how long does it take teachers to grade essays

How to Grade Essays Faster | My Top 10 Grading Tips and Tricks

Are you looking for ways to grade essays faster? I get it. Grading essays can be a daunting task for ELA teachers. Following these essay grading tips and tricks can save you time and energy on grading without giving up quality feedback to your students.

Are you Googling “How to Grade Essays Faster” because that never-ending pile of essays is starting to haunt you? (Yup. I’ve been there.) Teachers of all disciplines understand the work-life struggle of the profession. Throw in 60, 80, 100, or more essays, and you’re likely giving up evenings and weekends until that pile is gone.

Truthfully, while there are many aspects of being an ELA teacher I love , grading essays doesn’t quite make the list. However, it’s a necessary aspect of the ELA classroom to hold students accountable and help them improve. But what if I told you there were some tips and tricks you could use to make grading much easier and faster? Because there are. That means saying goodbye to spending your weekends lost in a sea of student essays. It means no more living at school the weeks following students turning in an essay. Instead, prepare to celebrate getting your time (and sanity) back.

Start By Reframing Your Definition of Grading an Essay

Before you can implement my time-saving grading tips and tricks, you need to be willing to shift your mindset regarding grading. Afterall, where does it say we have to give up hours upon hours of our time to get it done? It’s time to start redefining and reframing what it even means to grade an essay.

The key to reframing your definition (and, therefore, expectations) about grading student essays is thinking about helping your students, not correcting them. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with pointing out grammatical and structural errors. However, it’s essential to focus on leaving constructive feedback that can help students improve their craft. Now, how can that be done without spending hours filling the margins with comments?

I’m glad you asked.

Grade Essays Faster with These Tips and Tricks

Since we can’t avoid grading altogether, I hope these tips and tricks can help you grade essays faster and increase student performance. And while I love rubrics, and they can certainly save time grading, they aren’t your only option. So here are eight other tips and tricks to try.

Tip 1: Get Focused.

This has been one of my biggest grading time-savers. And I’m not just talking about limiting your distractions while you grade (more on that in a minute), but I mean narrow your focus on what it is you’re grading. Often, we spend so much time correcting every single grammatical mistake that we miss opportunities to give feedback on the skills we’re currently teaching. Try to focus your feedback on the specific skills your students just learned, like writing a strong thesis, embedding quotations, providing supporting evidence, or transitioning from paragraph to paragraph.

Taking this approach to grading will lead to less overwhelm for both you and your students. In fact, your students will have a clearer understanding of what they need to continue working on. Just be sure to make the specific skill (or skills) that you’re looking for (and grading) clear at the start of the assignment.

Tip 2: Give Student Choice.

Let’s say you’ve been working on a particular skill for a few weeks and have had your students practice using various writing prompts. Instead of feeling forced to provide feedback on every written response, let your students choose their best work for you to grade. I find that this grading technique works best on shorter assignments.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t apply this to longer essays. If you’ve been working on a certain aspect of essay writing, you can let your students pick the paragraph from their essay they want you to grade. Either way, encourage your students to select the writing they believe best represents their skills and knowledge for the task at hand. Not only will this cut down on your grading time, but it will also encourage a sense of ownership over students’ grades.

Tip 3: Check Mark Revisions.

The checkmark revision approach is a great way to put more ownership and accountability on your students. Instead of grading a student essay by telling them exactly what to fix, turn it into a learning opportunity! As you review the student essay, simply use check marks to note areas that need to be corrected or could be improved. Then, give students time in class to work through their essays, identifying what the check mark indicates and making proper adjustments.

However, make sure your students have a clear list (or rubric) outlining the expectations for the essay. They can use this list to refer to when trying to figure out what revisions they need to make to improve their work. Alternatively, if you’re not ready to jump straight to checkmarks, you can create a comment code that provides a bit more guidance for students without taking up a lot of your time.

Tip 4: Use Conferences.

Have you ever thought about holding student-teacher conferences in lieu of providing written feedback? If not, you totally should! Students are so used to teachers doing the heavy lifting for them. Alternatively, turn the revision process into an active experience for them. Instead of going through the essay on your own, marking errors, and making suggestions, talk it through with each student.

When it comes to student-teacher conferences, make sure to set a reasonable time limit for each conference to ensure you’re not spending days conducting these meetings. Just make sure your time limit is enough to review their written work and provide verbal feedback. I require each student to mark their essay as we review it so they know exactly what to work on. While I’m more than willing to answer questions, I encourage students to make an appointment with me after school if they need extensive help.

Tip 5: Skim and Review

I can’t be the only one who wants to shed a tear of frustration when I watch a student toss a comment-covered essay right into recycling. So, instead of spending hours leaving comments on each and every student’s essay, skim through their rough drafts while noting common errors. That way, instead of waiting until students turn in their final draft to address their mistakes, you can review common errors in class before they submit a final draft. Trust me. This will make grading those final drafts much easier– especially if you have a clear rubric or grading checklist to follow.

This is a great way to review common grammar mistakes that we don’t always take time to teach at the secondary level. It’s also a great way for you to address aspects of your target skills that students are still struggling with. Lastly, I find this shift in focus from the final product to the revision process helps students better understand (and, perhaps, appreciate) the writing process as more than a grade but a learning experience.

Tip 6: Leave a Comment at the End.

This is a huge time-saver, and it’s pretty simple. Although be warned, it might challenge you to go against all of your grading instincts! We’re so used to marking every single error or making all the suggestions with student essays. But, students are often overwhelmed by the mere look of ink-filled margins. What if, instead, you save your comments for the end and limit yourself to one or two celebrations and one or two areas for improvement? This is a simple yet clear way to provide feedback to your students on a final draft, especially if you’ve already gone through a more in-depth revision process from draft to draft.

Okay fine. If you must, you can fix the grammatical errors using a red pen, but save your energy by avoiding writing the same thing over and over again. If you’ve marked the same error three times, let that be it. If they don’t get it after three examples, they should probably make time to see you after school.

Tip 7: Grade Paragraph-by-Paragraph.

Instead of feeling overwhelmed by grading a tall stack of essays, consider breaking your grading– and writing– process down by paragraph. Assessing a single paragraph is far more time-friendly than an entire essay. So, have your students work on their essay paragraph by paragraph, turning each component in as they are completed. That way, you can provide quick and effective feedback they can apply when revising that paragraph and writing any future paragraphs for the final piece. Take it a step further by breaking it down into specific skills and components of an essay. For example, maybe you grade students’ thesis statements and supporting evidence as two separate steps. Grading each of these components takes far less time and, by the time students put it all together for their final essay, their writing should be much more polished and easier to grade. Plus, since you gave immediate feedback throughout the process, you don’t have to worry about spending hours writing comments throughout their entire paper. Instead, give the students a “final” grade using a simple rubric. And since you gave them opportunities to apply your feedback throughout the writing process, you can even have an “improvement” section of the rubric. This is an easy way to acknowledge student effort and progress with their writing.

Tip 8: Mark-up a Model Paragraph.

Take some of the work off your plate by grading a paragraph and letting the students do the rest. (You read that right.) Here’s how it works: instead of grading an entire paper, rewriting the same comments paragraph after paragraph, just mark up a model paragraph. Alternatively, you can grade the intro and conclusion paragraphs, while marking up one body paragraph as a model for the remaining body paragraphs. Give them a score on a smaller scale, such as 1 to 10, as a phase one grade.

Then, set aside time in class to have your students review your model paragraph and use it to mark up the rest of their paper before fixing their errors. I like giving them time in class to do this so they can ask me any clarifying questions in real-time. Once they turn in their revised essay, you can give them a phase two grade without having to worry about diving too deep into feedback. A comment per paragraph or page would suffice.

More Teacher Tricks to Help You Grade Essays Faster

T ip 9: set realistic goals..

Just like we set our students up for success, set yourself up for success too. If you know you can’t get through a class worth of essays during your prep period, don’t set it as your goal. You’ll only feel overwhelmed, disappointed, and discouraged when you only make it through half of your stack. Instead, only tackle your grading when you have the time to do so, and set realistic goals when you do. Grading more essays than you planned on? You feel on top of the world. Grading fewer? You feel like it’s neverending.

Tip 10: Avoid Distractions.

Instagram? Facebook? I know how easy it is to wander over to your phone and take a scroll break. But, we both know a few minutes can turn into an hour real fast. So, do yourself a favor, and when you know it’s time to grade a stack of essays, free your space of any distractions and set a timer. You’d be surprised by how much you can get done in an hour of uninterrupted essay grading.

The bottom line is that grading is an unavoidable aspect of being an ELA teacher. However, I hope one or more of these ideas can help you grade essays faster. The truth is, with these essay grading tips and tricks, you won’t only grade essays more efficiently, but you’ll provide better feedback for students as well. In fact, the longer we take to grade (or procrastinate grading) those essays, the less effective the feedback is for students, period.

So, here’s to more effective grading– faster!

Grading Essays

Grade for Learning Objectives Response to Writing Errors Commenting on Student Papers Plagiarism and Grading

Information about grading student writing also appears in the Grading Student Work section of the Teaching Guide. Here are some general guidelines to keep in mind when grading student writing.

Grade for Learning Objectives

Know what the objective of the assignment is and grade according to a standard (a rubric) that assesses precisely that. If the purpose of the assignment is to analyze a process, focus on the analysis in the essay. If the paper is unreadable, however, consult with the professor and other GSIs about how to proceed. It may be wise to have a shared policy about the level of readiness or comprehensibility expected and what is unacceptable.

Response to Writing Errors

The research is clear: do not even attempt to mark every error in students’ papers. There are several reasons for this. Teachers do not agree about what constitutes an error (so there is an unavoidable element of subjectivity); students do not learn when confronted by too many markings; and exhaustive marking takes way too much of the instructor’s time. Resist the urge to edit or proofread your students’ papers for superficial errors. At most, mark errors on one page or errors of only two or three types. One approach to avoid the temptation of marking every error is to read or skim the whole essay quickly once without marking anything on the page – or at least, with very minimal marks. Some instructors find this a useful method in order to get a general sense of the essay’s organization and argument, thus enabling them to better identify the major areas of concern. Your second pass can then focus more in-depth on a few select areas that require improvement.

Commenting on Student Papers

The scholarly literature in this area distinguishes formative from summative comments. Summative comments are the more traditional approach. They render judgment about an essay after it has been completed. They explain the instructor’s judgment of a student’s performance. If the instructor’s comments contain several critical statements, the student often becomes protective of his or her ego by filtering them out; learning from mistakes becomes more difficult. If the assignment is over with, the student may see no reason to revisit it to learn from the comments.

Formative comments, on the other hand, give the student feedback in an ongoing process of learning and skill building. Through formative comments, particularly in the draft stage of a writing assignment, instructors guide students on a strategic selection of the most important aspects of the essay. These include both what to keep because it is (at least relatively) well done and what requires revision. Formative comments let the student know clearly how to revise and why.

For the purposes of this guide, we have distinguished commenting on student writing (which is treated here) from grading student writing (which is treated in the Teaching Guide section on grading ). While it is true that instructors’ comments on student writing should give reasons for the grade assigned to it, we want to emphasize here that the comments on a student’s paper can function as instruction , not simply as justification. Here are ten tips.

Use your comments on a student’s paper to highlight things the paper accomplishes well and a few major things that would most improve the paper.
Always observe at least one or two strengths in the student’s paper, even if they seem to you to be low-level accomplishments — but avoid condescension. Writing is a complex activity, and students really do need to know they’re doing something right.
Don’t make exhaustive comments. They take up too much of your time and leave the student with no sense of priority among them.
Don’t proofread. If the paper is painfully replete with errors and you want to emphasize writing mechanics, count the first ten errors on the page, draw a line at that point, and ask the student to identify them and to show their corrections to you in office hours. Students do not learn much from instructors’ proofreading marks. Direct students to a writing reference guide such as the Random House Handbook.
Notice patterns or repeated errors (in content or form). Choose the three or four most disabling ones and direct your comments toward helping the students understand what they need to learn to do differently to correct this kind of error.
Use marginal notes to locate and comment on specific passages in the paper (for example “Interesting idea — develop it more” or “I lost the thread of the argument in this section” or “Very useful summary here before you transition to the next point”). Use final or end comments to discuss more global issues (e.g., “Work on paragraph structure” or “The argument from analogy is ineffective. A better way to make the point would be…”)
Use questions to help the student unpack areas that are unclear or require more explanation and analysis. E.g.: “Can you explain more about what you mean by “x”?”; “What in the text shows this statement?”; “Is “y” consistent with what you’ve argued about “z”?” This approach can help the student recognize your comments less as a form of judgment than a form of dialogue with their work. As well, it can help you avoid “telling” the student how they should revise certain areas that remain undeveloped. Often, students just need a little more encouragement to focus on an area they haven’t considered in-depth or that they might have envisioned clearly in their head but did not translate to the page.
Maintain a catalogue of positive end comments: “Good beginning for a 1B course.” “Very perceptive reading.” “Good engagement with the material.” “Gets at the most relevant material/issues/passages.” Anything that connects specific aspects of the student’s product with the grading rubric is useful. (For more on grading rubrics , see the Grading section of the Teaching Guide.)
Diplomatic but firm suggestions for improvement: Here you must be specific and concrete. Global negative statements tend to enter students’ self-image (“I’m a bad writer”). This creates an attitudinal barrier to learning and makes your job harder and less satisfying. Instead, try “The most strategic improvement you could make is…” Again, don’t try to comment on everything. Select only the most essential areas for improvement, and watch the student’s progress on the next draft or paper.
Typical in-text marks: Provide your students with a legend of your reading marks. Does a straight underline indicate “good stuff”? Does a wavy underline mean something different? Do you use abbreviations in the margins? You can find examples of standard editing marks in many writing guides, such as the Random House Handbook.
The tone of your comments on student writing is important to students. Avoid sarcasm and jokes — students who take offense are less disposed to learn. Address the student by name before your end-comments, and sign your name after your remarks. Be professional, and bear in mind the sorts of comments that help you with your work.

Plagiarism and Grading

Students can be genuinely uninformed or misinformed about what constitutes plagiarism. In some instances students will knowingly resort to cutting and pasting from unacknowledged sources; a few may even pay for a paper written by someone else; more recently, students may attempt to pass off AI-generated essays as their own work. Your section syllabus should include a clear policy notice about plagiarism and AI so that students cannot miss it, and instructors should work with students to be sure they understand how to incorporate outside sources appropriately.

Plagiarism can be largely prevented by stipulating that larger writing assignments be completed in steps that the students must turn in for instructor review, or that students visit the instructor periodically for a brief but substantive chat about how their projects are developing, or that students turn in their research log and notes at intermediate points in the research process.

All of these strategies also deter students from using AI to substitute for their own critical thinking and writing. In addition, you may want to craft prompts that are specific to the course materials rather than overly-general ones; and you may also require students to provide detailed analysis about specific texts or cases. AI tools like ChatGPT tend to struggle significantly in both of these areas.

For further guidance on preventing academic misconduct, please see Academic Misconduct — Preventing Plagiarism .

You can also find more information and advice about AI technology like ChatGPT at the Berkeley Center for Teaching & Learning.

UC Berkeley has a campus license to use Turnitin to check the originality of students’ papers and to generate feedback to students about their integration of written sources into their papers. The tool is available in bCourses as an add-on to the Grading tool, and in the Assignments tool SpeedGrader. Even with the results of the originality check, instructors are obligated to exercise judgment in determining the degree to which a given use of source material was fair or unfair.

If a GSI does find a very likely instance of plagiarism, the faculty member in charge of the course must be notified and provided with the evidence. The faculty member is responsible for any sanctions against the student. Some faculty members give an automatic failing grade for the assignment or for the course, according to their own course policy. Instances of plagiarism should be reported to the Center for Student Conduct; please see If You Encounter Academic Misconduct .

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4 Tips for Managing Essay Grading

Audrey Wick is an English professor at Blinn College in central Texas

I remember the bright-eyed enthusiasm with which I approached the process of essay grading for the first time as a rookie instructor. I was so excited! The essays seemed like such a gift! They were, after all, the voices of my students come alive to me on paper.

Now that I’ve been teaching for a number of years, those essays seem like “gifts” that keep on giving. Each semester, I receive batches of essays from my students—multiplied by the several sections of each course I teach—and the process of responding to them all can be overwhelming.

Luckily, I’ve developed a few techniques for essay grading over the years that I’m happy to pass along so we can all recapture the initial enthusiasm which surrounded that inaugural set of essays.

1. Stagger Due Dates For Essay Grading

For instructors teaching multiple sections, this is key.

Full-time instructors at my institution teach five classes, so each deadline results in well over 100 papers submitted. That’s a lot of essays to grade at once! Rather than bracing for an avalanche of essays being submitted on a single day, consider staggering due dates: a Monday deadline for one section, a Tuesday deadline for another, etc. Since deadlines are often accompanied by student questions, staggering them allows correspondence around the assignment to spread out a bit. This way an instructor is not answering dozens of last-minute questions, for instance, on a Monday.

But even if there needs to be uniformity between sections, staggered deadlines can be accomplished by differences in modality. For instance, my face-to-face sections have a mid-week Wednesday deadline, but my online sections have an end-of-weekend Sunday deadline. With this schedule I can still ensure all of my students submit essays, say, at the end of week four, even with staggered submission days.

2. Digitize Your Essay Grading

Many instructors use digital assignment submissions—but I still have colleagues who require hard-copy paper submissions. I shared this preference when I first began teaching, but collecting, shuffling, transporting, organizing, and redistributing paper copies cut into time I spent actually grading essays.

Digitizing through electronic drop box submissions means that the moment a student submits an assignment, I get it—and I don’t have to move it anywhere.

Digital drop boxes also allow me to set submission windows, so students have the option to submit early. While plenty of students do procrastinate, it’s refreshing to see those who submit well in advance of a deadline. This helps me manage the influx of their assignments since the files arrive a few at a time.

3. Grade Essays in Order

Thanks to digitized submissions, I am able to see the exact date/time a student submitted an assignment. The dropboxes I use allow me to sort submissions using this time data, and that is the order in which I grade papers. I tell this to students—so for some, it’s their incentive to submit early because it means that they will receive their grades and feedback prior to others in the class.

This is a good habit to cultivate in students: a reward for early preparation. I realize this is not always possible for students, but it’s one small way I can incentivize the process equitably.

Grading essays on a rolling basis instead of in one fell swoop means that I can devote more focused attention to each submission because I’m not overwhelmed. This allows me to stay organized as well.

4. Use Smart Shortcuts in Essay Grading

If I’m assigning the same essay prompt across multiple sections, there are certain types of feedback that I am apt to give. If I find a way to shortcut these, I can save myself time on each essay.

The easiest way I do this is through saved comments in the digital grading software I use; I can archive comments across sections and then apply them individually to papers as needed.

No matter if you have this capability or not, there may be other ways to take a smart shortcut:

Creating a document in a word processor of frequently typed feedback
Using shorthand and frequently understood editing marks
Applying a rubric for essay grading
Leaving audio feedback on digital essay submissions instead of text feedback (since many of us can talk more quickly than we can type or write)

I may be grading over 100 submissions, but each of my students is only reading feedback on their own. So, I also need to remember that shortcuts should not undercut the quality of feedback each student ultimately receives.

Seeing students’ writing is, truly, a gift. And with proper time management, essay grading can be an exercise instructors feel enthusiastic about, round after round.

Want more of my tips for powering your course your way? Get the Empowered Educator eBook.

Center for Teaching

Grading student work.

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What Purposes Do Grades Serve?

Developing grading criteria, making grading more efficient, providing meaningful feedback to students.

Maintaining Grading Consistency in Multi-Sectioned Courses

Minimizing Student Complaints about Grading

Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson identify the multiple roles that grades serve:

as an evaluation of student work;
as a means of communicating to students, parents, graduate schools, professional schools, and future employers about a student’s performance in college and potential for further success;
as a source of motivation to students for continued learning and improvement;
as a means of organizing a lesson, a unit, or a semester in that grades mark transitions in a course and bring closure to it.

Additionally, grading provides students with feedback on their own learning , clarifying for them what they understand, what they don’t understand, and where they can improve. Grading also provides feedback to instructors on their students’ learning , information that can inform future teaching decisions.

Why is grading often a challenge? Because grades are used as evaluations of student work, it’s important that grades accurately reflect the quality of student work and that student work is graded fairly. Grading with accuracy and fairness can take a lot of time, which is often in short supply for college instructors. Students who aren’t satisfied with their grades can sometimes protest their grades in ways that cause headaches for instructors. Also, some instructors find that their students’ focus or even their own focus on assigning numbers to student work gets in the way of promoting actual learning.

Given all that grades do and represent, it’s no surprise that they are a source of anxiety for students and that grading is often a stressful process for instructors.

Incorporating the strategies below will not eliminate the stress of grading for instructors, but it will decrease that stress and make the process of grading seem less arbitrary — to instructors and students alike.

Source: Walvoord, B. & V. Anderson (1998). Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment . San Francisco : Jossey-Bass.

Consider the different kinds of work you’ll ask students to do for your course. This work might include: quizzes, examinations, lab reports, essays, class participation, and oral presentations.
For the work that’s most significant to you and/or will carry the most weight, identify what’s most important to you. Is it clarity? Creativity? Rigor? Thoroughness? Precision? Demonstration of knowledge? Critical inquiry?
Transform the characteristics you’ve identified into grading criteria for the work most significant to you, distinguishing excellent work (A-level) from very good (B-level), fair to good (C-level), poor (D-level), and unacceptable work.

Developing criteria may seem like a lot of work, but having clear criteria can

save time in the grading process
make that process more consistent and fair
communicate your expectations to students
help you to decide what and how to teach
help students understand how their work is graded

Sample criteria are available via the following link.

Analytic Rubrics from the CFT’s September 2010 Virtual Brownbag
Create assignments that have clear goals and criteria for assessment. The better students understand what you’re asking them to do the more likely they’ll do it!
letter grades with pluses and minuses (for papers, essays, essay exams, etc.)
100-point numerical scale (for exams, certain types of projects, etc.)
check +, check, check- (for quizzes, homework, response papers, quick reports or presentations, etc.)
pass-fail or credit-no-credit (for preparatory work)
Limit your comments or notations to those your students can use for further learning or improvement.
Spend more time on guiding students in the process of doing work than on grading it.
For each significant assignment, establish a grading schedule and stick to it.

Light Grading – Bear in mind that not every piece of student work may need your full attention. Sometimes it’s sufficient to grade student work on a simplified scale (minus / check / check-plus or even zero points / one point) to motivate them to engage in the work you want them to do. In particular, if you have students do some small assignment before class, you might not need to give them much feedback on that assignment if you’re going to discuss it in class.

Multiple-Choice Questions – These are easy to grade but can be challenging to write. Look for common student misconceptions and misunderstandings you can use to construct answer choices for your multiple-choice questions, perhaps by looking for patterns in student responses to past open-ended questions. And while multiple-choice questions are great for assessing recall of factual information, they can also work well to assess conceptual understanding and applications.

Test Corrections – Giving students points back for test corrections motivates them to learn from their mistakes, which can be critical in a course in which the material on one test is important for understanding material later in the term. Moreover, test corrections can actually save time grading, since grading the test the first time requires less feedback to students and grading the corrections often goes quickly because the student responses are mostly correct.

Spreadsheets – Many instructors use spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) to keep track of student grades. A spreadsheet program can automate most or all of the calculations you might need to perform to compute student grades. A grading spreadsheet can also reveal informative patterns in student grades. To learn a few tips and tricks for using Excel as a gradebook take a look at this sample Excel gradebook .

Use your comments to teach rather than to justify your grade, focusing on what you’d most like students to address in future work.
Link your comments and feedback to the goals for an assignment.
Comment primarily on patterns — representative strengths and weaknesses.
Avoid over-commenting or “picking apart” students’ work.
In your final comments, ask questions that will guide further inquiry by students rather than provide answers for them.

Maintaining Grading Consistency in Multi-sectioned Courses (for course heads)

Communicate your grading policies, standards, and criteria to teaching assistants, graders, and students in your course.
Discuss your expectations about all facets of grading (criteria, timeliness, consistency, grade disputes, etc) with your teaching assistants and graders.
Encourage teaching assistants and graders to share grading concerns and questions with you.
have teaching assistants grade assignments for students not in their section or lab to curb favoritism (N.B. this strategy puts the emphasis on the evaluative, rather than the teaching, function of grading);
have each section of an exam graded by only one teaching assistant or grader to ensure consistency across the board;
have teaching assistants and graders grade student work at the same time in the same place so they can compare their grades on certain sections and arrive at consensus.
Include your grading policies, procedures, and standards in your syllabus.
Avoid modifying your policies, including those on late work, once you’ve communicated them to students.
Distribute your grading criteria to students at the beginning of the term and remind them of the relevant criteria when assigning and returning work.
Keep in-class discussion of grades to a minimum, focusing rather on course learning goals.

For a comprehensive look at grading, see the chapter “Grading Practices” from Barbara Gross Davis’s Tools for Teaching.

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HOWTO: 3 Easy Steps to Grading Student Essays

In a world where number two pencils and bubbles on an answer sheet often determine a student’s grade, what criteria does the writing teacher use to evaluate the work of his or her students? After all, with essay writing you cannot simply mark some answers correct and others incorrect and figure out a percentage. The good news is that grading an essay can be just as easy and straightforward as grading multiple-choice tests with the use of a rubric!

What is a rubric?

A rubric is a chart used in grading essays, special projects and other more items which can be more subjective. It lists each of the grading criteria separately and defines the different performance levels within those criteria. Standardized tests like the SAT’s use rubrics to score writing samples, and designing one for your own use is easy if you take it step by step. Keep in mind that when you are using a rubric to grade essays, you can design one rubric for use throughout the semester or modify your rubric as the expectations you have for your students increase.

How to Grade Student Essays

What should I include?

When students write essays, ESL teachers generally look for some common elements . The essay should have good grammar and show the right level of vocabulary . It should be organized, and the content should be appropriate and effective. Teachers also look at the overall effectiveness of the piece. When evaluating specific writing samples, you may also want to include other criteria for the essay based on material you have covered in class. You may choose to grade on the type of essay they have written and whether your students have followed the specific direction you gave. You may want to evaluate their use of information and whether they correctly presented the content material you taught. When you write your own rubric, you can evaluate anything you think is important when it comes to your students’ writing abilities. For our example, we will use grammar, organization and overall effect to create a rubric .

What is an A?

Using the criteria we selected ( grammar , organization and overall effect ) we will write a rubric to evaluate students’ essays. The most straightforward evaluation uses a four-point scale for each of the criteria. Taking the criteria one at a time, articulate what your expectations are for an A paper , a B paper and so on. Taking grammar as an example, an A paper would be free of most grammatical errors appropriate for the student’s language learning level. A B paper would have some mistakes but use generally good grammar. A C paper would show frequent grammatical errors. A D paper would show that the student did not have the grammatical knowledge appropriate for his language learning level. Taking these definitions, we now put them into the rubric.

The next step is to take each of the other criteria and define success for each of those, assigning a value to A, B, C and D papers. Those definitions then go into the rubric in the appropriate locations to complete the chart.

Each of the criteria will score points for the essay. The descriptions in the first column are each worth 4 points, the second column 3 points, the third 2 points and the fourth 1 point.

What is the grading process?

Now that your criteria are defined, grading the essay is easy. When grading a student essay with a rubric, it is best to read through the essay once before evaluating for grades . Then reading through the piece a second time, determine where on the scale the writing sample falls for each of the criteria. If the student shows excellent grammar, good organization and a good overall effect, he would score a total of ten points. Divide that by the total criteria, three in this case, and he finishes with a 3.33. which on a four-point scale is a B+. If you use five criteria to evaluate your essays, divide the total points scored by five to determine the student’s grade.

Once you have written your grading rubric, you may decide to share your criteria with your students.

If you do, they will know exactly what your expectations are and what they need to accomplish to get the grade they desire. You may even choose to make a copy of the rubric for each paper and circle where the student lands for each criterion. That way, each person knows where he needs to focus his attention to improve his grade. The clearer your expectations are and the more feedback you give your students, the more successful your students will be. If you use a rubric in your essay grading, you can communicate those standards as well as make your grading more objective with more practical suggestions for your students. In addition, once you write your rubric you can use it for all future evaluations.

Like it? Tell your friends:

How to design a rubric that teachers can use and students can understand.

How to Evaluate Speaking

FAQ for Writing Teachers

Professor takes forever to grade (what to do)

About the author

Hi there. I am the prolific professor with 15 years of experience teaching online and in-person. I have a graduate degree. I have a passion for education. But I’ve also worked in the professional world (outside of education) too. Thanks for visiting.

grade book with no grades professor slow grader

My professor is SLOW to grade

As a college student, you work hard on your assignments, and you study for your exams, only to wait FOREVER for your professor to grade them. It doesn’t seem FAIR.

It can be totally frustrating when your professor takes forever to grade your assignments. Not only is it annoying, it’s also nerve-wracking for you.

You’re probably worried about how you did on the assignment, and your anxiety builds as you wait for your grade. It can definitely ruin your day waiting to find out how you did.

After working so hard and submitting your assignments on time, you don’t get the feedback you need because your professor takes too long to grade.

Even worse is when you don’t get your grade before the next assignment is due.

How are you supposed to know how you are doing in the course to improve if you don’t get your grades in a timely manner?

Well, as a former professor, I am going to tell you why professors take so long to grade AND how to get your professor to grade faster.

I will even hook you up with an email template to send to your professor to get your grades faster. Don’t worry, I will tell you everything I know so that you can email your professor to get them to grade faster.

How long should professors take to grade?

table showing how long it takes to a professor to grade a research paper discussion post quiz or test

The table above outlines the minimum and maximum amount of time it should take a professor to grade a particular assignment. The time is in minutes. But please understand that I used my estimates as a professor and your professor’s circumstances may make grading faster or slower.

While it may only take a professor 10 minutes to grade your research paper, they have multiple classes with lots of students so they will have to grade all those assignments too. This is how grading gets backed up.

Professors should follow their grading policy and grade accordingly. Professors will take longer to grade more complicated assignments like written research papers while shorter assignments should be graded faster. If a professor has a teaching or graduate assistant, they will likely have help grading and it can speed things up.

As a former professor, I would say that professors should take NO longer than a WEEK to grade assignments unless it’s a long research paper. And then they may need TWO weeks to finish all their grading. But any longer than that, it is problematic.

There is not necessarily a time limit for professors to grade , so it can vary widely. Some professors don’t work as hard as other professors or they just take longer to grade because of their process, so there are too many variables to give you a specific timeframe.

Why does my professor take forever to grade ?

Here are a few factors that may effect the length of time it takes professors to grade assignments

Method of submission (scantron or written)

Do they have assistants to help with grading?

How many classes are they teaching?

What is their grading policy?

Are they a thorough grader?

Okay, it should be obvious here, but if an exam is completed on a scantron, it should take them minutes to grade them. Most universities will have a scantron machine that will grade them automatically and they can enter the grades right away.

If professors have any assistants to help them with grading, you might have your grades sooner.

Some professors overdo themselves and teach way too many courses . This can slow down grading for students. You could check your professor’s teaching load and find out how many classes they are teaching.

If they have more than six courses they are teaching, it could signal that they are overworked if they are taking way too long to grade your assignments.

First, I would advise you to check their syllabus and see if they have a grading policy. A lot of colleges will require their professors to tell students how long they should have to wait for feedback. See if this is in your professor’s syllabus.

Are they within that timeframe? If they are, don’t sweat it too much. But if it’s days after their expected timeframe, you are going to want to reach out. However, make sure you consider holidays or any campus closures. That won’t count against their time.

Finally, if you have a professor who is so thorough in their grading, it is going to take much longer for them to grade all the assignments. They might check every single source, which can take awhile. While not ideal, it could provide you with more detailed feedback.

And in reality, you could just have a bad professor and you might need some other advice. I have an article to help you out if you think you have a bad professor.

Are professors required to grade in a timely manner?

Professors are not necessarily required to grade in a timely manner, however, most colleges will REQUIRE their professors to teach, support and advise students.

How can professors do that adequately if they take too long to grade assignments?

So, while a grading timeframe isn’t outlined for professors by the college , it is indirectly required through their job duties.

Also, some colleges will have a faculty handbook , and it could outline a grading policy for professors. This isn’t that common, but it is possible that a university will tell professors how quickly they should grade.

Nonetheless, if a professor doesn’t grade in a timely manner, it can be frustrating for students and it might be considered unprofessional.

But professors have a lot of discretion in their grading process so it would be hard for a college to require professors to grade quickly. If they did, it could hurt students because some professors may have complex assignments that take additional time to grade. You don’t want to rush that.

Keep in mind that professors will likely give themselves a deadline for grading so check their syllabus to see if they outline their policies.

What to do if your professor isn’t grading assignments

If a professor isn’t grading assignments in a timely manner, you should reach out to them and discuss your grade and outstanding assignments.

I recommend scheduling an appointment and going in person , but if you want to email them instead, I’ll help you do that too.

First of all, be polite. You don’t know how hard your professor has been working to grade all the assignments or what is going on in their personal life. They might have been sick recently so they could be backed up with their grading.

Secondly, check their syllabus to see if they have a deadline for students to receive feedback. They might have it outlined there. If they are within that timeframe, you will likely need to wait until that time has passed before you reach out.

Third, approach them as a concerned student. You want to try and refrain from calling them out or telling them they are lazy. You are reaching out to them because you want that important feedback to help you improve and learn the material.

Keep very good records. I want you to write down when an assignment was due, and how long it took them to complete their grading for each assignment. If you need to go to their boss, you will have documentation to show them. This is a very last resort, in the most extreme circumstances, but it might be necessary.

Finally, if it’s taking too long for your professor to get their grading done, you should let your professor know on their student evaluations. Most colleges will have students complete evaluations about their professor, and this is where you can leave that feedback. Their boss will see it too so they can advise them to grade faster if it’s a problem.

They won’t see these evaluations until after the semester ends so it won’t help you now but it could make things better for future students.

How do you ask a professor to grade an assignment faster?

I have an email template for you to customize and send to your professor when you want them to grade your assignments quicker. Remember, don’t copy and paste this email. You should be using it as an example to help you craft the perfect email to your professor.

Dear Professor Smith, I am in your History 101 class and I am enjoying the topic we are reviewing right now. I have learned so much, and I really like the information you shared about the Civil War last week. Since we recently completed an assignment over this topic, I would love to know how you think I did because I value your input. I am also interested in your assignment feedback to learn about my progress in your course. I am trying to assess how I am doing in your course so far. We have a similar assignment due next week, and I would like to know how to improve that assignment submission after reviewing your feedback on this last assignment. I’d love to discuss these outstanding assignments at your earliest convenience, and find out how you think I did. I will use these grades and feedback to improve. Thanks.

This email is polite, short, and to the point. And you can see how I tried to compliment the professor too. I did not blame them, and I wasn’t rude or demanding. You want to have the professor understand why you want your grades now, and you should be a concerned student.

You want to approach them from the perspective of wanting to improve and get the feedback you need to progress in the course.

Use this as a guide to help you create the perfect email to your professor about grading more promptly.

But don’t be afraid to talk to your professor. That’s their job.

Remember, there are times when you should not email your professor, so check out my detailed guide before you click send.

How long does it take professors to grade a paper or assignment?

It could take professors, on average, 10 MINUTES to grade each student’s assignment. This will depend on the complexity and length of the assignment. When I was a professor, this is approximately how long it took me to grade assignments. Some were much quicker than others, but this was the average time it took me to grade students’ assignments and leave them feedback.

Something that lengthens the time it takes for professors to grade assignments is the amount of feedback they leave each student. The more detailed they are with their feedback, the longer it will take to grade.

If the course is online, it might take longer for them to leave feedback because they have to use a computer to type their comments and enter them. This is just another step that usually makes the process take longer.

You should also keep in mind campus closures, weekends and sick time that could affect a professor’s grading schedule.

I know you want your grades and feedback sooner rather than later, so use my tips to talk to your professor about grading faster.

Can you call, text or email your professor in 2024?

Do professors curve grades (written by one).

Sammiches & Psych Meds

Parenting, lifestyle, news commentary, and humor website.

Why It Takes Teachers So Long to Grade Work

I recently overheard a couple of students discussing how long it takes some teachers to grade the class’s work. Though I couldn’t pinpoint which of my colleagues they were discussing (or even if it was me), I did catch bits and pieces of the conversation before telling them I didn’t want to hear talk about other teachers in my class, most of which stemmed around the idea that teachers taking up to a month or more to grade student work is not only, like, totally annoying and stuff, but it’s also unacceptable.

I have heard similar complaints from parents as well. A few years ago, a father couldn’t believe it had taken another teacher nearly three weeks to grade 60 sets of 20 essays each. All I could think was, THREE WEEKS?!?! That teacher obviously has super powers to get it done that quickly!

I can understand wanting feedback as soon as possible. After all, you can’t work at improving if you don’t know what to improve upon. (Never mind the fact that very few students actually care about the improving part anyway.) But what I can’t understand is when students think teachers have the time to grade things quickly. They see us in front of the class delivering a lesson or walking around the room monitoring a formal assessment, right? They must know we don’t have a clone of ourselves who can grade whilst we remain actively engaged in other classroom activities before their very eyes, correct? So it would seem the knowledge they lack is that of exactly how long it takes to grade assignments and what teachers have to do to find the time to grade them.

In order to help others get just exactly why it takes teachers so long to grade, I think breaking down the average teacher’s daily responsibilities is necessary. Here’s a look at my typical weekday, if you’re interested in what it is teachers claim to be so busy doing. Bear with me, though, as the damn thing goes on forever. (If you don’t give a shit, move on to the next section. I’m cool with it.)

My Typical Teacher Schedule

5:30 a.m. — Alarm goes off. I order Mr. Sammich to hit snooze and curse the universe.

5:40 a.m. — Alarm goes off again. I mutter a string of obscenities and Kung Fu kick Mr. Sammich in the spleen to hit snooze a second time.

Sometime between 5:50 and 6:20 a.m. — Depending on whether or not I plan to wash my hair or even apply makeup, I roll out of bed and head to my kids’ rooms to engage in battles over why clean undies are better than dirty undies, why you can’t wear camo pants with a checkered shirt and tie, and why you still have to brush your teeth in the morning even if you brushed them the day before. Then I help them put on their shoes and coats and shove them out the door.

Sometime between 6:00 a.m. and 7:10 a.m. — If I have an IEP or 504 meeting scheduled before school, I’m showered, dressed, and out the door by 6:30. If I don’t, I’m showered, dressed, and out the door by 7:10 (at the absolute latest).

7:45 a.m. — School begins. I have first period conference, so I get busy planning lessons and units, making copies, grading work, setting up and arranging the materials for the activities of the day, and/or helping the student who somehow slithers out of class and wanders in to figure out what he missed while he was absent. I get about 1/3 as much done as I had hoped to. In some instances, I have an IEP, 504, or other meeting and get nothing done.

8:50 a.m. — Second period shuffles in. I teach and help students with their work. If I’m lucky, I get an assignment or two graded or a lesson plan finished while students wrap something up.

9:55 a.m. — Third period shuffles in. I teach and help students with their work. If I’m lucky, I get an assignment or two graded or a lesson plan finished while students wrap something up.

11:00 a.m. — Fourth period shuffles in. I teach and help students with their work. If I’m lucky, I get an assignment or two graded or a lesson plan finished while students wrap something up.

12:00 p.m. — Lunch time. I take my first bathroom break, come back and yank out a banana or granola bar or warm up a frozen dinner or bowl of soup in a colleague’s microwave and get to work on those lesson plans and that grading. Occasionally, a student sticks around to chat or to get help on something, in which case I barely get to eat, let alone do any work. On still other occasions, I have a department or other meeting and get nothing done.

12:25 p.m. — Fifth period shuffles in. I teach and help students with their work. If I’m lucky, I get an assignment or two graded or a lesson plan finished while students wrap something up.

1:30 p.m. — Sixth period shuffles in. I teach and help students with their work. If I’m lucky, I get an assignment or two graded or a lesson plan finished while students wrap something up.

2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — A lot of different things can happen during this time. If it’s the first Monday of the month, I have a staff meeting until 3:50. Sometimes I have IEP, 504, or other meetings that start any time between 2:30 and 4:00 and end any time between then and 5:00. Twice per year, I have 3 evenings each of parent/teacher conferences that start at 4:30 and end at 7:30. I have open house one night until 9:00 p.m. at the beginning of the school year and various after-school student activities, such as school plays, that I occasionally stay late to attend throughout the school year. I phone and email parents and colleagues I need to contact during this time as well.

When I don’t have any meetings scheduled, I attempt to get as much planning, grading, and conferencing with colleagues done as possible before I need to head home to attend to my other responsibilities.

Sometime between 3:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. — Depending upon what work responsibilities I have (see above) and what family responsibilities I have (see below), I head home.

3:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. — Just as is the case with after school meetings and such, I have a number of things I need to do during this time frame. On certain days, I take my son to his physical, occupational, and/or speech therapy (usually a 1.5 hour deal). I can get some grading done there. When I can’t, I read or write. Other days, I have to do little errands like attend something at my kids’ school, run up to the store, or get somebody to a doctor/dentist appointment, for example.

Every day, I have to help Mr. Sammich figure out dinner (He does the cooking. I’m just the brains behind the operation. Sorta. OK, I just supervise.) Sometimes we head out to get a bite. Other times we eat in. I read books to my kids and ask them about their days and enjoy their presence for a little while. If they want to watch a little TV, I break out my school work and multitask, getting a bit of planning or grading done here and there. After dinner, the kids need a bath and a bedtime story, both of which almost always wind up being a whole big thing as we argue about how many books we can read and why they can’t have a sleepover on a school night and how important it is that we get enough rest to be healthy. When the battle has been won (or the enemy exhausted beyond the point of continuing), I either plop down on the couch with Mr. Sammich or head up to my bedroom with my trusty computer.

8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. — This is usually the time I try to really dig into the planning and grading (or the graduate coursework when I’m unfortunate enough to be enrolled in that). I start out with the best intentions, plodding my way through a task while a crime drama plays in the background on my computer or TV. Once in a while, I stop to rejuvenate, checking Facebook, telling a lame joke to my husband, typing out a few lines of a blog post, or tuning in to the show to see if I can figure out whodunnit. After a couple minutes, I get back to my planning and grading, but as my eyelids get droopier, my time on task gets shorter until eventually, I’m ready to conk out.

10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. — These are what I call the witching hours. On rare occasions, I fall asleep rather easily and stay that way until the alarm goes off again. Most frequently, however, I lie awake, exhausted but unable to slip into a slumber as the demons and ghosts and ghouls of my life invade my mind. I think about all the lesson planning and grading I still have to do and fantasize about getting more done than is ever actually possible the next day. My mind turns to my students and their parents and that meeting I have on Thursday and when I’m going to put together the staff training stuff I’m leading and how I wish I could spend more time with my children and wouldn’t a Caribbean vacation be splendid right about now?

At some point, I fall asleep, but not without waking up three or four times in the middle of the night — just enough to ensure I feel like I got exactly zero sleep the next day.

Sounds a lot like the schedule of any working person, right? Maybe even less hectic than some. But here’s where things get different. In all that time I spent planning and grading throughout the day, I only accomplished about 1/4 to 1/3 of what I actually needed to. That means that day’s work gets pushed to the next, but it doesn’t end there, because the next day there’s more to add to the pile until I have to take a sick or personal day to get all that stacked work finished (And yes, teachers save up their sick and personal days — dragging themselves to school through cold and flu — so they can take off work in order to get work done. It’s madness.)

Why does seemingly nothing get done if we claim to always be doing something in those stolen moments? A breakdown of how long it takes to do that planning and grading is necessary to understanding this one. First, the grading.

Breakdown of Time It Takes to Grade Assignments

Quizzes/Tests

Multiple choice quizzes and tests, when hand graded, take about 1 second per question to grade. That means a 10 question quiz takes about 10 seconds to grade. Sixty 10 question quizzes (which is equivalent to two class periods’ worth), then, take about 10 minutes total to grade. Similarly, 60 100 question tests (at 1 second per question) take about and hour and 40 minutes to grade.

Short answer quizzes and tests take a little longer — about 5 seconds per question. So a 10 question quiz takes 50 seconds to grade, which means two class periods’ worth takes about 50 minutes. Sixty 20 question tests take — you guessed it — an hour and 40 minutes.

Extended answer quizzes and tests take anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes per question to grade. So a 10 question quiz takes 10-30 minutes alone. Sixty of them? Anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to grade, my friend.

Homework/Classwork

These vary widely depending on the type and purpose of the assignment. Some homework/classwork is intended to be formative in nature only, meaning the teacher looks each assignment over to see where the students’ understandings and confusions lie so as to better inform his or her instruction, but he or she does not assign each assignment a grade (or only gives a grade for completion). These can take anywhere from a couple seconds to several minutes per assignment, meaning grading sixty of them (or two class periods’ worth) can take anywhere from a couple minutes to a few hours.

Homework/classwork intended to be summative in nature, or to measure students’ mastery of a concept or skill, takes a bit longer to grade. Usually, assignments like these are either short or extended answer, which means they take about as long to grade as short and extended answer quizzes and tests.

Essays/Projects

These are the mother of all assignments and are by far the most time consuming. A standard 5-paragraph, thesis-driven essay takes me about 1-2 minutes each for the introduction and conclusion and 1-5 minutes each for the body paragraphs depending upon how many errors and how much feedback each student requires. That means grading a single essay can take anywhere from 5 to 19 minutes. Multiply that by two class periods, and you’re looking at anywhere from 5 hours (I’ve never been so lucky) to 19 hours to grade (that’s more like it).

Projects, like essays, are quite involved and require the same amount of time to assess and provide feedback on.

Inputting Grades

Teachers aren’t done when the assignments themselves have been graded. They also have to input grades into their electronic grade books, which have become the standard across school districts. Inputting a single class’s grades for a single assignment takes about 1-2 minutes.

A Sample Course Load

Let’s say I teach 5 class periods total (my 6th is my conference period) — 2 sections of freshman English, 2 sections of sophomore English, and 1 section of senior English. On a given day, I collect 60, 10 question short answer quizzes from my 2 freshman classes, 60 essays from my 2 sophomore classes, and 30 formative classwork assignments from my 1 senior class.

60 quizzes x 50 seconds per quiz = 50 minutes

60 essays x 12 minutes per essay (we’ll average the time) = 12 hours

30 classwork assignments x 1 minute per assignment = 30 minutes

5 classes of grades to input x 1 minute per class = 5 minutes

13 hours and 25 minutes worth of grading work for ONE SINGLE DAY (and that’s after a full day’s teaching and family responsibilities)

Now, granted we don’t collect essays and quizzes every day (well, most of us don’t), but the work still piles up. There are assignments here and projects there to grade every day, which means the stack just keeps growing. And we have to find time in that schedule I laid out up there to get it all done (which is impossible; hence the hoarding of sick and personal days and the need to not collect/grade everything).

While daunting, this teaching and grading would seem almost manageable if there weren’t another factor to consider: planning. You know what’s coming, right? A breakdown of the planning process.

Breakdown of Time It Takes to Plan Lessons/Units

Contrary to popular belief, many teachers do not simply recycle previous years’ lesson plans every year. We are constantly looking for ways to improve upon our approach and better suit our students’ needs. As such, even when we’ve taught the same concept or material for 10 years in a row, it takes some time to get it right each year.

Lesson Plans

Not everything takes the same amount of time to plan. A single lesson, for example, involves identifying the learning goals (5 minutes), determining how you will assess students’ understanding summatively and formatively (10-20 minutes), and organizing a step-by-step plan of action for teaching and assessing (10-20 minutes). So a single lesson plan on comma usage in writing, for example, takes anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes.

Unit plans are a series of lesson plans that, when put together, help students master larger concepts, skills, or material. A unit on Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, might consist of lesson plans on novel background and historical context, literary elements (plot, characterization, theme, etc.), critical reading strategies, small and whole group discussion strategies and skills, and argument-driven paragraph and/or essay writing, to name a few.

Units consist of anywhere from about 5 lessons to upwards of 20, meaning the average unit, which for our purposes we’ll say includes 12 lessons, takes 12 lessons x 25 minutes per lesson = 5 hours to plan from scratch. A unit plan a teacher has used before can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours on average to improve for the next batch of students.

Let’s use our trusty course load from the grading example to see how long it takes a teacher to plan units for his or her classes, shall we? That’s 5 class periods total (my 6th is my conference period) — 2 sections of freshman English, 2 sections of sophomore English, and 1 section of senior English

1 unit from scratch for my freshman classes = 5 hours

1 lesson plan for my sophomore classes = 25 minutes

1 tweaked unit plan for my senior class = 30 minutes

5 hours and 55 minutes worth of planning every few weeks (about 2 hours of planning per week, or 24 minutes per day)

The good news about lesson and unit plans is you can spread the planning out across a couple of weeks while you’re working on your current unit. Sometimes, with all the grading and other responsibilities, they can creep up on you, and some teachers have been known to plan an entire unit in just a couple of days (can you say personal day, please?).

Putting It All Together

Using the examples from above (and knowing that these vary based on subject area and unit), let’s see what a typical day requires of a teacher if he or she were to get a single day’s worth of work done at once.

7 hours 30 minutes of contractual teaching (not including any time before or after school for meetings, conferences, or contacting parents)

13 hours 25 minutes of grading

24 minutes of planning

21 hours 19 minutes of teaching work per day

That leaves 2 hours and 41 minutes per day to sleep, spend time with family, run errands, and relax.

It takes a helluva lot of time to plan, teach, and grade! Next time you wonder why it takes teachers so long to grade work, think of this, would ya? And give us a bit of a break. We only design lessons and assign work to help our students grow and succeed. It would be much easier on us to do nothing. All we ask in return is that you help us out by being patient.

NOTE: It’s very possible that my math is off a bit. It is, after all, almost the witching hours, and my eyeballs are feeling rather sticky. Forgive me?

7 Grading Tips for New Teachers

Among the many challenges facing early career teachers, grading can be especially daunting, so we’ve collected some pointers to make it easier.

Female teacher with her elementary school students in the classroom.

New teachers have a lot to be excited about. They’ve embarked on a fantastic journey of meeting students, creating lesson plans, and beginning an extremely meaningful career. On the downside, one aspect of teaching that causes more dread than excitement for early career teachers is grading.

Grading is a cumbersome task for all teachers, but for early career teachers it can be debilitating. We know we need to give timely and relevant feedback , and we know grading is important, but how can we make the process easier on ourselves? These are some tricks of the trade that may help new teachers struggling with grading.

1. Don’t grade everything: Depending on the curriculum expectations for your school, you may be in a position to determine what is and is not worth going in the gradebook. Use that power. It’s OK to not grade an assignment or to give credit for participation.

After teaching a lesson that required students to complete multiple writing assignments, I complained to a fellow English teacher about the hours I had spent reading the work. They were surprised at my complaints—rather than grade every assignment, they had only graded one.

2. Cycle your feedback: It’s tempting to spend enormous amounts of time commenting on student work. And it’s true that good teachers give good feedback. However, it’s OK to not give feedback to every student on every assignment.

I like to systematically cycle through the students to whom I give feedback. For each assignment I give to my five sections of ninth grade English language arts, I choose a single class for which I’ll spend extra time writing out detailed comments. For the next assignment, I choose a different one.

3. Have students grade other students: Sometimes new teachers forget what an amazing resource students can be. Instead of spending hours grading your students’ work, you can spend 15 minutes of class time having students grade each other.

It’s important to address expected behaviors as a class before letting students give feedback to their peers. Spend time instructing your students about what is helpful, specific feedback versus generic comments or statements that are better left unsaid. As one of my students put it, it’s the difference between “That sucked!” and “You could do better if you....” Once your students are ready to evaluate each other constructively and kindly, let them, and give yourself a break.

4. Use technology wisely: Technology can make the lives of teachers infinitely easier. If you have the available equipment, administering formative assessments like quizzes or exit slips via Google Forms , Edmodo , or Kahoot! can save you oodles of grading time.

Additionally, you can alleviate the strain of grading by giving students the technological resources to do better work.For example, I will regularly give my students the chance to use grammar checking websites like Grammarly or Paper Rater before turning in their writing. Prior to this, my students and I talk extensively about the limitations of these tools—every once in a while, they’re just flat wrong. A caveat to this tip is to consider what you want your students to focus on for a particular assignment. If you want students to check their own grammar (or their peers’), you might not want them using websites like these.

5. Don’t assign busywork: Although it can be tempting to assign sponge activities to fill time, only give students impactful work that develops their skill sets. Just as I want to use my time grading assignments that matter, my students want to complete work that matters. By avoiding assigning meaningless work, you can ensure that everyone’s time is spent optimally.

Ask yourself: Does this assignment enhance the lesson or the students’ understanding of the lesson? If the answer is no, toss it.

6. Use rubrics: Rubrics can be a phenomenal tool when grading. Rather than question your reasoning for your assessment of each student’s assignment, you can take some of the mental work out of it. Did they do this? Check. Did they do that? Check. You’ll make grading easier for yourself by giving them solid feedback that you’ve already considered.

Another perk of this tactic is that you can give your students the rubric before they even begin the work. That way, they know the expectations they need to meet in order to succeed.

7. Grade whenever possible: We teachers know the definition of busy better than most. But there are still moments in the classroom that can be taken advantage of as time for grading. Whenever students are working independently, teachers should be grading.

It’s important to grade wisely: Don’t sit at your desk with your head down, completely unaware of the classroom. Instead, find an open desk, preferably one next to a student who struggles to focus, and grade there. Periodically get up to circle the room, ask if anyone needs help, or give direction as needed. But use every bit of your workday to knock out as much grading as you can.

Grading can be daunting for those of us who are new to teaching. There were many times when I fell so far behind in my grading that I had to devote entire weekends simply to catching up. Since I’ve been using these ideas, my grading load has been significantly more manageable. Hopefully, with these tips in your back pocket, you’ll grade more effectively and with less stress.

The fastest way to grade essays

EssayGrader is an AI powered grading assistant that gives high quality, specific and accurate writing feedback for essays. Thousands of teachers use EssayGrader to manage their grading load everyday. On average it takes a teacher 10 minutes to grade a single essay, with EssayGrader that time is cut down to 30 seconds That's a 95% reduction in the time it takes to grade an essay, with the same results.

How we've done

EssayGrader analyzes essays with the power of AI. Our software is trained on massive amounts of diverse text data, inlcuding books, articles and websites. This gives us the ability to provide accurate and detailed writing feedback to students and save teachers loads of time. We are the perfect AI powered grading assitant.

EssayGrader analyzes essays for grammar, punctuation, spelling, coherence, clarity and writing style errors. We provide detailed reports of the errors found and suggestions on how to fix those errors. Our error reports help speed up grading times by quickly highlighting mistakes made in the essay.

Bulk uploading

Uploading a single essay at a time, then waiting for it to complete is a pain. Bulk uploading allows you to upload an entire class worth of essays at a single time. You can work on other important tasks, come back in a few minutes to see all the essays perfectly graded.

Custom rubrics

We don't assume how you want to grade your essays. Instead, we provide you with the ability to create the same rubrics you already use. Those rubrics are then used to grade essays with the same grading criteria you are already accustomed to.

Sometimes you don't want to read a 5000 word essay and you'd just like a quick summary. Or maybe you're a student that needs to provide a summary of your essay to your teacher. We can help with our summarizer feature. We can provide a concise summary including the most important information and unique phrases.

AI detector

Our AI detector feature allows teachers to identify if an essay was written by AI or if only parts of it were written by AI. AI is becoming very popular and teachers need to be able to detect if essays are being written by students or AI.

Create classes to neatly organize your students essays. This is an essential feature when you have multiple classes and need to be able to track down students essays quickly.

Our mission

At EssayGrader, our mission is crystal clear: we're transforming the grading experience for teachers and students alike. Picture a space where teachers can efficiently and accurately grade essays, lightening their workload, while empowering students to enhance their writing skills.

Our software is a dynamic work in progress, a testament to our commitment to constant improvement. We're dedicated to refining and enhancing our platform continually. With each update, we strive to simplify the lives of both educators and learners, making the process of grading and writing essays smoother and more efficient.

We recognize the immense challenges teachers face – the heavy burdens, the long hours, and the often underappreciated efforts. EssayGrader is our way of shouldering some of that load. We are here to support you, to make your tasks more manageable, and to give you the tools you need to excel in your teaching journey.

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how long does it take teachers to grade essays

Teachers are using AI to grade essays. But some experts are raising ethical concerns

W hen Diane Gayeski, a professor of strategic communications at Ithaca College, receives an essay from one of her students, she runs part of it through ChatGPT, asking the AI tool to critique and suggest how to improve the work.

“The best way to look at AI for grading is as a teaching assistant or research assistant who might do a first pass … and it does a pretty good job at that,” she told CNN.

She shows her students the feedback from ChatGPT and how the tool rewrote their essay. “I’ll share what I think about their intro, too, and we’ll talk about it,” she said.

Gayeski requires her class of 15 students to do the same: run their draft through ChatGPT to see where they can make improvements.

The emergence of AI is reshaping education, presenting real benefits, such as automating some tasks to free up time for more personalized instruction, but also some big hazards, from issues around accuracy and plagiarism to maintaining integrity.

Both teachers and students are using the new technology. A report by strategy consultant firm Tyton Partners, sponsored by plagiarism detection platform Turnitin, found half of college students used AI tools in Fall 2023. Meanwhile, while fewer faculty members used AI, the percentage grew to 22% of faculty members in the fall of 2023, up from 9% in spring 2023.

Teachers are turning to AI tools and platforms — such as ChatGPT, Writable, Grammarly and EssayGrader — to assist with grading papers, writing feedback, developing lesson plans and creating assignments. They’re also using the burgeoning tools to create quizzes, polls, videos and interactives to up the ante” for what’s expected in the classroom.

Students, on the other hand, are leaning on tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot — which is built into Word, PowerPoint and other products.

But while some schools have formed policies on how students can or can’t use AI for schoolwork, many do not have guidelines for teachers. The practice of using AI for writing feedback or grading assignments also raises ethical considerations. And parents and students who are already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition may wonder if an endless feedback loop of AI-generated and AI-graded content in college is worth the time and money.

“If teachers use it solely to grade, and the students are using it solely to produce a final product, it’s not going to work,” said Gayeski.

The time and place for AI

How teachers use AI depends on many factors, particularly when it comes to grading, according to Dorothy Leidner, a professor of business ethics at the University of Virginia. If the material being tested in a large class is largely declarative knowledge — so there is a clear right and wrong — then a teacher grading using the AI “might be even superior to human grading,” she told CNN.

AI would allow teachers to grade papers faster and more consistently and avoid fatigue or boredoms, she said.

But Leidner noted when it comes to smaller classes or assignments with less definitive answers, grading should remain personalized so teachers can provide more specific feedback and get to know a student’s work, and, therefore, progress over time.

“A teacher should be responsible for grading but can give some responsibility to the AI,” she said.

She suggested teachers use AI to look at certain metrics — such as structure, language use and grammar — and give a numerical score on those figures. But teachers should then grade students’ work themselves when looking for novelty, creativity and depth of insight.

Leslie Layne, who has been teaching ChatGPT best practices in her writing workshop at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, said she sees the advantages for teachers but also sees drawbacks.

“Using feedback that is not truly from me seems like it is shortchanging that relationship a little,” she said.

She also sees uploading a student’s work to ChatGPT as a “huge ethical consideration” and potentially a breach of their intellectual property. AI tools like ChatGPT use such entries to train their algorithms on everything from patterns of speech to how to make sentences to facts and figures.

Ethics professor Leidner agreed, saying this should particularly be avoided for doctoral dissertations and master’s theses because the student might hope to publish the work.

“It would not be right to upload the material into the AI without making the students aware of this in advance,” she said. “And maybe students should need to provide consent.”

Some teachers are leaning on software called Writable that uses ChatGPT to help grade papers but is “tokenized,” so essays do not include any personal information, and it’s not shared directly with the system.

Teachers upload essays to the platform, which was recently acquired by education company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which then provides suggested feedback for students.

Other educators are using platforms such as  Turnitin  that boast plagiarism detection tools to help teachers identify when assignments are written by ChatGPT and other AI. But these types of detection tools are far from foolproof; OpenAI shut down its own AI-detection tool last year due to what the company called a “low rate of accuracy.”

Setting standards

Some schools are actively working on policies for both teachers and students. Alan Reid, a research associate in the Center for Research and Reform in Education (CRRE) at Johns Hopkins University, said he recently spent time working with K-12 educators who use GPT tools to create end-of-quarter personalized comments on report cards.

But like Layne, he acknowledged the technology’s ability to write insightful feedback remains “limited.”

He currently sits on a committee at his college that’s authoring an AI policy for faculty and staff; discussions are ongoing, not just for how teachers use AI in the classroom but how it’s used by educators in general.

He acknowledges schools are having conversations about using generative AI tools to create things like promotion and tenure files, performance reviews, and job postings.”

Nicolas Frank, an associate professor of philosophy at University of Lynchburg, said universities and professors need to be on the same page when it comes to policies but need to stay cautious .

“There is a lot of danger in making policies about AI at this stage,” he said.

He worries it’s still too early to understand how AI will be integrated into everyday life. He is also concerned that some administrators who don’t teach in classrooms may craft policy that misses nuances of instruction.

“That may create a danger of oversimplifying the problems with AI use in grading and instruction,” he said. “Oversimplification is how bad policy is made.”

To start, he said educators can identify clear abuses of AI and begin policy-making around those.

Leidner, meanwhile, said universities can be very high level with their guidance, such as making transparency a priority — so students have a right to know when AI is being used to grade their work — and identifying what types of information should never be uploaded into an AI or asked of an AI.

But she said universities must also be open to “regularly reevaluating as the technology and uses evolve.”

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Leslie Layne teaches her students how to best use ChatGPT but takes issue with how some educators are using it to grade papers. - Courtesy Leslie Layne

This AI Tool Cut One Teacher’s Grading Time in Half. How It Works

It usually takes Aimee Knaus, who has been teaching computer science for more than two decades, upwards of two hours to grade a classful of coding projects.

This school year, she cut that time roughly in half, with the help of an AI teaching assistant developed by Code.org, a nonprofit organization that aims to expand access to computer science courses, and the Piech Lab at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

Knaus, who teaches middle school in Kimberly, Wis., was one of twenty teachers nationwide who tested the computer science grading tool’s capability on about a dozen coding projects also designed by Code.org, as part of a limited pilot project.

Beginning today, Code.org is inviting an additional 300 teachers to give the tool a try.

In early testing by Knaus and other teachers, the tool’s assessment of student work closely tracked those of experienced computer science teachers, said Karim Meghji, the chief product officer at Code.org. If that trend holds through this larger trial, the nonprofit hopes to make the tool widely available to computer science teachers around the country, he said.

Meghji would ideally like the tool to become widely available by the end of the calendar year, but the timeline will depend on the results of the broader testing.

‘I worry AI couldn’t push my students to the next level’

Many educators see helping teachers tackle time-consuming but relatively rote tasks— like grading —as a huge potential upside of AI. Curriculum company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Writable tool, Essaygrader, Gradescope, and others have already been released . And some teachers have experimented with using ChatGPT, an AI-powered writing and research tool, to grade papers.

But others are wary of outsourcing grading—especially on assignments that call for making subjective decisions about students’ writing or ideas.

“After all these years, I’ve worked to perfect my feedback and my process,” said Carly Ghantous, a humanities instructor at Davidson Academy Online, a private virtual school. “I worry that the AI wouldn’t be able to push my students to the next level of writing” as well as an experienced teacher could.

By contrast, the criteria for grading the coding projects that the computer science tool examined are cut and dry, Meghji explained.

The AI tool must determine whether a student’s coding project contains certain requirements—for instance, whether there are at least two changeable elements. That’s something the technology figures out quickly and accurately.

Megjhi predicts that, down the road, AI tools could frequently be tapped to help grade student work. Given the technical nature of computer science, it makes sense that the subject would be among the first out of the gate, he added.

“I think we have a unique situation with computer science and coding,” he said. “I do think that assessment will become an AI-assisted task for teachers across multiple subjects. I can’t say what that’s gonna look like for English or for social studies or other subjects. But I can tell you that I do think based on what I’ve seen in computer science that there is there’s definitely an opportunity for broader application.”

‘I had the answer key, but I didn’t know what I was doing’

Grading computer science tasks can be particularly tricky —and time consuming, Meghji said, which is why Code.org was interested in exploring possible AI solutions.

Many teachers who lead computer science courses don’t have a degree in the subject—or even much training on how to teach it—and might be the only educator in their school leading a computer science course.

Kevin Barry, a former social studies teacher, was tapped to teach computer science at his southern Maryland high school by a principal who noticed Barry’s facility with technology. Barry, who is one of a hundred educators who gave Code.org information to inform the development of its tool, hasn’t yet tested the product for himself.

Still, he already wishes that something like it had existed when he first stepped into the computer science teaching role nearly ten years ago.

Back then, “it took me even longer to grade because I didn’t know what I was grading,” said Barry, who teaches at La Plata High School. “I was learning it as I was doing it with the students. I had the answer key, but I didn’t know what I was doing.”

These days, the tool could help him challenge his highest flyers—giving Barry extra time to help those who may be struggling.

In his classes, “I’ve had the captain of the robotics team [and a] kid who lives on a farm and barely knows what the power buttons are,” along with 28 other students whose abilities are somewhere in between those extremes, Barry said.

“I have more advanced students that want to go on” to trickier projects, Barry said. If the tool was able to examine their work, “they can be working three assignments down the road.”

‘We should still always be the ones in control’

Knaus agrees that the tool could be a huge time-saver for teachers. She’s interested in seeing it go beyond grading, offering real-time feedback or assistance to students as they work on coding assignments.

Knaus was surprised by how in sync the tool’s assessment of student work seemed to be with her own. But if she disagreed with the tool’s estimation of an assignment, she wouldn’t hesitate to ignore the AI tool’s recommendation.

“I don’t know that it necessarily is going to always be completely accurate,” Knaus said. “When we think about AI, I think it’s really important for humans to understand that we should still always be the ones in control.

“I don’t think we want to get to the point where we trust AI” over our own knowledge, she concluded.

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2. how teachers manage their workload.

The vast majority of teachers say there’s not enough time in the workday to accomplish all that’s expected of them. Some 84% say they don’t have enough time during their regular work hours to do tasks like grading, lesson planning, paperwork and answering emails.

A bar chart showing that over 8 in 10 teachers say there’s not enough time in the day to get all their work done.

Reasons it’s so hard to get everything done during the workday

We asked teachers who say they don’t have enough time to get all their work done in their regular work hours about some of the possible underlying causes.

Most say simply having too much work is a major reason they don’t have enough time to get everything done.

Smaller shares say these factors are major reasons:

Often having to perform non-teaching duties such as hallway or lunch duty (24%)
Often spending time helping students outside class time (22%)
Often having to cover for another teacher’s class when they aren’t available (16%)

Shares ranging from 51% to 72% say each of these is at least a minor reason they don’t have enough time to get all their work done during regular work hours.

A horizontal stacked bar chart showing that about 8 in 10 teachers who say they don’t have enough time in their regular workday to get everything done say just having too much work is a major reason.

Staffing issues

A pie chart showing that 70% of teachers say their school is very or somewhat understaffed.

Staffing shortages in K-12 public schools have been widely reported. These shortages extend from classroom teachers to non-teaching staff. Seven-in-ten public K-12 teachers say their school is understaffed, with 15% saying it’s very understaffed and 55% saying it’s somewhat understaffed.

This pattern is consistent across elementary, middle and high schools.

Teachers in medium-poverty schools (18%) and high-poverty schools (19%) are more likely than those in low-poverty schools (11%) to say their school is very understaffed.

Balancing work and personal life

A diverging bar chart showing that a majority of teachers say it’s difficult for them to achieve work-life balance.

Given all of these challenges, it’s not surprising that a majority of teachers (54%) say it’s difficult for them to balance work and their personal life – 16% say this is very difficult, and 37% say it’s somewhat difficult.

About one-in-four say it’s very easy (6%) or somewhat easy (20%) for them to balance work and their personal life. And 20% say it’s neither easy nor difficult.

Work-life balance is more difficult for teachers who are women than for those who are men (57% vs. 43% say this is very or somewhat difficult).

How teachers experience their jobs

A horizontal stacked bar chart showing that large majorities of teachers say their job is often stressful, overwhelming.

Large majorities of teachers say they find their job to be stressful (77%) and overwhelming (68%) extremely often or often.

Smaller majorities say their job is frequently fulfilling (56%) or enjoyable (53%).

A bar chart showing that, among teachers, women are more likely than men to say they often find their job stressful, overwhelming.

Among teachers, women are more likely than men to say their job is frequently stressful or overwhelming. For example, 74% of women teachers say they find teaching to be overwhelming extremely often or often, compared with 49% of men.

Feeling stressed or overwhelmed is also more common among elementary and middle school teachers than among high school teachers.

When it comes to experiencing positive emotions, teachers who are newer to the profession are more likely than those with longer tenures to say they frequently find their job to be fulfilling.

A bar chart showing that newer teachers more likely to say their job is often fulfilling, enjoyable.

Among those who’ve been teaching for less than six years, 67% say their job is fulfilling extremely often or often. This compares with 52% among those who’ve been teaching for six to 10 years, and 54% among those with more than 10 years of teaching experience.

Newer teachers are also more likely than those who’ve been in the profession for more than 10 years to say they frequently find their job to be enjoyable.

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Table of contents, ‘back to school’ means anytime from late july to after labor day, depending on where in the u.s. you live, among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

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IMAGES

How to grade essays
5 Essay Grading Tips for Grading Essays Faster and More Efficiently
Manage & Grade Essays
How Long Does It Take To Do A 1500 Word Essay
Essay Topics for Grade 8, 9, 10, 12 + Writing Tips and Examples
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COMMENTS

How long do you spend grading essays? : r/teaching
3-5 pages, I'd say 30 minutes - 1 hour. Generally 15-30 minutes per paper. I spend 1-2 hours making a good (specific, detailed, objective as much as possible) rubric beforehand; after doing so, marking the essays becomes much faster. I imagine it will get even faster with more experience.
grades
Other elements will impact how long the grading takes. Such as are you grading all of the exams by yourself or are there other professors/teaching assistants grading exams. If there are multiple people sometimes it is necessary to have a collaborative meeting, and even co-grade several essays to make sure you are being consistent.
How to Grade Essays Faster
Tip 2: Give Student Choice. Let's say you've been working on a particular skill for a few weeks and have had your students practice using various writing prompts. Instead of feeling forced to provide feedback on every written response, let your students choose their best work for you to grade.
Grading Essays
Grade for Learning Objectives. Know what the objective of the assignment is and grade according to a standard (a rubric) that assesses precisely that. If the purpose of the assignment is to analyze a process, focus on the analysis in the essay. If the paper is unreadable, however, consult with the professor and other GSIs about how to proceed.
Grading Essays: A Strategy that Reflects Writing as a Process
She has taught high school English for 10+ years in Dallas, Chicago, and New York City and holds a M.A. in Literature from Northwestern University. She has always had a connection to the written word-- through songwriting, screenplay writing, and essay writing-- and she enjoys the process of teaching students how to express their ideas.
4 Tips for Managing Essay Grading
1. Stagger Due Dates For Essay Grading. For instructors teaching multiple sections, this is key. Full-time instructors at my institution teach five classes, so each deadline results in well over 100 papers submitted. That's a lot of essays to grade at once!
Grading Student Work
Use different grading scales for different assignments. Grading scales include: letter grades with pluses and minuses (for papers, essays, essay exams, etc.) 100-point numerical scale (for exams, certain types of projects, etc.) check +, check, check- (for quizzes, homework, response papers, quick reports or presentations, etc.)
Grading Essays Faster and Easier with These 20 Spectacular Tips
Grading Essays Tips From Other Teachers. 10 Tips for Grading Essays Quickly and Efficiently. Efficiently Grading Student Writing. 12 Smart Ideas to Grade Essays Faster. Tips for Grading Essays . After reading so many ideas and racking my brain it made sense to me to break these ideas into four categories.
12 Smart Ideas To Grade Essays Faster
9. Grade with a Timer. Think efficiency…Identify a maximum time to spend on each essay, say 3-minutes per page, so you don't linger too long on any one paper. To increase your focus, breathe deeply and perform 5-10 squats after completing 3 papers. 10. Grade with a Checklist.
HOWTO: 3 Easy Steps to Grading Student Essays
Using the criteria we selected (grammar, organization and overall effect) we will write a rubric to evaluate students' essays. The most straightforward evaluation uses a four-point scale for each of the criteria. Taking the criteria one at a time, articulate what your expectations are for an A paper, a B paper and so on.
Do professors really read student's papers (The truth from a PROF)
Students can determine if their professor actually read their paper by reviewing any feedback that their professors left them on their paper or in their online course. If there is no feedback, you should really ask your professors to help explain your grade so you know why you got the grade they assigned. If they don't have any explanation ...
Professor takes forever to grade (what to do)
Professors should follow their grading policy and grade accordingly. Professors will take longer to grade more complicated assignments like written research papers while shorter assignments should be graded faster. If a professor has a teaching or graduate assistant, they will likely have help grading and it can speed things up.
Why Teachers Take So Long to Grade Work
So a 10 question quiz takes 50 seconds to grade, which means two class periods' worth takes about 50 minutes. Sixty 20 question tests take — you guessed it — an hour and 40 minutes. Extended answer quizzes and tests take anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes per question to grade. So a 10 question quiz takes 10-30 minutes alone.
Grading Papers: When Is Grading Taking Too Long? : r/Professors
I try to spend no more than 4-6 minutes per paper. Really good and really bad papers might take more time, but I can average about 5 minutes per paper within a section. I use a rubric and tend to focus my comments on particular things: unit 1- details and description, unit 2- organization, unit 3- whatever.
Grading Student Writing Takes So Much Time (For Me Anyway)
By John Warner. This past weekend, I graded a round of essays in my first-year writing course. With three sections of 20 students each, this means 60 essays, though attrition has already hit, leaving me with only 58 to work through. The two most cognitively taxing things I do in my life are try to write novels and to grade student writing when ...
7 Grading Tips for New Teachers
3. Have students grade other students: Sometimes new teachers forget what an amazing resource students can be. Instead of spending hours grading your students' work, you can spend 15 minutes of class time having students grade each other. It's important to address expected behaviors as a class before letting students give feedback to their ...
EssayGrader
The fastest way to grade essays. EssayGrader is an AI powered grading assistant that gives high quality, specific and accurate writing feedback for essays. Thousands of teachers use EssayGrader to manage their grading load everyday. On average it takes a teacher 10 minutes to grade a single essay, with EssayGrader that time is cut down to 30 ...
Teachers are using AI to grade essays. Students are using AI to write
Meanwhile, while fewer faculty members used AI, the percentage grew to 22% of faculty members in the fall of 2023, up from 9% in spring 2023. Teachers are turning to AI tools and platforms ...
Grading the EdReady Essay
3. The student's essay is displayed on-screen: you will make comments and give the student a grade of "Pass" or "Incomplete:" A grade of "Pass" means the student has met the requirements of the essay. This option will enter a grade of "Pass" in the student's account and return your comments to the student. The student will be notified and will ...
Grading Teacher-Graded Assignment Items and Projects
August 01, 2023 10:45. Print Article. Email Article. Teachers can use this page when grading any CTE or Odysseyware Grades 3-5 course assignments and projects. On the main menu, select Dashboard. The yellow alert icon indicates an ungraded item. Left-click on the icon. Note. Learn more about other alerts.
HOWTO: 3 Easy Steps to Grading Student Essays
If the student shows excellent grammar, good organization and a good overall effect, he would score a total of ten points. Divide that by the total criteria, three in this case, and he finishes with a 3.33. which on a four-point scale is a B+. If you use five criteria to evaluate your essays, divide the total points scored by five to determine ...
Teachers are using AI to grade essays. But some experts are ...
A report by strategy consultant firm Tyton Partners, sponsored by plagiarism detection platform Turnitin, found half of college students used AI tools in Fall 2023. Meanwhile, while fewer faculty ...
How long does it generally take you to grade a final?
For a 2-hour exam for 40 students, it would take me about 9.5 hours, if everything scaled linearly. But these things don't generally scale all that linearly, as a 2-hour exam would have harder questions, rather than just more easy questions, and so would take less time to grade (more blank or obviously wrong answers to give a 0 to). 9.
This AI Tool Cut One Teacher's Grading Time in Half. How It Works
How It Works. It usually takes Aimee Knaus, who has been teaching computer science for more than two decades, upwards of two hours to grade a classful of coding projects. This school year, she cut ...
2. How teachers manage their workload
Seven-in-ten public K-12 teachers say their school is understaffed, with 15% saying it's very understaffed and 55% saying it's somewhat understaffed. This pattern is consistent across elementary, middle and high schools. Teachers in medium-poverty schools (18%) and high-poverty schools (19%) are more likely than those in low-poverty schools ...