Writing Week 2020 - Grading

Well it's not the most exciting topic, but it's an important one to talk about.... duhn, duhn, duhn - GRADING!

Grading all the awesome writing your students complete can be SO overwhelming!  I hope today's writing topic can help you feel a little better about grading personal narratives.

Grading for me has always been most beneficial when students are a part of the process.  I use data charts with my students so they can track their own knowledge on all kinds of subjects of learning in our classroom.  It helps them set their own goals as learners and to see what they need to improve upon.

There are many different ways to have students assess themselves as writers and rubrics are one of the easiest ways for them to self assess their writing.

Here are some of my kid friendly rubrics for you to use with personal narratives.

Using a personal rubric allows students to see immediately what they need to add and edit to their writing before they can publish it.

This self-reflection also helps students know what goals they can set to help them grow in their writing.  There are a lot of ways to set up a goals chart for writing.  If you do a search online you'll find so many different kinds that can meet your needs.  I personally love using post it notes for students to add their names to and move as needed.  Just remember that your goals for writing will change throughout the school year.  At the beginning of K you may want "Spaces Between Words" as a goal, but by the end of the year that might not be goal that you need to keep as an option for your students.

We also need to assess student writing, so I created these teacher rubrics for easy grading with personal narratives.  Click on the image to grab them.

If you want to create your own, click here for an editable version.

Another great tip for grading writing is to have other important people in your students' lives grade for you.  I have had it timed out that parent conferences have occurred around the time I plan to grade writing.  It is really helpful for parents to sit with you and get their feedback about the writing growth and the writing needs of their child.

You can also have a buddy class help grade and talk through the rubric with the student from your class the buddy student is assigned to.  Older elementary students LOVE to help the younger ones and this is a perfect activity to complete together.

Also, having students read their own writing out loud to their writing partner is an excellent method of self-assessment.  I often say, "You're the author of your own story.  If you can't read it, then other people can't read it."  This is important for students to make sure their writing is neat, but also that words aren't left out or that invented spelling is readable to the author. I often have students start the Writing and Conferences portion of Writer's Workshop by reading their story first to their writing partner(s). I even model, model, model why this is important during mini lessons.

Tomorrow is all about independent writing choices in centers/Daily 5!