Sunday, April 09, 2006

a teacher's spring break...

i have 42 essays to grade over break. before i can grade said essays, i have to make a rubric for them. the english department at anonymous high doesn't believe in grading rubrics. bumbling department chair doesn't make a mark on students' essays...just a grade at the end. the students have figured out that he reads the introduction and conclusion and skims the rest. i talked to a couple students who did an experiment. they wrote an amazing beginning and end to their essays. they then wrote some serious paragraphs and sentences in the body and some random sentences having nothing to do with anything. both recieved a's. i made copies of said essays as dirt in case i ever need it. is that conniving? do i care? the rodent grades by the student...what i mean is, if she likes the student, the student does well. if she doesn't, well, that student had better find a different teacher really quickly. the head fem nazi beast *i'm all about women's lib; however, there becomes a point where some women take it too far. it's the man-hating i can't stand* does something similar, but instead of just looking at who the student is, she bases some of her grade on whether or not the student agrees with her views...she's also partial to estrogen. if you're full of testosterone, then don't plan to pass her class.
like with nearly everything i do, i'm anal about how i grade my essays. i don't want any parent to come back and bite me in the behind. so, i use a rubric. and i use a different rubric for each assignment. obviously i'm looking for different things in different assignments, and i let students know what i want on the prompt. i always try to make sure my prompt and my rubric match up. i sometimes even give assignments and rubrics to students in other classes to see if they think it makes sense.
anyways, i'm rambling...so, plans for spring break:
  • make rubric for persuasive essays.
  • grade persuasive essays.
  • look over term paper outlines.
  • score and enter vocab quizzes in book.
  • clean out remainder of grading from my bag.
  • work out on a daily basis.
  • find some time to be a lazy bum on the couch.
  • apartment shopping.
there's probably more, and i'll think of it eventually. i'm sure there will be a lot of blogging going on over here this week.

3 comments:

M said...

I'd be interested to know from a high school perspective: do you tell the students about the rubric and all the points that you'll be grading them on?

I hate it how during the holidays you always have to do all this extra work! ughh

Ms. H said...

There you go again...being a maverick -- wanting to have a standard grading scale!! That's CRAZINESS!! teeheehee.

Enjoy the week o' breaking spring. I'm jealous!

the anonymous teacher said...

i usually give my students the rubric when i hand out the assignment. then they can't say they didn't know. with this one i detailed in the prompt what i wanted, but i didn't have the rubric created yet.
and, seriously, heaven forbid we have consistency. we don't even have benchmarks we need to follow, so i think i'm asking too much with having a standard writing rubric.