Grading/Correcting/editing writing assignments

[KrissiK]

Those of you with large-ish families, children who aren't inclined to work independently, and basically you seem to spend your whole day "doing school".... how do you find the time to work out the mechanics of writing? I can grade spelling tests, grammar tests, math tests, etc. pretty easily. But when it comes to putting out the mental energy to grade an essay... Even a paragraph, I really struggle. And I'm finding that I am a big fail in the area of writing. Content-wise, my kids do well. They are read to enough that their sentence structure is pretty good, and they seem to be able to express themselves with out too much trouble, but none of them, for the life of them, have decent handwriting, punctuation, spelling, paragraphs, etc. And that makes grading things even harder because I have to decipher it, first. And so.... as I was talking today with the principal of the parochial school we are putting oldest DS into for 7th grade and she told me that she talked to the teacher who gave him the placement exam, and he will be coming into 7th grade weak in Math and Language Arts.... I just felt awful. I know part of it was because he was very nervous (he does pretty well in math, but he said he forgot everything he knew), but I also know it's because I just can't hold them accountable in their writing like I need to.

Any advice?

[basketcase]

First, don't stress! I'm sure a lot of what's going on is the newness of that kind of testing situation, and you'll have the chance to help your 7th grader through the transition. It's not like your time teaching him is done - you'll be helping him succeed in his new school.

 

I think you shouldn't be doing all the grading and editing yourself. Among other things, kids can easily grade their own spelling tests (or their siblings'). Adding in something like Daily Paragraph Editing or Editor in Chief will encourage those proofreading skills without taking time away from you. (D. Par. Editing has a full-sized page marking every error the kids should have caught, so again, it's easy for them to check their own papers.)

 

If you find grading writing overwhelming, you could gradually add in the things you'll be checking for. The first week or two of the new program, you could make sure the kids understand capitalization (or just capitalizing proper names or whatever) and that would be the only thing you checked for in their writing. Checking for just the one thing wouldn't take more time than checking a spelling test. Then you'd gradually add things in over the year, including larger items like paragraph structure.

 

Even proofreading a writing assignment can be outsourced to the kids somewhat. You could sit down and have a round-robin approach of everyone passing a paper to someone to edit, then continuing until they got back to the original author. You'd be a part of the circle, so the kids would be learning editing skills AND you'd have an established time to edit their work yourself.

 

There's no reason you couldn't seek outside help for this. A grandparent or tutor could help from a distance pretty easily. And a spouse could sit down with you once a week in the evening and crank through some writing assignments.

 

Publishing gives an opportunity for kids to perfect their work, so planning to put some writing on display or making a book or sending work to family members would encourage you and the kids to edit more.

 

You've got this!

 

ETA: You shouldn't be deciphering bad handwriting. Kick those papers back until it's legible or have them type the assignments. For us, cursive was our savior. It gave my oldest a fresh start on his handwriting. His print is still illegible, but his cursive is beautiful when I tell him it needs to be. He can skip a handwriting assignment if his other work is done with nice handwriting, so he feels like he's getting away with doing less work. It's kind of awesome.

[KrissiK]

Thank you for the advice. You have given me some good ideas. And since I will only have two who are doing "real writing" it should be easier. You are right about the handwriting, though, unfortunately with all the battles I have with my kids (esp. My oldest) over school work, it has become a battle I chose to not fight and I am paying for it. They are going to work in cursive over the summer, though.

[ereks mom]

I developed a rubric for essay grading, and I use it as a checklist to look for particular elements--including handwriting, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc.) each time I grade an essay.  I prefer grading assignments objectively, and essay grading was always so subjective that I felt like I wasn't able to be consistent.  I'd be happy to share my rubric with you.  PM me your email address if you'd like to see it.