Feel pressed for time? Let your students swap papers and grade each others’ work in class every so often. No, I’m serious. It is a good idea and it is also legal, even encouraged, by the highest law in the land.
The Owasso vs. Falvo decision was made ten years ago, but it bears reviewing, especially at this time of the never-ending winter when malaise and pressing to-do lists sap our time and energy.
Student grading is allowable and it is not an invasion of privacy according to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the 2002 decision the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that there is nothing illegal about swapping papers and grading them in class. In fact, the practice even encouraged by the high court:
“Correcting a classmate’s work can be as much a part of the assignment as taking the test itself,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself and seven colleagues in the decision.
“It is a way to teach material again in a new context, and it helps show students how to assist and respect fellow pupils,” wrote Kennedy, a former law professor who still teaches several classes a year.
Peer grading offers students immediate feedback on daily lessons. Students often enjoy the instant results and they can learn from each other when we discuss the answers. It also saves teachers time, allowing them to concentrate on doing the tasks they are best suited for like creating lessons for their students that incorporate best teaching practice.
When was the last time the Supreme Court voted unanimously on anything? ALL of the justices hardly ever agree on a ruling. But they did in this case because it is not only lawful, it is a good idea. According to the highest court in the land, this is good practice. Who are we to argue?
Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec01/sc_cases.html
Interesting, I did not know this went to the Supreme Court, for some reason it seems very trivial.
I always have students grade their own papers. One student is responsible for getting the small quiz papers and red pens started around the class, and by the time everyone is settled and has their stuff, we get going. Then they put their pencils/pens down, far from their hands, and pick up the red pen (they can’t have the non-red pen in their hand at any time while correcting it), and then we correct it. As Bryce would say, works for me.
It seemed a bit trivial to me when I first heard it too, Jim, but I’m glad we have this ruling. Saves so much time. Combine this with the research on the futility of error correction and we can spend a much great chunk of class on C.I.
I admire this level of organization, Jim. I’m not sure I could pull that off. I think I would lose the red pencils.
In keeping with the TL threads on some other blogs and sites lately, do you give these instructions in the TL? Just wondering because I do that, but some are arguing that we should concentrate on high frequency words. Seems like my students lose focus and revert to English if I start using too much of it for routine tasks.
I’ve had students complain and suggest that it’s a violation of privacy. For that reason I have a poster hanging up that talks about that court case. I don’t remember where I got the poster from though, maybe from this site?
Could be, Chris. I think Ben Slavic also has it available on his site under “Posters”
It’s not much organization, really. I just have one kid responsible for passing them out and getting them back.
Come to think of it, I often don’t give the directions for taking a quiz, in Spanish, because we’re usually rushed and I want no confusion as to what is happening. But it doesn’t involve me saying any more than “Quiz” (which I should use a more Spanish appropriate word, though “Quiz” I think is, if memory serves me right). The format is almost always the same (5 questions) and the routine was taught from Day 1.
So Bryce, do you go through the whole thing and say “take out a pencil” “write you name on the quiz” etc etc?
When we do a quiz at this time of the year in my Spanish One classes I say (in Spanish) a variation of: “You need some paper now, class. So take out a sheet of paper. Just one sheet of paper is OK. Write your name, the date and the class on it, please. Now write the numbers from one to ten. There will be ten questions.” I try to make the language rich so that the top kids can get more language and the very bottom SPED kids can get “paper” and “10”.
I always say the “write your name, date and class” thing because unless I remind them all of the time it seems like my students gradually revert to simply writing their first name on their paper and nothing else, so I say it every time. Your students probably never would do that. ;-)
I ramp up the language as we go through the year. The first week they learn “name, date and class” because they have to write those on every paper. that is a school-wide thing that we are asked to do, plus I have them write out the date in Spanish on every paper (it is always updated and on the white board every morning as an assigned student classroom job) so that they can passively learn the date formula, months and numbers as we go through the year.
I give extra credit every so often if they indeed have the entire date written out in Spanish on their paper, because so tend to slack on it if I don’t. Random reinforcement works best–just ask the folks in Vegas!