About this time of year, I’m feeling as distressed as the paint on this picture. I’m tired. I’m really tired, I’m ready for my first “break”, and thank the gods that we now have the whole week of Thanksgiving off (even if I hate the furlough cut in my pay).

I’m going to make this short and sweet. As the sun starts to drop at 5 p.m., I’m all about nesting in my home, and vegging in front of some quality Netflix, and…I’m not in the mood to grade. The problem with this? I’ve eliminated multiple choice tests (which you can grade while watching tv or listening to a podcast) and give weekly paragraph assessments (3-4 per week). The thing is, if I assign it, I really need to be willing to grade it. My co-worker and I were discussing this, and lamenting this as the downside of more “authentic” assessment in general, and Common Core (as we’re implementing it) in particular.

I have some ideas about how I”m going to handle things to get out of the grading of writing being a weekly grind, but I’ve always seen this as a central problem to this change in assessment. Writing is a labor intensive endeavor, and I’m dubious that that any attempts at automation will just result in students becoming good at writing essays that only an algorithm will want to read. What am I going to do between Thanksgiving and Winter Break to lighten my load?

• Have students work on their research projects, which they are doing on a wiki. I get MacBooks on our weekly assessment day, so this is a sensible replacement.
• Have them do assignments that take more time for to produce than for me to grade. I’ll throw in some assessments that can be posters, comics, plays, etc. I’ve done this before, and it’s a nice change of pace for all of us.

On a longer-term basis, following the holidays…

• I need to get back into the writers workshop system, where they are editing each others work before I see it. It will take a while to set up, but should be worth it.
• Have the kids do blogging and peer-commenting as feed-back. I did this one week on the wiki, and need to do it more.

Image credit: number 11 by jontintinjordan, on Flickr