Umpires, and Training Students to Grade Each Others' Daily Quizzes

The most effective tool I've ever discovered for 9th grade conceptual physics is not the daily quiz - it's the grading of the daily quiz.  Students trade papers, pick up the red pens I provide, and mark right or wrong as I go over each answer.  

The purpose here is pedagogical, not logistical.  I'm perfectly capable of rephrasing these questions as multiple choice for ease of grading; and it's not like I don't have time to grade these simple quizzes, anyway.  No, the reason we trade and grade daily quizzes is that students pay attention to each question threefold:  once when they take the quiz, once to figure out how to grade the quiz in front of them, and once to think about whether they themselves got each question right. 

It's essential, though, to establish an appropriate tone and ground rules in order for trade-and-grade to be successful.  Here are some principles that my class learns that make the daily quizzes work.

(1) We are a team.  Daily quiz performance is just like a football team's conditioning sprints.  Teams have fast and slow players.  Good teammates respect the effort and talent of those who are the fastest; good teammates encourage and respect those who are slower, too.  

The team atmosphere must be established from the first day of school.  The highest form of sin in my class is to denigrate  a classmate for a wrong answer.  Even negative body language directed at another student - a teammate - is unacceptable.  

Because we are a team, we can depersonalize the grading process.  A grader is acting as an umpire for the team.  Umpires don't call people out because they dislike the players, they call safe or out honestly based on their judgment, and on a shared respect for the game.  A good team doesn't want a biased umpire, even if the bias is in their favor - they want to win or lose with integrity.  Those who play sports know that a tainted win is nothing to be proud of. 

(2) Don't look at or talk to the person grading your paper.  You have enough to focus on with the paper you are grading.  Trust your classmate to evaluate your work appropriately.  No one respects the player who continually tells the umpires how to do their job.

(3) Don't talk to the person whose paper you're grading.  Imagine an umpire who, presented with a close pitch, asks the catcher: "Hey, did you mean for that pitch to be over the outside corner?"  The batter would go berserk!  So students should never ask "hey, did you mean this line to be straight?"  If you can't tell, mark it wrong.  The burden is on the student writing the quiz to communicate clearly.  

(In my AP classes, I ask regularly: "Are you allowed to travel with me to Kansas City in order to accompany your exam from reader to reader explaining what you meant?  No?  So don't get in that habit now.")

(4) Ask for help on borderline calls.  The class is instructed to raise their hands and read me any answers they're not sure about.  Not generalities like "What if the student kinda hinted at the answer?"  I ask the student to read, verbatim, what is on the page.  I then make a call one way or the other, and we move on - just like an umpire.  

And if the student who wrote the answer tries to chime in what he meant, I politely say, "Since the answer needed clarification, it must be incomplete.  Please mark it wrong."

(5) Be transparent.  Just as a league doesn't assign the same umpire to the same team too many times, be sure you're mixing up occasionally who gets whose paper.  Have the graders write "graded by" and their name at the top of the page, and make it clear that accurate grading is a skill that you are assessing.  Ask students to place their own pencils and pens on the floor while grading goes on, so that the only writing utensil available is the red pen - that way, it's not possible to change an answer dishonestly.  

If you suspect someone is grading inappropriately to benefit (or hurt) a classmate, don't ignore it, but don't get preachy!  I've had small issues early on - students giving credit when they shouldn't, hoping to curry favor with a classmate.  Those were easily and definitively solved when I asked publicly but earnestly, "Luke, can you please show me why you marked this answer correct?  I think it's clearly wrong, but am I missing something?"  That's all it takes.

(6) Make instant replay available.  We have a standing rule - students may never, ever, argue or discuss with the person who graded their paper.  But they may circle in red a question they think was graded inappropriately, signaling me to take a look.  They can't talk to me, they can't tell me what they meant, they can just circle the question.  And, if the grading was indeed incorrect, I will change the score and let both student and grader know what happened and why.

Early on, usually I get a bunch of students circling their answers, hoping to argue for a better score.  That ends quickly when they can't talk to me to lawyer up.  If someone can't stop arguing and circling obviously wrong answers, I tell that student that I'll take off an additional point for each answer they challenge incorrectly.  (Kind of like how in the NFL a coach loses a time out if he incorrectly challenges a ref's call.)

Thing is, students are more careful graders than I am.  The process is quite fair - even moreso than if I combed through all the quizzes.

The most important point to keep in mind, though, is that the grading process is not even about fairness.  The goals are twofold - to provide an arena in which students are paying attention to physics facts, but also to establish that physics has right or wrong answers.  

Within a week my class has stopped arguing with me about grades.  They know what my answer will be - it is the student's responsibility to communicate correct physics the first time, in writing.  They've seen that the entire class is held to the same standard, that no one can sycophantically beg for points after the fact.