How Would Bob Ross Grade A Stack Of Essays?

I have blown many an ELA teacher’s mind with what I am about to say …

Here goes …

YOU DON’T “NEED” TO TRADITONALLY GRADE ESSAYS ANY LONGER!!

In fact, not only do traditional grading methods consume our evenings and weekends, but they do very little in terms of helping our students grow and mature as writers.

So, we need to ask ourselves … why do we insist on doing something that saps us of all of our energy and doesn’t work?

Over the course of my career, I have developed an entire system of alternative grading practices.

For the method I am going to share today, I asked myself a question …

How would Bob Ross grade a stack of essays?

In my latest YouTube video, I share with teachers an alternative grading method that I entitle “Grading Myself the Color of Bob Ross.”

The problem with traditional grading practices is that we do 99.9% of the heavy lifting.

Think about it …

We load our student’s essays with comments and assign a grade.

What are we asking our students to do? What are they tasked to lift?

And this is exactly why the system doesn’t work.

In my video, explore how students actually engage the evaluation process and equip themselves with concrete learning targets to improve as writers.

Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zM2sHW2lmw

It is my sincere desire that ELA teachers never sacrifice an evening or a weekend ever again futilely cramming comments into margins.

On the first Wednesday of February, I will be presenting a FREE webinar with Perfection Learning whereby I’ll showcase a number of my alternatives to traditional grading. I’ll post about it in the groups as the date nears.

This is the kind of “stuff” that will comprise my portion of the textbook I am collaborating on with Timm Freitas. In addition to my templates and discussion modalities, this is the flavor of what you can expect.

Also, in the coming weeks (most likely the end of February), I will be launching another Teach It “Write” 5-Week Mastermind. If you would like more information, please reach out.

My webpage also has some information about the Mastermind:

https://teachinghow2write.com/teach-it-write-mastermind/

Here’s to never grading the same way again!

And here’s to truly watching our students take off as writers!