The English Teacher's Guide to Fight Feedback Fatigue
We all know the feeling of grading an endless pile of papers, especially when marking essays or close readings with tedious analytical responses. These assignments lead to the greatest grading fatigue because processing students’ analytical inferences takes an intense focus during the whole grading process. As a result, grading these types of assignments leads to major teacher burnout. (And if you think that picture is embellished for dramatic effect, it is not. That’s the picture of my grading pile the 2nd week back to school with all my students’ writing diagnostics.)
See below for 5 tips to grade smarter and reduce grading burnout and teacher stress. These grading ideas are intended to help you stay focused and be efficient!
Tip #1: Narrow your focus
When possible, figure out how you might grade the assignment before even giving it to the students. This can help you think of any modifications in your sentence structure or prompts/questions.
For instance, it can help you realize that maybe you only need to give four questions instead of five on a close reading, so taking a few minutes just to think about it from that perspective can help you make adjustments that will make your grading process a little easier.
Continuing with a close reading example, I realize that I don’t need to evaluate every single answer that my students give. This doesn’t negate the importance of all of their responses--my students need ample practice with this type of work, so giving them 4-5 questions fulfills that purpose. Then I can hone in on maybe two or three responses that matter.
Pick the same questions to grade for all students in your class. This ensures your grading is fair because question #2 could be really hard for everyone, so it’s not fair if you only grade some students’ #2 and other students, you don’t.
Being consistent is also good because then you’re not shifting your focus. You might not even read the other two or three responses because that was their practice and you’re honing in on these other questions. You now know what you're looking for during your grading sessions. You can even make a list so that you don't have to remember when you take a break and come back to your grading pile.
Furthermore, for an assignment like a close reading, my last question is usually the most important because all of the previous ones are stepping stones to talking about theme at the end of the assignment. I might also just go directly to that theme question and see if they integrated their responses from the previous questions (maybe that’s something I need to tell them in advance that they should do), but I don’t tell them in advance that this is the only one I’m going to look at. The previous questions are there to help prepare them for that more rigorous question at the end.
Tip #2: Grade in manageable chunks….but make your first chunk the longest
You want to have your first grading session the longest because, for instance, I know I always take one or two assignments to get acclimated to the particular one I’m grading and kind of get into my zone.
It can also take about five assignments for me to start noticing patterns in student work. This is where you can make yourself a bullet list of what you need to be looking for here. I might realize students are struggling with number three about indirect characterization. Maybe I need to insert a chart to help them with the STEAL acronym to help them find an example for each type.
After you've gotten acclimated to the assignment, grade for as long as you possibly can, and then grade the remaining papers in manageable chunks.
I used to plan for my grading sessions a little too optimistically. I would plan to sit down one time a day and knock out five papers. Five seems like such a small number, but in reality, I am usually burnt out by three. Now that I know that about myself, I allocate grading in chunks of three times a day when I have a big stack of papers—morning, afternoon, and evening. If I get through two papers each, then I can get through a whole class set throughout the week. (And that's six papers a day, one more than my initial plan of five.) If I teach three sections of the same class, this means I can grade all of my students' papers in three weeks, which is exactly in line with my county's grading policy's turnaround time.
Notice that this method does not involve grading on weekends (gasp!). Yes, it requires you to grade at least two papers on each of your planning periods and commit to doing it again right after your last class dismisses each day. And yes, your weekends will thank you for not saving thirty essays just for them :)
Tip #3: Develop a list of essay comment codes.
I know that I am constantly seeing similar errors on my students' work and making similar comments on paper after paper. As soon as I begin grading something, I will start to make a bank of my most common comments for that particular assignment. Essay feedback comment banks are one of the best grading time-savers! You can find a resource of essay feedback codes, or sometimes your assignments are very tailored that you’ll just naturally start creating your own comments. Maybe after grading about five papers, you can have enough to cover almost the spectrum of feedback comments you need for everybody else.
If you’re marking essays by hand, print out a copy of your comment sheet. Number each comment on your sheet and then write the number on your essay papers as a “code.” Pass out your hard copy of the comments sheet to the class so they can lookup what each "code" comment means for their essay.
If you’re doing your essay marking online, simply copy and paste the comments directly into the students paper--no code needed! After going virtual, this is now my favorite way to grade essays. I find that it's faster to copy and paste, easier for the students because they don't need to refer to an extra paper with a list of codes, and the revision process is less messy. Digitally, students fix their work. On paper, it's sometimes difficult for me to find where the revision is because so many things get scratched out and rewritten.
This is my favorite tip because the purpose of us investing the time in grading is to provide students with the avenue to be more successful next time, to learn what they are doing well and where they need to improve. Teacher feedback is an essential part of the grading process, and this tip helps you to streamline it!
The combination of a list of what to look for while grading and your feedback comments is going to help your focus and attention, and make you much more efficient.
Tip #4: Grade as your assignments come in. (Grade in chunks… sometimes.)
Many teachers prefer to wait until everyone has submitted their work and designate Saturday as their grading day, deciding “I’m going to not think about this assignment until that time.”
That can work very well with some assignments. But especially with lengthier assignments, such as essays and projects, when you go to actually evaluate the work, the work is so involved that you enter the zone of feedback fatigue quicker than you anticipate. What can then happen is you don’t get as far as you anticipated, and then after your first big span, you’re usually a little burned out and so each span thereafter gets a bit shorter, and shorter... this is when you know you're in the teacher burnout zone.
It is a good idea to have a designated day to handle a bulk of work. However, take advantage of the moment when you’re on a planning period and you’re maybe just running through emails... and all of a sudden, you see a notification: oh! A student just turned in an assignment.
Pop right into that assignment and immediately look at it. Resist the urge to close that window and go back to your email. Grade it right then and there. The more you get into this habit, the overall assignments you have to grade when you go to do your grading haul is going to be smaller. This can help prevent you from having that overwhelming burden of being in the weeds with your grading, and being so behind.
It’s typically more efficient to keep grading as things keep coming in. Sure, it’s not always possible, but when the opportunity is there, don’t even think about it! Just immediately take advantage of it.
Tip #5: Streamline your rubrics.
As an English teacher, I’ve tried to make a set amount of rubrics that I always go to with my assignments. Essentially, I usually have the same rubric to evaluate their analytical work. (it looks like this – link to image and purchase--this should be an internal link to another post) If they’re writing an essay, I have a rubric for each part of the essay I’m looking at.
What I like about this system is that every time I grade a new assignment, I’m not figuring out how to work within the confines of a new rubric--and your students aren’t, either. So, if I give my students seven different analytical assignments in the first quarter, I might be using the same exact rubric. Even if the assignments look different, if they’re working on the same skill, I’m going to use the same rubric.
Having familiarity with your rubric and using the same rubrics is not just good for you and speeding up your grading, it’s also beneficial for your students. Students like it when they know what your expectations are. And also, sometimes, they’re just really...forgetful? at looking at the rubric. So, if you keep using the same rubrics, you emphasize their importance, and they’re finally going to start paying attention to it a little bit more.
How to get students to LOOK at your feedback...
Ok, the moment you’ve been waiting for—you’ve been working so hard giving students all of this wonderful feedback, and a concern is ….well…wait. Students don’t look at my feedback!
My response is.....Make them look at your feedback! You’re the teacher! :)
Here's how to do this: Assign students reflections and self-assessments. Create a reflection where students have to go back to their essay and synthesize the teacher feedback that you gave them. So now, you’re drawing in metacognition, and they’re making connections to “ohhh—that’s why I’m not good at this part of the body paragraph,” without you explicitly sitting down and telling them.
More reflective assignments are going to promote students' ability to make those connections and better understand your future feedback, and it ensures (thank goodness) that yes, they did look at it. And furthermore, reflections are pretty easy to grade :)
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