Grading

Due to the creeping crud that both my hubby and I had last week, I didn't get a set of 7th grade autobiographical essays finished until this weekend. I should have had them ready to hand back a week ago but it just didn't happen. I was really feeling awful, and as I told the students, they certainly didn't want me grading their papers while I felt that terrible. Who knows what kind of grade they would have received!

Well, I'm going to be busy this week. Tomorrow I will collect persuasive essays on Positive Thinking (based on Hatchet) and my Writers' Workshop students will turn in their fourth short story. I watched one of these stories come off the printer - 9 pages - oh my! The next day, I have research papers due from my 8th graders who have been reading A Single Shard. These papers all have something to do with Korea, but since I didn't want huge papers to grade (5-7 pages required), I provided the list of possible topics. So I will be occupied with about 90 essays/research papers. I really need to plan this month better!

However, I do know it could be much worse. The junior high teacher at the public school across the street has 30-35 kids in each of her classes. Imagine... That would mean at least 180 essays to grade. Normally, I read each student's paper three times, and depending on the paper, this can take from three to fifteen minutes each. That's 4.5 to 22.5 hours. Just think, it could be 9 to 45 hours! That's a lot of grading!