essay grading tips

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!

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• 10 Tips for Grading Essays Quickly and Efficiently

We’ve all been there. No one likes marking. But as a professor, it’s part of the job description. One of the draft titles of this post was even “How to Grade Essays Without Wanting to Commit Murder.” While there are some great guides on teaching the mechanics of grading available, there isn’t much useful advice on how to make grading easier apart from either having fewer assignments or providing less feedback. In the real world, neither one of these is very useful. But there are strategies that every instructor or professor can follow to make grading essays quicker and more efficient. Here are some of mine.

1) Have Faith in Yourself

One of the biggest problems I’ve faced and continue to face as an instructor is Imposter Syndrome, or the belief that I’ve somehow fooled everyone around me into believing that I am a knowledgeable and competent person. Grading is one area where Imposter Syndrome likes to rear its ugly head. You will have finished reading a paper and then start to doubt that you’ve given it an appropriate grade. Or you worry that your students will get mad at you for giving them a bad grade. Or you’ll worry that this paper will result in a grade dispute, and then real professors will review and judge your work and find you wanting. Resist these thoughts. Remember that you have the expertise and good judgement to evaluate essays. Do not second-guess yourself. Assign a grade, make your comments, and move on. Have faith that you have done your best.

2) Don’t Repeat Yourself

It’s very common in research essays to see that same mistake made more than once. This is particularly the case when it comes to footnotes and bibliographies, which are often filled with tiny mistakes. Don’t spend all your time correcting these mistakes. Fix it once, and explain what you did. If you see it again, circle it and write something like “see previous comment on…” If it’s a systematic problem, I’d then make a note to mention this problem in the comments and say that you’ve only corrected a couple of instances to give them an idea of how to do it properly. This is not high school, and it is not your job to find every single mistake on an essay and correct it. Instead, identify the problem, and give your student an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned. The same goes for grammar and spelling. If it’s a serious issue, I always recommend that students go see the Writing Centre. It’s not your job to teach them how to write (unless it’s a composition class, in which case, good luck!)

3) Create a Comment Bank

You’ll notice that after a while, you will repeat the same sentences over and over again. To save yourself from having to either remember what you said last time or type or to write the same sentence over and over again, create a Word document with your most common comments. This is sometimes referred to as a Comment Bank or a Teaching Toolbox. I will do a whole blog post on this in the near future, but it’s easy to get started. If you save your comments on your computer, read through them and copy and paste the most common into a new Word document. For example, one that I use a lot is “While I can see that you are trying to make an argument here, you spend too much time describing or summarizing your sources rather than analysing them. In general, you should avoid description as much as possible.” The time and frustration you will save is immeasurable

4) Create a Bibliographic Bank

Odds are you will receive several papers on a given topic. Once you’ve been marking for a while, you’ll notice that you keep recommending the same books or articles. Again, to save you from having to remember which sources you want to recommend and/or typing out the full references, create a Word document with a list of topics and some of the most important sources listed for each. This way you only do the research once, rather than a million times. This is also helpful if you want to evaluate whether your students have selected appropriate sources or have missed important ones. Your comps list can be a great starting point.

5) Make a Grading Conversion Chart

In general, most assignments require three different “grades”: a letter grade, a percentage, and a numeric grade (like 7 out of 10). They each have their own purposes, but the odds are you will need to convert between them. Even when working at one institution for many years, it can be hard to do this conversion in your head. Spend several years as a sessional at multiple universities with their own ideas about what each letter grade means, and the problem grows exponentially. My solution is is to use an Excel spreadsheet of grades. This is relative easy to create. Mine look like this:

It’s really easy to do. Each “out of” number has three columns. The first is a numeric grade. The second is that grade converted to a percentage (it’s easier to do with a formula, and then just do “fill down.”) The third column is the corresponding letter grade. You can fill these in manually, or you can use a formula.

Here’s mine, but make sure yours corresponds to your institution’s grading scheme! =IF(K19>=95%,”A+”,IF(K19>90%,”A”,IF(K19>=85%,”A “, IF(K19>=80%,”B+”, IF(K19>=75%,”B”,IF(K19>70%,”B-“, IF(K19>65%,”C+”,IF(K19>60%,”C”,IF(K19>55%,”C”, IF(K19>50%,”P”,IF(K19>0%,”NC”,)))))))))))

6) Mark in Batches

I like to run, and when you’re really tired and facing a long run, thinking of the time remaining in intervals makes it much easier. The same is true for marking. A stack of 100 essays seems insurmountable. So what I do is break that stack down into manageable groups, usually 3 or 5 essays, which is about an hour to an hour and a half of grading, depending on the length of the essay. I sit down, grade those essays, type the comments up, put the grades into my grading sheet, and then take a break of at least 45 minutes. This is part of the SMART goal system (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound). It really does help make the grading feel achievable while also ensuring that you are giving your mind a break every one in a while. Once you’ve finished your batch, either set them aside in a different location or put a tick or some kind of mark on them so you can easily tell that they are all finished.

7) When in Doubt, Roll Up

Many essays seem to fall in a valley between one grade and the next, like when you’re not sure if it’s a B- or a B. In these cases, I almost always roll up. This was advice that I got when I was a TA, and it stuck with me. Try to give your students the benefit of the doubt. Remember that university is hard. Many students take multiple classes and/or work while in school. If you are dealing with a paper on the borderline between one grade and the next, or your paper is within 1 to 2% of rolling to the next letter grade, then just bump the grade. It’s always better to err on the side of generosity. And giving someone a 69.5% instead of a 70% is just a bit of a dick move.

8) Don’t Waste Your Time

There will be essays that are so bad that they defy all explanation. Either there are no footnotes or bibliography, the essay is 3 pages when it was supposed to be 8, or the student just completely ignored your instructions. In other words, it’s obvious that the student just doesn’t care. Don’t waste your time commenting on these papers. If your student can’t be bothered to read the instructions, then you have no obligation to spend your precious time marking the paper. I usually place a comment to the effect of: “I would strongly recommend that you review the requirements for this assignment, which can be found on the Research Assignment Instructions sheet.” I find that this is firm, but fair. Save your energy for the students who really put effort into their papers, even when they don’t succeed.

9) If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Say Something Nice Anyways

Students are humans (though it’s easy to forget this sometimes…), and respond best to positive reinforcement. So try to find something good to say about the essay. Some suggestions, courtesy of my good friend Clare include: “Nice margins!” “Excellent choice of font!” On a more serious note, I usually go with something like “This is a great effort!” or “I can see that you are trying here!” I always use the positive-negative-positive sandwich. Put a positive comment, then a negative comment, and then another positive comment. This tends to motivate students to do better rather than just feel defeated. Remember, your job is to encourage students to learn, so make them feel like you are invested in their success.

Expert Tip: One variation on the positive-negative-positive sandwich comes courtesy of my friend Teva Vidal: “The “shit sandwich” is for kids who deserve detailed feedback but who just missed the mark: start off with the main strengths of what they wrote, then lay it on thick with what they screwed up, then end on a positive note in terms of how they can use what they’ve already got going for them to make it better in the future.

10) Try to find some joy in the work

You know how “Time flies when you’re having fun”? Well, this approach can help with marking. Try to have a sense of humour about the whole thing. There will be times when you become angry or frustrated because it seems like students are ignoring your instructions and therefore losing marks unnecessarily. Laughing this off will help. Some professors like to collect so-called “dumb” sentences and post them online. There are a number of ethical problems with that that I will not get into here. But I can and have shared them with my husband when I’m grading in the room with him. We can laugh together and I blow off steam (Saving your marriage through marking! I can see my husband laughing right now). I also like to mark with a bright pink pen, since it’s hard to get mad when you’re writing in pink ink.

—————————————-

So those are my suggestions for making the grading of essays a little more pleasant. I think the most important takeaway is that it’s worth spending the time to create tools. For many years, I would waste time researching lists of sources, writing out the same comments, and using a calculator. But my time, and yours, is precious, so work smart, not hard (this is becoming something of a motto…). Any other tips for grading essays quickly and efficiently? Let me know in the comments below!

So You Want to be a Sessional

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November 18, 2017 at 7:59 am

Many thanks for this! Found it really useful while I’m grading my mid-terms 🙂 The comment about imposter syndrome resonated with me – I’m always second guessing if I should grade higher or lower, or leave it. Most times, I re-read the essay and see that my grading was actually fair first time around.

November 18, 2017 at 5:00 pm

Same here! I still struggle with this, and I’ve been teaching for nearly ten years! Glad I could help!

October 16, 2019 at 3:32 pm

Im a new tertiary level lecturer and I am finding marking the most insightful way to udnerstand how students think. Some of the papers I have marked recently have been indescribable, incomprehnsible and just mere reflections of what I am defining as ‘laziness’. To justify this definition I thought long and hard and finally realised that if it took me truck loads of hours to get it right on essay writing, and to Masters level thats a lot of assignments.  So when I really feel confused I reflect back on my own learning experiences and use that as a secondary standard with the marking rubric the primary standard…I refuse to compromise my standards of learning just to enable a lazy student to maintain theirs.

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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.

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The Innovative Instructor

Pedagogy – best practices – technology.

Quick Tips: Grading Essays and Papers More Efficiently

If you are among those who don’t teach during the summers, grading papers may be the furthest thing from your mind at the moment. Before we know it, however, a new semester will be starting. And now is a good time to be thinking about new directions in your assessment and evaluation of student work, especially if your syllabus will need changing as a result.

Jenkins, who teaches several writing-intensive courses every semester, notes that it is easy to take on the pose of a martyr when faced with stacks and stacks of multiple-paged papers, especially when the process is repeated a few times for each class. He offers eight guidelines for keeping grading in balance with the aspects of teaching that are more enjoyable. Jenkins proposes that you:

• Change your bad attitude about grading. Grading is an integral part of teaching. View grading student work as an opportunity to reinforce class concepts and use misconception that arise in their papers as a basis for class discussion.
• Stagger due dates. Plan in advance and have students in different sections turn in essays on different dates.
• Break it down. Determine an optimum number of papers to grade at one sitting. Take a break for an hour before starting another session.
• Schedule grading time. Literally. Put it on your calendar.
• Have a realistic return policy. Jenkins says, “I’ve chosen to define ‘a reasonable amount of time’ as one week, or two class sessions. Occasionally, if I get four stacks of papers in the same week, it might take me three class meetings to finish grading.”
• Be a teacher, not an editor. Stay out of the weeds and focus on the major problems with the essay. Jenkins limits editing “to situations where a simple change of wording or construction might have broader application than to that one essay.”
• Limit your comments. For undergraduates, a few observations will be more useful as a teaching strategy than pages of commentary. Jenkins tries to offer one positive comment and three suggestions for improvement.
• Limit grading time on each essay. Following the suggestions above will help you reduce the time you need to spend on each paper.

One thing Jenkins doesn’t mention is using a rubric for grading. Rubrics can be a powerful tool for consistent grading across the class or sections, as well as a means for students to understand how the assignment is being evaluated. See previous Innovative Instructor posts on rubrics: Creating Rubrics and Sharing Assignment Rubrics with Your Students .

You might also be interested in some of The Innovative Instructor’s past posts on grading: Feedback codes: Giving Student Feedback While Maintaining Sanity and  Quick Tips: Paperless Grading .

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Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Microsoft Clip Art

One thought on “ Quick Tips: Grading Essays and Papers More Efficiently ”

Rubrics… The schools have worked with recently, have provided students with rubrics on key aspects of the essay. By presenting students with the key requirements, I scan the paper for the elements – then review each to ensure they have covered each adequately or with great detail. Grades are assigned accordingly. My comments are relevant to the rubric measure, eliminating any confusion for the expectations or student effort.

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