragraphs (see figure 3 for an example). But there were no questions. I'd made out the test questions, but I used the pictures or diagrams to get the discussion going. Figure 3 is an actual test, minus the questions of course. This was based on a project the kids had done, and I actually used three different students' work.

figure 3

I would bring kids out one at a time and begin talking about something in the project. The great thing is that for one student I might focus on C, and for another I might bounce around (When they go back in to discuss - something I expressly forbid them to do, but knew they would - they have a hard time figuring out what to talk about).

Because I've already assessed certain strands, I only ask Kaylan questions about the strands I still need to assess. Since I have my gradebook right there with me, no confusion. And I have the benefit of oral responses, so i can dig deeper for understanding if I need to.

Okay, so how does this save time if it actually takes longer? First, it's really hard to take an oral test home to grade, so everything's done in class. Victory! On top of that, let's say I'm assessing standard 1c, and I can tell Deshaun doesn't get it. Since I'm always coaching, I reteach right then, not in an after-school tutoring session a week after he took the test. I let him know that if I had graded his assessment it wouldn't have been pretty, and since I didn't want to see either of us cry I'm going to let him come back out and try again the next day. By doing that, I've placed reteaching and retesting both into class time - where they should be - not during my family time.

This strategy worked great for me, but here are a few things I want to point out:

1. You obviously have to plan some self-directed work during your testing block. I usually took about one week for testing and retesting. On any given day that week, I might have spent half the period working with the whole class on the next unit, and then testing the other half of the period.
2. Bring out your lowest performing students near the beginning. They can be tested, retaught and sent back in to study more, and then retested later in the week.
3. Bring in your highest performing students near the beginning. I used to ask them questions way beyond what they needed to show mastery just to stretch them. If I had time, I would bring them back out to see if they had come up with answers to the questions I'd posed. These questions didn't effect their grade, and I let them know that, but often they would rise to the challenge. 

I want to challenge you to try this at least once to see how it works for you. Think about it: one unit with no tests to take home and grade, no tutoring sessions, no retest schedule. Sounds glorious, and it can be yours if you grade like a coach. Let me know how it turns out!

Time Hacks for Teachers - A - Always Coaching

Back when I played basketball, I loved game nights. There was always an air of excitement, a sense of comradery, and, for me, the hope I wouldn't do anything too embarrassing (if  I even got in the game - hey, I usually did). Coach Patterson would always give us some pep talk - "they put their pants on the same as you..." - before the game.

I want you to imagine for just a moment, Coach telling us, "You guys have practiced hard this week. I know you can beat this team. Good luck, and come talk to me after the game." Come talk to me after the game - what?

Maybe we would have still played our hearts out. Maybe Kyle or Keith would have led us to victory without the coach guiding us. Maybe not.

Can you imagine, the score is tied, ten seconds on the clock, we have the ball. Kyle calls a time out. We huddle up at the bench, and someone says, "Coach, what should we do?"

Then Coach Patterson crosses his arms over his dark blue sweater vest and says, "I can't help. This is the game."

That would be totally crazy, but let's take a similar situation in the classroom. I don't know how many times I told a student, "I can't help. This is a test." For many teachers, it doesn't sound crazy in this setting.

But I always hated saying to kids. Sometimes it would be a student like Josh, who would, for the first time the whole unit, actually be interested in knowing something (Perhaps it was the first time the whole unit held anything of value to him, but that's a different conversation.). Finally, Josh was receptive to my teaching, and I gave the standard teacher mantra - I can't help. This is a test.

Totally crazy!

I remember one test day, three students came up with very similar questions, and I told them I couldn't help. After the third student sat back down, looking defeated, a voice in my mind (yes, they're real) asked, "Why can't you help?" And, I answered it!

By the end of that conversation with myself (totally crazy???), I had come to the realization there was no rule saying I couldn't help students on test days. Tweet this Sure, if it is a State-mandated standardized test, but this was just me assessing a student in my classroom, and I'd missed a teachable moment.

What a doof! Three kids were struggling with the material it was MY job to teach, and I said, "No." On top of that, I had to give up time to tutor or reteach the material after the test, and then give a retest. And I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME FOR ALL THAT!

If I'm honest, no matter how masterfully I present that information a second time, those three students will not be as engaged as they might have been when it mattered to them. I decided my standard teacher reply was merely a bad teaching practice, and Mark Barnes (@markbarnes19) said, "Bad practice adds up to disengaged students, who hate you and your class." (via www.brilliantorinsane.com)

After that day, I began to relish those pleas for help on test day. It's even been reported that I've stopped the whole test to reteach some point kids seem to be missing. Coaches are always coaching, on practice days and game days. Release your inner coach, even on game test day.

In the next post, I'm going to show you my greatest time-saving grading hack. It will pull together the ideas of constantly assessing, oral responses and always coaching. It's the one thing that truly turned grading into something I enjoyed. Don't miss it.

Let me pass the ball to you
Have you been guilty of saying, "I can't help. This is a test."? Have you tried anything else< and if so, how did it work?

Time Hacks for Teachers - O - Oral responses give immediate feedback

One of the main reasons we feel overwhelmed by grading is because teachers are good people. Good people want to do good things, and for students, getting quality feedback quickly is a good thing. Alice Keeler, of www.alicekeeler.com says, "Research shows that feedback has a large impact on learning. Grades...not so much." (@alicekeeler) Because we know this, we teachers take home stacks of papers to grade, to give that feedback our students.

When Coach Patterson saw me do something wrong out on the basketball court, he didn't wait to give me a written progress report. He would blow the whistle, stopping the whole practice. We would discuss the problem and then we would try it again. Immediate!

This idea of immediate feedback goes hand-in-hand with constantly assessing, which I talked about in my last post. I began to walk around my classes more and more asking questions - tough questions, and then giving lots and lots of feedback. If a student got the question right, or even part of the question right, I would have them repeat it to the rest of the group. If they got the question wrong, we would talk about it.

Basically, I spent less and less time up in front lecturing, and more time in mini-lecture/discussions. Students seem to be much more motivated to learn when they are in the midst of being assessed. When I was standing beside them asking a tough question, their group was looking at them, and at that one moment in time, they really wanted to know the right answer. What a glorious thing to see in the classroom! Since there were few lecture, that meant no more time spent putting together PowerPoint slides and interactive note sheets - things typically done outside of class time.

One of the best things about the immediate feedback that comes with oral responses is you can ask more questions. How many times have you been grading a students answer, and you just aren't sure if they have it or not. It's like their answer is almost there, and if you could just ask them to clarify something you would know for sure that they truly understand. Unfortunately, since you are grading the paper in your living room at 8:30 pm, there's no way to ask (Actually, it's very fortunate that you can't ask them at 8:30 pm in your living room, but you know what I mean.).

Because our goal is to determine if students have mastery of the standards, I would just turn the standards into questions. Take this standard from a high school environmental science class:

• 5a. Describe factors affecting population growth of all organisms, including humans. Relate these to factors affecting growth rates and carrying capacity of the environment.

I might type up a couple of question from this standard. 

1. What are some of the major factors affecting population growth of all organism. (Do you see how creative I was with that?) Once they tell me what they are, I can ask for an explanation of them. Okay, that one was pretty basic, but it keeps getting harder as you ask more.
2. How might differences in shelter from one ecosystem to another impact the growth rate and carrying capacity of schooling animals? (What???) 

And, since I gave myself permission to go ahead and assign points for mastery, even if it wasn't time for the big test, I was able to reduce my grading. By the time you've asked these kinds of questions to kids over and over, and you've given immediate feedback over and over, many of them will have already shown you they have mastery of the content before the final or summative assessment. So by the time you need to grade the test, you don't have too much to grade (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

For Kaylan, I only have to grade questions dealing with standard 1c and 1d. Jared has shown master on several things as well, so I only have to grade questions dealing with 1b and 1c. Obviously, I'm going to have to craft my test or assessment in such a way as to make this division easier.

I liked to divide questions for each standard into sections. I would put a line between them, so it was easier for me to see where one section ended and the other started (see Figure 2). So for Kaylan, I would know I could skip the first two sections and only grade sections three and four. Then I was finished grading her test. For my own sanity, I just had the students fill in the whole test (Probably that was just lazy on my part, but I figured it was just review for them.).

So, by giving large amounts of oral feedback, I didn't feel the need to grade everything the students were doing (Just FYI, I didn't always tell them I wasn't grading it, and would often take up work. Sometimes I would grade one or two questions that showed mastery, because I was always assessing.). Because I was constantly assessing, I had less to grade on the summative assessment, and by doing less lecturing, there was less time spent prepping (sometimes). 

Tweet Because I was constantly assessing, I had less to grade.

But with these two changes, I also found myself doing something else that helped students. Unfortunately, you have to wait until the next post to find out what it was. I'll give you a hint: it starts with an "A".

Let me pass the ball to you:

What are some time-saving things you've learned to do in the classroom?

Here's one last time-saving tip, subscribe to get the next post without even looking for it.

Time Hacks for Teachers - C - Constantly assessing

When I first started to change my grading style, I wasn't thinking about coaching. But now, when I look back, I see some similarities (and they make great analogies). Anyway, that's where the coaching angle came from.

Today's post is a little long, so let's look at the "C" in COACH. Back when I played high school basketball (way, way back), Coach Patterson didn't say, "Okay guys, remember, this Friday is our big ball-handling assessment. You need to study." We might have run some layup drills on Monday, passing drills on Tuesday, and scrimmaged on Wednesday, but he was always assessing.

As teachers, it's easy to say we constantly assess also, but we do it slightly different. And those differences are what really changed my grading. We start with standards, and from those standards, we determine what it will take for students to show mastery. Then we create our summative  assessment.

Once we've done that, we work out our lesson plans, and it's in those plans, where formative assessments are formulated. The formative assessments serve as markers to help us determine how students are progressing toward mastery.

Often, our final or summative test (quiz, project, etc.) is the real determination of whether students "have it" or not. If your classroom runs like this, then your grade book may look quite a bit like mine used to (see Figure 1), with columns for daily work, homework, quizzes, and of course the summative assessment. My grade book was the first thing I changed.

Figure 1

Since I was really only interested in mastery, there was no need to grade anything that didn't show mastery. Because of this I restructured my grade book (see Figure 2). Now my columns represented standards.

Figure 2

A copy of that grade sheet was on a clipboard that I always carried around the room (okay, almost always). As i talked with students, let's say Kaylan shows me she has mastery of Standard 1b on Tuesday. In the old days, I would have walked away thinking, "Wow, Kaylan's going to ace the test Friday."

But if I'm constantly assessing, why do I have to wait until Friday's big test to give Kaylan credit for showing mastery? Instead, I can give it to her on Tuesday. Now, say questions 6-10 on the summative assessment cover standard 1b. That's five questions I don't have to grade come Friday (WooHoo!!). In fact, if I truly assess all along the way, by the time I get to the final test, my grade book might look like Figure 3, but probably with numbers instead of thumbs-up.

Figure 3

It might sound a little confusing right now, but hang with me. I promise it's not. In fact, grading (assessing) went from my least favorite part of teaching, to one of my favorites.

Let me pass the ball to you:
Some districts or schools have already moved to standards-based grading. If you have, what differences have you seen in your time usage?

Time Hacks for Teachers - Grading Like a C.O.A.C.H.

Introduction

When I first started out in teaching (ages ago), I was determined to be the best teacher I could be. It didn't take long to realize it was going to be harder than I thought. Creating meaningful assessments, and lessons and units and...and it wasn't long until I was out of time. And that didn't even include grading.

I have to admit, I became a procrasti-grader. Grading was, to me, the most boring, horrible, terrible part of teaching. Interacting with students and creative planning I was great at. Marking errors on assessments, not so much.

Work that I took up began to pile up, which like rainy days and Mondays, always got me down. But...I wanted to be the best teacher, and my students needed feedback, so I would take home stacks of papers to grade. I graded on weekends. I graded during basketball games - not if I was playing. I graded all the time...until I'd had enough.

You may not know this about me, but I'm sarcastic. I've even been called a smart a...a smart something. And in a fit of desperation and defiance, I stopped grading papers one day. Instead, I typed up a bill for overtime hours.

My administrators were sitting at a table in the lunchroom, and I handed it to them. The seriously scrutinized it. Then they all laughed.

I laughed too, but down deep it was depressing. No one seemed to care that my job was becoming my life. No one offered any hope.

Dragging myself back to my classroom, I sat at my desk contemplating a career change. I still liked kids, and creative planning rocked, but grading had become my arch nemesis. Like the superhero I am, I decided I could either fight back or be defeated.

I fought back. Superman could bend steel beams, but I was learning to bend my self-imposed grading rules. The Flash was fast, but I learned to grade even faster. By the time I stepped out of the classroom (2 1/2 years ago, I became a media specialist), I never took grading home.

In my new position, I have been surveying teachers, and keep hearing words I used to say, "I don't have enough time." Because of that, I'm going to share with you some of my greatest grading hacks.
You may not be able to just take them and use them like I did, but my hope is that they will spark ideas to help you become a grading superhero too.

Don't forget to subscribe to get all the grading hacks. (And yes, I will explain why I call it 'Grading Like a C.O.A.C.H.)

C - Constantly Assessing

Three Reasons You Should Be A Teacher-Leader

There is a lot of talk these days about teachers becoming teacher-leaders, and to many over-worked and under-payed teachers, that might sound like a joke. "Why would I want to add something else to my plate?" But I think it is something every teacher should consider, especially if you've been around for a while.

Unfortunately, some of the teachers who have been in teaching for a significant amount of time are burning out. The last thing they see as helpful is "doing more." But doing more is only drudgery if it's doing more of the same. Being a teacher-leader lets you step into something different.

Here are three reasons why becoming a teacher-leader can revitalize your career:

1. People need help

Everyone needs assistance sometimes, and if you have been a teacher for a while, you can help. Most of us find something intrinsically pleasing about helping someone in need. And, it doesn't have to take more of your time.

You already do some really great things. If I asked you, "What is your one "teacher super-power," or what do you do really well as a teacher, what would you say? If you are good at something, chances are you already do that thing often. How long would it take to send out an email that says, "Hey, I tried this in class and it worked wonderfully. Let me know if you'd like to know more."

By doing that one simple thing, you put yourself out there as someone who knows something. That's not too scary a place to be. Conversations may arise at the copy machine or the lunchroom, where you can share more with people who are curious. If no one seems curious about the thing you shared, it's okay. Perhaps it will be the next thing someone needs help with. Keep sharing.

2. You may need some help

If you share, you might just be an example to others who also begin to share. They might share something that could help you down the road. In fact, you all might become idea-sharing superheroes around your school.

Alright, so you might not be stopping bullets or leaping over tall buildings, but you could begin to form an amazing personal learning network (PLN). [Education needs more acronyms like Twitter needs more hashtags!] Why are personal learning networks important? "In a recent survey,Teachers Network found that 80 percent of teachers said network participation encouraged them to remain in the classroom, while 90 percent said that networking improved their teaching practice." (Edutopia)  

3. Get more out of your career

Education is a tough career, and one reason is because it is a relatively flat career. If you are a first year teacher, you are expected to create lessons, teach classes, maintain records, etc. If you are ten year teacher, you are expected to do the same things. 

There is little in the way of growth paths unless you stay out of the classroom. So when things get a little stale, teachers tend to change grade levels or subject areas, but after a while those changes too become stale. But by becoming a teacher-leader, you create another level in the teaching profession. 

The great thing about becoming a teacher-leader is that you get to make that move on your own. There's one department chair position, and the same person might hold that for years, but no one can stop you from reaching out to help your peers - and they won't want to! You can become a superhero to your administrators and peers alike. 

How have you, or someone in your school, demonstrated teacher-leadership?