To Grade or Not to Grade

When I was student teaching I was feeling really overwhelmed with grading. I had stacks of of papers that I didn't know what to do with and didn't really have time to grade. I talked to my cooperating teacher about it and she told me something that was kind of revolutionary to me at the time. You don't need to grade everything. If the point is for students to learn and not necessarily show what they know, you don't need to grade every assignment.

I've been trying to remember this as grades are due this week. There are several assignments I had my students do to get them thinking about material. But the point was to get them thinking and writing, not for them to prove knowledge. I've taken to handling assignments like these in two different ways. Some I grade on completion; they get points just for doing it. And others just don't get graded. The point was for them to learn something, analyze something, think about class material. I don't need to grade all of these.

I've taken to calling these kind of assignments "activities" instead of assignments. It changes how students think about what they are doing. Instead of thinking just about getting the assignment done, or how to get points, they think about the process they are following. And that is what I want them to be doing. Now I just need to find a way to change how we think about assignments that I do grade, that are designed for students to show what they know.