Hello all, I'm nearing the end of my first two weeks of teaching and I have a tiny question: How do you return work to your students? I've done several worksheets and handing back one at a time seems ridiculous to me when I have close to 40 students in a class. I do have a student work center (in baskets for incoming homework, 3 hole punch, tape, stapler, hand sanitizer, etc.) I was thinking of having files next to the in baskets with returned work that students can pick up at their leisure. Does anyone else do this? If not, what do you do? Thanks so much!
I tried putting student work in a basket for students to rummage through to find their own. Most students didn't touch it. What I do now is hand the stack of papers to one or two students so that they can pass them out while I'm taking attendance and doing other beginning-of-the-period housekeeping tasks.
I find the kids are more than eager to help hand things back. Major assignments like tests or essays I will give back myself, but for everyday homework or worksheets I don't see any reason why a student can't pass back papers. Other ideas: If they sit in rows or groups you could make a pile for each row/group and give the pile to the first person in the row to pass back. I find when I do this that the kids look for their name and if it's not theirs they pass it on - they are so interested in getting their grade they don't care what anyone else got. Having a return folder for each kid could work but not for me I struggle with organization and I don't think I could handle 150 folders (for all my classes). I would probably just wind up having a student do that as well.
Oh I just thought one folder for each period, not for each student. Oh my gosh, no. I would have 150 of those too and then filing on top of it... no thanks! I like the idea of having a student pass back papers though (quizzes, tests, major papers I would do myself.)
I won't allow kids to pass back anything with a grade on it. I have a big problem with having other students seeing other students grades.
I found that it took me a while to hand out worksheets in the beginning of the class. So what I do is tape a folder to each group and then I'll put all my handouts in the morning then the kids just pull out the right sheet when it comes time. Just make sure you get a durable folder so it'll stand the test of time! Also when they go to hand in the papers I spend time in the beginning of the year to make sure they know that when the pass it over left to right their paper goes on the top so that when I grade them they stay in order and when I hand them back it's in order.
What I'm planning to do is that each of my sections has a colored folder. One side are for papers to grade and the other is for graded papers. I plan on having 2 to 3 assignments done before handing out papers (on average, depending on the assignments and situation), then clipping the papers together based on table (3 to 4 students to a table). I'll then just place the papers on the tables at the beginning of class or end depending on how the kids act.
