Teaching Timesavers: Time is MONEY
Time.
Time is actually the ultimate indicator of wealth, not dollars. The more time we have, the more we can do the things we love and the more experiences we can have. One of the great perks of having a job in public education is having summers off if you so choose. However, many teachers are so busy doing all the things they can't get done during the school year, that it often doesn't feel like time off. Teaching is a job in which one performs for 6 hours a day. The prep and review of said performance is done outside of paid hours. During those six hours with our students, we must be interesting at all times, we must be professional in the face of sometimes outrageous obstacles, and we must be kind. All of those things are important, but the most important part of the show is the learning. The students must be learning.
The time you spend teaching and grading does not equal better teaching! If you are feeling overwhelmed with workload, you need to figure out how to be more efficient with your time!
The hours add up very quickly. You have the prep (lesson planning), the performance (classroom teaching), the review (grading). If you are not careful with your time this could add up to well over 40 hours a week!
I don't know about you, but I don't get paid overtime for all those hours and time is money!
Imagine if you could have that lost time back...
What would you do? Start a business? Work out regularly? Learn to cook? Learn to play the accordion? The point is: the more time we have the more balance we have. We need to learn to live like it's summer after the school day is done.
I used to spend an extra 20 hours a week grading, planning, and responding to student and parent emails. Now I rarely spend more than one extra hour a day. I feel that I am much more balanced now and a better teacher.
Hopefully, some of these time saving tips will help you get your balance back!
Email:
This one is easy and you can start doing this right away.
Check your email once a day.
I prefer to do this at the end of the school day. It helps me transition from work mode to home mode (this is especially important for Distance Learning where the lines between work-life and home-life can become blurred). Once a day and that's it! I find that if I keep checking email throughout the day, it becomes a time-suck and I am sending more emails and going back and forth on things. We are teaching. No one expects us to email back immediately.
I also never check work email over the weekend. Never ever.
And guess what? Since I have started doing that, I have really started to enjoy my weekends! No one has ever gotten upset with me for not getting back to them until Monday morning. Nothing negative has happened. This has given me my weekends back. If something is an emergency, my admin or co workers will text me.
Plan Out the Entire Grading Period Ahead of Time:
This may seem counter-intuitive, put planning out the entire grading period in advance saves hours of time in the long run and makes you a better teacher. Share this plan with your students! It helps students to see what is coming up and to know what is expected of them.
Backwards planning, or knowing how you are going to assess your students BEFORE you plan and execute your lessons helps you and your students see the big picture.
When I plan out a unit, I plan everything. Every single assignment, due date, lesson, etc...
The first time you do it, will take a few hours. The magic happens you are teaching the same class next year, and the plan and all the lessons are already done and all in one place! You can review it, discard the lessons that didn't work and add new ideas to existing lessons very quickly.
Of course, the plan has to be loose with some cushion for things like District Testing and fire drills or Johnny throwing up on his desk in the middle of class.
I like to include extra Workshop Days to accommodate for unexpected things.
Incorporating "Workshop Time" Into Class Time:
Workshop time is magic! Once you start incorporating it into your class time, you will wonder how you ever survived without it. If you do it correctly, it can be a time saver and provide extremely valuable learning experiences for your students.
I teach English, so my Workshop Time usually revolves around writing, but you can use it for any type of project.
In my class, we are doing Mastery Grading, so the students are working on different projects at different times, so Workshop Time is open. In my class, Workshop Time is in-class time for students to work on upcoming assignments. Workshop Time enables you to work one on one with your students and get grading done DURING class time! Workshop Time has saved me hours and hours of after hours grading and tutoring time. Students love it, because they can work at their own pace, work ahead, and get help IF they need it. It saves them precious time, too!
A typical Workshop Day in my current Virtual Class looks like this:
- Students work individually on their projects, etc...
- If they have questions, they just unmute themselves and ask, or ask in the chat. This is great because they are getting real time feedback on their work as they do it. Also, many times many students may have the same question, so you answer once and they all hear it or see it, saving time.
- As the students work, I grade. As I grade, I post in the chat things like this:
- Great job, Saira! I just graded your essay rewrite and it brought your overall grade up 3% (the goal is for other students to see this and be motivated to rewrite their papers as well).
- Students, remember you need four direct quotes in your essays.
- I love how much work you guys are turning in!
- Peter, check your email and get back to me ASAP.
- I just finished graded the District Writing Assessment-check your grade in the portal.
- I always grade the class that is workshopping first, so they get the real time feedback. For instance, if I am in period 4, I grade everything outstanding in period 4 before moving onto period 5.
- Note: if you are in a co-teaching situation-this even gets better! My co-teacher and I are on top of grading, and one of us can do private or small group meets if necessary or use the time to make parent contact, etc...
- Students must stay in the Meet or Zoom for the entire class, unless they have an A, then they are free to go if they like (in the classroom, they would be free to work on an assignment for another class or read a book if they have an A).
- In a hybrid or regular class, this would look the same, but students would have the option of talking to you in person, or even better--asking a peer for help, which saves you even more time!
- I schedule at least 6 full class days a quarter for workshop time. With Mastery Grading, I do it the last three weeks of the quarter, with traditional grading it works best before big projects are due.
- Day one--Thesis (5 points--each day it is late, take off one point. Check it and give the points, right when they come up to your desk. Immediate response.)
- Day two--Outline with main points and quotes being used (5pts)
- Day three--1st page (5pts)
- Day four--2nd page (5pts)
- Day five--3rd page and Works Cited (5pts)
Putting All Grades for the Quarter In with Zeros:
The following is controversial but a powerful motivating and time saving tool! I put in all the assignments BEFORE they are due AND I put the zeros in!
I do this right after the first progress report. I do this so students can see what their grade is if they decide to stop working. So they can see what their LOWEST grade will be. This is highly motivating for students. They like to know that their grades can only go up! This is part of Mastery Grading, but could work with traditional grading as well.
Pros of Putting in the Zeros:
- This gives the teacher a better snap shot of which students need the most guidance. Their grades can only go up! I tend to give the most guidance to students who are failing or close to the next grade. High achieving students can work ahead and even pick and choose which assignments to complete. Not everyone completes all of the assignments, which means LESS GRADING!
- It motivates students to redo or turn in more assignments because their grades can only go up!
- This system allows for "trickle in" grading, which is a huge time saver! If I get 3 essays a day, instead of 200 at once, it is much easier for me to keep on top of them. Turnaround time is much faster!
- Student confusion: it's new, so students were a bit confused the first quarter. I found myself explaining why I put the zeros in quite a bit.
- Parent confusion: at first, you may get a few concerned parent emails, but I found that parents actually preferred this grading system once explained to them.
- Grades are scarily low in the middle of the quarter. But fear not! As I write this, we are mid quarter. About half (41) of my English students are failing--but their grades can only go up over the next couple of weeks. At the end of the last semester, I had only had 5 students fail, total. Workshop Time and putting the zeros in motivated a lot of students that may normally fail.
Trickle In Grading:
Trickle Down Economics does not work, but Trickle In Grading does!
As an English teacher, grading has always been my biggest time suck.
I have gotten rid of hard due dates. Students can turn in assignments at different times. I usually get 5-10 assignments a day to grade. Every once in a while, I may have 20 assignments. These amounts are more manageable than 180 papers at at once!
I usually get caught up in grading DURING the school day. This frees up time for me to do other things, like write this blog.
Because I put the zeros in ahead of time, I don't really have an issue with students waiting until the very end to turn in work. They will do anything to get those zeros off of the grade book. This also freed up time for me to "go after and motivate" my failing students to turn in work to pass at the end.
No Comments on Papers
I used to spend 30 extra hours grading every time I collected a batch of papers. Now I rarely spend more than one hour a day outside of class time.
Writing comments on papers is a time-suck.
Instead, read the paper and write the notes in a little paragraph on the bottom.
I like to use the Sandwich Method:
- Say something positive
- Give criticism
- End with a positive
Oral Quizzes:
I cannot sing the praises of an oral quiz enough! Oral quizzes are probably the biggest time savers of all. An oral quiz is when you simply call on students to answer questions instead of collecting more paperwork to grade later.
I like to use oral quizzes to check if students have done their reading homework. I don't have time to call on all of the students during one class period so I like to break it up into sections. Here's how I do it:
Oral Quiz for The Great Gatsby (I break this into four sessions--so each session covers a quarter of the book).
- Make an index card for each student with their name on it.
- Call on students to answer questions about the reading. Keep it light. This is the time for recall type questions, not thematic questions. I like to ask questions that make the students prove they did the reading, such as "Describe the scene in the pool after Gatsby's Death." Or "What were some things Myer Wolfsheim talked about in the speakeasy?"
- If the student gets a question right they get a point. If they get a question wrong, they get a zero (it's important to put the zeroes, so you know how many times you have called on each student--try to keep this equal as possible between students)
- After the last session, I add up the points and divide by the number of times each student was called on. If they get a 70% or higher they pass and I give them full points on the quiz. If they get less than 70% I offer a harder make up quiz they can redo during office hours later if they wish. It's much faster than grading a short answer quiz, it is more in depth than a multiple choice quiz, and the students get a good review from listening to the other student's answers.
Oral quizzes, oral presentations, and anything oral saves you grading time.
Practice:
Hopefully, you feel inspired to use some of these strategies in your own classroom!
Identify your biggest time-suck, then try to think of something you can do to fix it. There is ALWAYS something you can do, you just need to think outside the box!
Start off by changing one assignment. Pick one of the above strategies, or come up with your own and see how much time it saves you. I would love to hear about it in the comments!
