A part of my transition from classroom teacher to specials teacher I wasn’t expecting as the grading! In a lot of ways I am finding that being a specials teachers takes away a lot of the pressures of teaching. I am not expected to test their reading level monthly or track their math fact progress. This quarter I have been loving having flexibility to create my own curriculum.

I assigned each grade level I teach (2nd-7th) one big project this quarter. I spent a lot of time planning and prepping. I created examples and rubrics for each grade. The past 3 weeks have been filled with project work time in all of my classes. It sounded great until I realized that I would have all grade levels turning in their projects within the same 2 weeks! AHHHHHHH!

So it’s the end of quarter 1 and I find myself grading over 400 student projects. I refuse to give out participation and effort grades only. I believe students should receive feedback and know that the work we do matters. I like to reward hard-workers and help guide those who may need more practice on certain skills learned.

I am hoping to plan out quarter 2 better so that I don’t end up with so much time consuming grading again!

I will be spending the next week grading, grading, grading! Is it fall break yet?

Moving forward , I will make sure to plan out my units differently so that not all grade levels have projects due around the same time. Perhaps I shall consider younger grades having projects due the first half of the quarter and older graders having a later due date. This would ensure that I won’t have everything all at once to grade!