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The Only 4 Things to Prep for a New Grading Period

woman in white long sleeve shirt writing on paper

Grading Period

It can be overwhelming to reset for a new grading period, especially if you want to produce high-level reading and writing results. Focus your energy on these 4 tasks. They will make planning and lesson creation a breeze as the time goes on. This can be combined with my back-to-school set-up checklist for the start of the year.

1. Make a weekly calendar for each course listing the reading and writing topics.

My school is by trimester, but you can divide by quarters or semesters. I use one over-arching theme for the whole trimester with sheltered ELL/ELA classes, and I love this dwelling on a topic to develop it at different levels of knowledge. Other classes may demand subdivisions for multiple units. Each week, you can see the reading assignment and the writing topic. I’ve been working with The Writing Revolution 2.0 to help with pacing writing instruction.

Three columns, one for each trimester. Each column has rows describing the general reading and writing tasks for each week.

2. Make a general calendar with all the no school days/events, as well as any routines you’ll use across classes on certain days of the week (e.g. vocabulary notes, game days, etc.).

This minimizes time duplicating information. This calendar has 12 weeks together (for trimesters). Don’t separate by months. Just put a column to the left and put in the general dates instead of marking each box with the day of the week. I make three copies (one for each class I teach). If you keep all the calendars on the same document, you can see all three plans together–no more opening multiple docs!

3. Fill in a calendar for each class using your weekly plan as your guide. 

This can still be pretty general. I bold whatever assignments I want to grade each week. The general plans listed below are the routine activities we do, which I have made slides templates for easy editing.

Weekly Schedule Monday: vocabulary notes, reading instruction, studio Tuesday: vocabulary game, reading instruction, studio Wednesday: reading instruction, writing instruction, studio Thursday: vocabulary review, reading instruction, studio Friday: reading instruction, cafe or vocabulary game

4. Identify the vocabulary words to be taught each week from the readings and put them in a sheet with the definitions. 

I want to be intentional about selections, and any time I have chosen words as we go, I have failed. Fortunately, I use CommonLit most of the time, which gives you a lot of repeating words within their units. I choose three to teach per week (a Marzano vocabulary recommendation from his book). This list is easy to convert into a Canva presentation for the grading period. (video instructions for fast Canva presentations!). For a deep-dive on my vocabulary routine, check out Reliable Vocabulary Building Strategies that Transform Readers and Writers.

Unit Planning

The above assumes you already have a general idea of the texts, topics, and assessments you are doing. Let’s say you don’t have that. I’m assuming you have something from your district, like a book or type of paper you’re required to teach. If you have absolutely none of it, start with CommonLit. It has robust free offerings to help you get started. Either way, divide your teaching into three phases, allocating the time as is appropriate for your course, students, grading period, etc.

1. Basic Processes

In this section, plan to pre-assess, teach, and assess the following basic processes:

  • foundational literacy (if needed)
  • fluency (if needed)
  • taking notes while reading
  • writing a paragraph
  • discussion

These are the processes that serve as the foundation for most ELA courses. The assessments may or may not end up in the grade book depending on what’s appropriate for your course and students. The expectations for these processes can be reduced to 3-5 look-fors.

2. Proficiency

This section addresses

  • reading comprehension
  • holistic paragraphs and essays
  • more in-depth student discussions and debates

Comprehension can be assessed through multiple-choice, timed writing, or discussions. While basic process writing is about assessing and addressing various components of writing, this section is about how they work together as a whole. As the teacher, you are finding what makes writing in the course/grade proficient. Discussions and debates in this part are more student-led and there are higher expectations beyond the basics of participation and turn-taking. You’re looking more at the quality and depth of interactions.

3. Independence

This section allows for even more student choice and voice. Activities could include book clubs, projects, or cumulative Socratic Seminars. Assessment and instruction shift to project management, executive functioning, or 21st century skills. There may still be skill and content evaluation, but often times, students are evaluating their own work and teachers are grading their insights and reflections.

Beat the Grading Period Panic

For years, I hated the end of the grading period because I had to somehow finish up grading and also plan ahead. I always felt behind and overwhelmed. This simple checklist got me ready enough to start the next grading period. The most important thing is that whatever you decide, decide to stick with your decisions. Sure, a lesson may flop and need an extra day, but after these high-level decisions are done, stop fiddling. Don’t be like Carmy on The Bear and keep changing the menu.

Carmy from The Bear saying, “It’s perfect.”