Grading and Feedback

Grading in Google Classroom

Grading digital assignments has always been a bit of a hassle. You have to have students email you their assignments as attachments, then you have to download them, open them, and finally you can grade them. I personally know the instant feeling of frustration when the students forget to attach the assignment, or even worse, when you have to send the assignment back to the students for corrections because you know you will have to start the entire process again. If you have experienced that sense of dread when it comes to grading digital assignments, or if you have just given up on digital assignments all together because it is so cumbersome, then rejoice because Google Classroom is about to make your life a little better.

Google Classroom allows students to turn in their work and then collects it in one place where you can quickly move from one student to the next. You can view, grade, and even leave feedback for students' work without the inconvenience of having to download each assignment separately. If students need to make corrections, all you have to do is leave a comment so they know what they need to change. Students will be able to see your feedback and their grade as soon as you finish, so you will no longer receive dozens of emails asking for score information. Even learning how to grade is easy. Watch the video below to see how it's done, and you will be grading digital assignments in no time. The video begins with a review on posting assignments, so if you want to skip ahead, the grading portion of the video starts at around three and a half minutes.

Things to Keep in Mind

Grading works best with assignments that students are doing in G Suites (Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc).

You can quickly grade Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and PDFs; however, you will only be able to see a preview of the assignment. This means you can grade it and leave private comments, but you will not be able to manipulate these files without downloading them separately.

Files from programs other than those listed above will not give you a preview, which means you will have to download the files in order to grade them.

Tip: For assignments that will require you to download student work, you should still use Google Classroom. As students become familiar with this process for all their teachers, it will become easier than sending email attachments, and work that students attach to an assignment is saved in a folder in your Google Drive. If you need to go back later and retrieve student work, it will be easier than sifting through your email.

Note: There is a way for you to import grades from Google Classroom into PowerSchool; however it requires you to download and merge two spreadsheets. Unless you have very large classes, it is better to just manually enter the grades.

In the Next Lesson:

Now that you have started posting assignments and grades in Google Classroom, it is time to start informing students and guardians on how they are doing.

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