Transcription
March is when teaching starts to feel heavy. The grading piles up, the pacing gets tight, and burnout creeps in. But instead of letting March overwhelm me this year, I changed one thing in my planning routine. And it completely changed how I graded. Today, I'm taking you through my March planning and grading routine, and I'll show you exactly what changed.
Welcome back. If you're new here, I'm a high school English teacher navigating real classroom life, planning, grading, and trying not to drown in March. March is that in between month. You're not at the beginning, you're not at the end, and everything feels like it's due.
Before I even touch grading, I start with planning because clarity reduces stress. I'm currently teaching 9th grade English. We are wrapping up our first unit, which ended with literary analysis essays, and I'm preparing to enter our second unit for the semester, which is poetry. So, this week, I'm making sure that I have tightened up my lesson plans from the first semester. Since I already have that done, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. But I want to make sure that I introduce the students to poetry well. So I'm creating some activities that will engage them with poetry terms and devices so they connect those to the text that we will be reading this unit.
So this new unit is starting in the middle of the week. So I don't want to start introducing material just yet. So when we get together on Thursday, we are going to have an introductory activity where students will be introduced to the vocabulary for the unit and the devices that connect with poetry so they can be familiar with the terms and the meaning of those terms. So they'll be working individually and in groups and they'll also have some rotation stations that they will go through.
On Friday, we are going to open up the unit by unpacking the embedded assessments so we can begin with the end in mind. That way, we know exactly what we are going to be creating at the end of the unit. There are two embedded assessments. So, we're going to start by looking at the rubric and the explanation of the assignments, knowing how to achieve that exemplary and mastery level when we complete that assignment. And I feel like this really helped my students in the first unit. So, definitely continuing this moving forward.
Then on Monday, we will begin with our first poem, which is so amazing. It's called Tamar's Opus. I love reading this poem and the activities that go with it. Then we will have a quiz on that poem and next week we will start working on our poetry project Wednesday through Friday. So they will be doing that solo. And then they also have a group portion.
And for me, if your lessons are clear, grading becomes predictable because as I'm creating the lesson plans, I know exactly what assignments I will be grading and I can go ahead and put those into our learning platforms as well as our grading system.
Okay, let's talk the shift that changed everything. I stopped grading paper by paper and started grading skill by skill. And if you've seen a previous video, how I've used AI to save me time and hours, I've created a comment bank, a rubric score chart for students to give them feedback. So on this literary analysis essay, I am looking for specific things. I'm looking for a thesis. I am looking for the literary devices with evidence and commentary. And then I go back and look for conventions such as grammar, syntax, structure and all those things which we have discussed thoroughly in class. This keeps my brain focused. It keeps my feedback consistent and it cuts my grading time almost in half.
Yes, I still need to stay motivated and drink my energy drink. I get tired while reading. Yes, I still sigh and roll my eyes at some of the things that go into these papers, but I don't feel buried or consumed.
Once grading is done, I prep materials immediately. Future me deserves peace. I used to leave making copies until the morning, but that version of me is stress. Trying to rush here and beat everyone to the machine, that's a nightmare.
Teaching at the end of March isn't about perfection. It's about momentum. I don't need every lesson to be revolutionary. I need it to be consistent. Progress over perfection keeps me sane. The things have to get done.
So, this is just a general overview of my planning routine. If you would like me to go more in depth with it, let me know. Drop down in the comments and say planning reset and I'll film that for you. March isn't about surviving. It's about systems.