On my last day of student teaching, my students and cooperating teacher presented me with a gift basket of everything I would need to be a teacher.
I was all set as I struck out in my own classroom. I had a copy of The BFG (autographed by all of my students) that I could use as a read aloud. I had pens, markers, and highlighters. I had a grade book and a plan book. But most important, buried deep within the basket was The EZ Grader.
I’m sure most of you are aware of the EZ Grader. It was an interlocking sliding piece of cardboard that quickly gave you percentages of questions right and wrong depending on the number of questions. You just gave students a fifteen question math quiz, and a student got 7 wrong?
Boom. 47% in the grade book.
19 questions. 7 wrong. Boom. 63%.
It was a simple but useful tool. And as a young teacher, I certainly used it. The EZ Grader became the go-to to record all of those percentages easily into the grade book.
I had no clue what I was doing and the impact of the EZ Grader. Of those seven questions wrong, not once did I provide feedback to the student. I simply encouraged them to do better next time. I should have been encouraging myself to do better next time.
Over the years, I did learn to share meaningful feedback with students, and over time, I relied less and less on the EZ Grader.
I haven’t seen one in years, but checked and found that you can get an EZ Grader on Amazon for about ten bucks. Or three of them for twenty-five bucks. If, of course, you and two other teacher friends want to throw some meaningless percentages at students.
Providing meaningful feedback to students requires a little more work. Hopefully, all of us are putting in that extra effort to help students grow as learners.
Don’t take the EZ way out.
Rich