Mark Summer Camp Feedback Template Made Easy

Mark summer camp feedback template

yes it's summer yes I'm on my patio and yes we're talking about gray hi everyone I know it's summer it's really the last thing you want to think about but I've been getting a lot of questions about grading and I thought I would just share my story about how I deal with papers and a system that helps me have free time the free time to build the blog and make videos and help all my teacher friends out so I'm in year 19 of teaching and I'd say about ten years ago I reached my breaking point I was just I was using every night lots of hours on the weekends to keep up with a stack of papers that just always seemed to get bigger and bigger and I couldn't keep pace I knew that I couldn't continue in teaching the way I was and I had to do something to make life more bearable and that's when I came up with some systems and some strategies that have really helped me in the last decade reclaim my life and I want to share those with you I've decided to do a four part series I'm going to call it grading hacks and each episode will have different themes the theme for today's episode is slash the stack call it down because it really can grow so high that it'll topple you over and bury you forever so I have six tips today to help you slash the stack and there will be more tips coming in the next three episodes probably once a week or so as we lead up into the school year I think it's important to do it now so that you have a strategy in place before school begins if you wait to deal with this until school starts you'll be overwhelmed and you won't make those decisions so here we go six tips to help you manage the paper load okay first up do not grade everything there is no line in my future contract that says I have to grade every single piece of paper that little Johnny rice on in fact I pick and choose what I'm going to do but that doesn't mean that Johnny can't benefit from writing a lot and creating work for me but the type of work that I'm going to give feedback on I'm more judicious in what I respond to and here's some examples so for let's say they're doing a reading a chapter and they're doing short answers and then we're going to talk about the short answers in class the next day well when they turn those in and we have a discussion that's great but when they turn them in I only grade like two or three if there were ten in the stack or if I'm getting a short answer quiz maybe an open book quiz that sort of thing and there's four questions I only grade two of them now the kids don't know ahead of time which ones I'm going to grade obviously and I just sell it like it's a game hey you better do a good job at all four cuz you don't know which two I'm going to do and once I explain to the kids that I don't have time to have you know I've got five classes thirty four kids that's 170 kids that you would have to grade papers for who's got time for that so call it down pick a few grade those and move on so that's my first tip don't do every don't grade everything there's just no way you can along that line the second tip is to have them write more than you grade even on major works so I used something called crazy s a week where they write three essays we choose one we refine it and that's the one I grade and this is really great for standardized test prep a lot of my juniors are worried about the SAT in California they also have the EAP the early assessment program to see if they were college ready so they could get it together before senior year and get those skills that they were missing any and so those are essay based there's essays on there and the only way to get better at writing is to write a lot and get feedback so I would give them a prompt on Monday like say on Monday they're writing about like unhealthy competition amongst peers and they have one class period to write that essay and I take it on Tuesday I give them another prompt maybe they're writing about helicopter parents and whether they're helping or hurting kids so they spend the forty-five minutes writing that and turn it in on the third day on Wednesday I give them something about maybe legislation to prohibit celebrity endorsements of products you know pro or con and they write that essay and turned in then on the fourth day on Thursday I have those three that they've written I've held on to them and I do a lottery I pull topic one two or three out of a bag and that's the one they're giving back they revise it they polish it they make it as perfect as it can be in that class period and that's the one that I grade so they've written three times as much sometimes four times as much as I'm going to grade and give them really rich feedback on that but they're getting more practice I sort of equate it to being like a football coach or an athletic trainer you got a workout get ready for the big game and so those practice pieces are the workouts the weight training little cardio session and the big game is the Thursday paper oh there's a dog ah you're about to meet a fluffa do okay ah all right so she walked over there okay come here right come here come here okay this is hi Internet okay hack number three when you give reading assignments as homework you want to make sure the kids had actually done the reading so that they can participate in class not just smile and nod and pretend like they've done the reading while two smart kids actually answer your questions so a way to make this happen is to give a reading quiz to hold their feet to the fire but you don't want to spend all weekend grading reading quizzes you got better things to do so instead try the one question quiz err basically that's all it is it's a five point quiz I call it a quiz err so doesn't seem as like scary and it's one question from last night's reading and I generally focus on something that they can't find on sparknotes summaries because that's where they're going to go and instead it focuses on something funny or something gross or just something really memorable from that light last night's reading so for example if we're reading Huckleberry Finn and it's the chapter where he is making up a fake name and he misspelled a kid another kid asks him what's his name he says George Jackson and he misspells Jackson but it's a funny little moment haha and then that might be something that I asked them about or if it is about Great Gatsby and I'll say what did Nick wipe off the photographer's face at the end of the party then he'll say shaving cream because several times in the passage it's mentioned that the shaving cream is bothering Nick so if something's mentioned two or three times then it's sort of fair game for me if the questions are too hard and nobody got it right then throw that quiz out and just be like okay well I'll love recalibrate and we'll get it right next time so it's a little bit of a practice to get but once you get it down oh those quizzes are they great so fast in fact less than three minutes I can get thirty four quizzes graded and entered into the gradebook you just enter the assignment filled out and then the few kids who missed it you mark them down and you are ready to go the scoring is easy if you get their answer right five points if you get the answer wrong it is zero points if you tried a phony baloney and answer it's zero points but if you're honest and you just say I don't know or I didn't read I give you one out of five points to reward you for your honesty so give it a go that's hack number three the one question quiz err it's almost like a game show in my class and the kids actually kind of like it because they're like yeah I got it right and they're a little proud of themselves I'm like you should be you should just read the homework but whatever works for you on hack number four um instead of one of your essay rounds when you finish a novel you could host a writing contest instead and over the years I've done a theme like survivor Island or I've done a Hunger Games writing contest where we take I divide the class let's say I have I got to do the math here I don't know what's 12 times let's say I've got 36 kids in the class just to make the math right and then I've got 12 topics so I put three kids are writing a paragraph on one of 12 topics so I'll have 12 groups of three they're competing against each other in round one so let's say we're analyzing symbolism I pick 12 symbols and then those are the 12 competitor rounds and then we do a read around round-robin where kids read silently and score them I have a rubric for all that and then we add up who won and then the 12 winners of each of those topics go up against each other for round two the next day in class and so I teach the kids how to evaluate the writing we have rubrics there's a lot more details about that down in the description but you could run a writing contest any way you want the kids get really rich feedback the winners get extra credit and I get one round off of grading essays we do four major essays a year in my department and I do more than that but can't do that much more than that so this is a way the writing contest to have a rich writing experience have the kids get meaningful feedback and have a little fun with it also so grading hack writing contest can get you a lot of gain with not as much effort on your part all right number five we're on rethink your assessments and what I mean by that is are you giving the assignment to assess the skills you want or are you creating extra work for yourself so when we do speeches in my class I don't grade manuscripts I'm not grading for grammar then because it's about public speaking are the standards that I'm evaluating and what's on the rubric if we're doing book reports I'm actually assessing their reading not their writing so I actually don't do book reports at all I just talk to kids about their books and we just have a conversation almost like two friends sitting down at a coffee shop to chat about what they like I have a whole bunch of free SSR materials sustained silent reading it's how I run my free choice or independent reading program I'll put the link down there for you guys there as well but the last thing I want to do is grade book reports at the end of the nine weeks I would much rather have conversations with my kids about books all throughout the quarter leading up to it so hopefully you'll give that a shot it definitely lightens my grading load because at the end of the quarter I just go through I do a little bit of calculator math and I just put those grades in and I go off submit grades and I'm good to go and then our last hack if you will for this round up for this episode you know sometimes you guys I'm gonna take some piece of this but it's okay to just throw some completion points on a stack of papers and move on with your life I'm sure you've had this experience like I do regularly where there will be that one stack of papers they've been sitting in my wire basket staring at me for like three weeks usually I get everything back within a couple of days but since I say that one stinking stack of papers you know what if it's been hanging around my desk for like the third week forget it it's not going to get graded I got more stuff coming in I throw 5 out of 5 on every paper throw it into the grade book and move on with my life again no one ever said you have to create every single piece of paper that they write on and nor should you you've got other things to do with your time all right there are six hacks to help you through more are coming next week in episode two stay tuned for that you guys what are you doing thinking about grading it's summer vacation let's go relax a little bit all right I'll see you next time I'm making a video do you want to be on my video for youtube it's I'm a teacher and I talk to other teachers on YouTube do you want to say hi to the whole Internet sure hey dishes rock my sister's in English casual she's actually at a Meridian middle oh my god schoolteachers they're like the hardest working people well English teachers they work hard I know how hard it is for a living and then you pay you guys more sign me up alright I'll be right back [Applause] [Music]