346: Highly Recommended: The Extensive Research to Support English Teachers Grading Less | The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

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Episode description

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Episode description

In today’s short episode of “Highly Recommended”, I want to recommend an article I read at Edutopia this week, because it’s chock-full of the research you need to support conversations at your school about grading less. Changing the culture of grading in our ELA classrooms won’t just benefit teachers, it benefits students too. So today I want to share two highlights from the article, “Why Teachers Should Grade Less Frequently,” by Stephen Merrill and Youki Terada, and then give you the link in the show notes so you can go read it and send it to everyone in your department. Seriously.

Terada and Merrill share the research around nine reasons that grading less benefits both educators and educatees (students). This is not a both-sides-of-the-story type of article. It is VERY clear about its argument. Less grading for the right reasons is the way to go. Hopefully, if you’ve been around here for long, that sounds like a familiar story.

One of my favorite points in the article is #3, “Grading Obligations reduce teacher creativity and innovation.” According to the research, most teachers are splitting their time between grading and lesson planning, devoting about the same amount of time to each. As a result, and I imagine you’ve experienced this at some point or another, many folks are unable to give the necessary time to the reflection and discovery that would let them unlock their most creative classroom ideas.

Another key idea comes in #6: “Grading reduces opportunities for student practice.” According to the research, repeated practice counts for a lot when it comes to improving writing, and prioritizing feedback over reps isn’t the answer. If teachers feel they must grade everything students do, students won’t have as many opportunities to build the pathways that lead to better writing.

The big components of this article are ones our teaching community has been talking about for a long time. But what I love about this article is how it boils the ideas down into a three minute read with clear evidence and research links to back up what English teachers have learned through experience. That means you can point to the evidence online as well as the evidence in your classroom when you take these ideas to your colleagues, and explain your methods to parents who think papers are meant to be coated in red ink before they’re returned. Remember, I’m dropping this link in the show notes right now, so be sure to click over and read this great article from Stephen Merrill and Youki Terada!

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