One of my favorite scenes in Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone book occurs in Ollivander’s wand shop when Harry learns about the wizards’ most powerful tool: their wand. Ollivander explains that each wand is unique, and that a wizard will never achieve ideal outcomes when using another wizard’s wand. As Harry tries wand after wand, nothing happens except the discard pile grows and grows until finally he finds the perfect match and sparks begin to fly, literally.
By now you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with academic productivity? Or pedagogy? Or anything remotely relevant to ProfHacker.com?
My topic today is what I like to call “The Magic Pencil.” The Magic Pencil (MP) is my grading instrument of choice, and it has fundamentally changed that part of my time which is spent grading papers. My MP may not be your MP–you might not even like to grade in pencil. You might prefer green or purple or even the verboten red pen. Me, I have to grade in pencil. But let me be clear, when I say that I have to grade in pencil, I don’t mean that it is mandated by my dean or my college, nor am I suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. But grading in pencil, and grading with the Magic Pencil in particular, has markedly improved the quality of my grading life to such a degree that I am loathe to grade with other utensils unless it is absolutely necessary.
So what is so great about the Magic Pencil? Before I get to the list, I should point out that I teach English, so the bulk of my grading is essays rather than short-answer questions, equations, or multiple-choice. I can grade objective assignments in ink without issue, but grading essays is an entirely other ballgame.
- In general, I find that grading in pencil is easier and faster than grading in ink. For me this has everything to do with confidence. If I am grading in ink, I automatically slow down and become much more cautious about what I can and cannot say. Ink is, after all, permanent. When I grade in pencil, I can move more quickly through the paper and jot down my thoughts, reactions, and questions as I go. I need not worry about being too harsh or too vague at this point, not do I concern myself with handwriting. Knowing that I can go back and edit or supplement (or erase) my comments later on frees me from worrying so much about the best way to make a suggestion or ask a question.
- I can also take my time assigning grades. Usually, I will assign a grade after reading through the paper (with comments), but I used to worry that I was being inconsistent, especially when I had more papers to grade than I could get through in a day or two. Using pencil allows me to record my gut response to a paper, but if I find that my higher expectations at the top of the pile are tempered by the reality of execution halfway through, I can adjust the scores easily. I also like to avoid slash grades, those A-/B+ or B+/A- marks of indecision that would have driven me right off the edge had they been in vogue when I was an undergraduate. I like + or – grades, but I do not like both at the same time on the same essay. And yet, there are plenty of times when I find myself on the fence between A- and B+ or B- and C+. Grading in pencil allows me to defer that call until I’ve finished the stack and gotten a better sense of the spread.
- I do go back through the pile and mark the final grade in ink just to avoid any temptation that students might have to change their grades. I haven’t had that happen yet, but I decided that I’d rather not ever have to fight that particular battle. Going over the grade in ink gives the final mark a nice finality. It also forces me to remember to record the grades in my gradebook.
- But the Magic Pencil is not just any old pencil. My weapon of choice is a Sensa Classic .5mm mechanical pencil. I didn’t find it in Diagon Alley; I happened upon it in a card and stationery store many years ago while in graduate school. I, being poor, didn’t buy the pencil then, but I never forgot about it, and a year or two later, I happened to find one on E-Bay, and the rest was history. But whichever kind of writing utensil you choose, be sure that you can grip it comfortably.
- At the end of the day, no matter how fancy, a pencil is only as good as its eraser. I wore the Sensa erasers out long ago. Instead of replacing the tiny nub over and over again, I opted for a separate eraser. My favorite is the Staedtler brand Mars Plastic–they remove any and all traces of former remarks or indecision.
What kind of pen or pencil do you use to grade? Do you have other tools or tricks that have helped you to streamline the process? Please share in the comments section below.
[Photo by Flickr user Horia Varlan and licensed through Creative Commons.]
Comments
1. Aeon Elpis - February 23, 2010 at 06:47 pm
I use a green pen. I like the implication that feedback helps the student's work to grow rather than to bleed.
2. Kaitlin - February 23, 2010 at 06:52 pm
I like purple. Also glitter pens. But really, anything that writes smoothly and doesn't smear. I like the idea of writing in pencil because you can change things, but I've never found pencils very comfortable to write with.
I also have to record my grades in an old-school (read: paper) gradebook. I'd be too nervous to lose everything if I kept it all on a computer or on Blackboard!
3. CT - February 23, 2010 at 07:09 pm
I've been making all my comments using MS word for about 4 semesters now. I type marginal comments and have it track any changes I make, then print the graded paper to .pdf and email that back. I don't have a problem if my students would rather turn in a hard-copy for whatever reason, but I prefer the all electronic method for several reasons: -saves paper and cuts down clutter -as with a pencil, I can easily change my mind without leaving a trace of it -I get to keep a copy of the commented on paper (big advantage in comp. classes for keeping track of revisions and remembering my recommendations) -I have a word doc filled with routine comments for copying and pasting (a real time saver)
As for my pen of choice, it's a pentech stick gel. I bought like a hundred of them for $25. Every once in while I get a bum one that just won't right, but usually they give me a nice flow, and at a quarter a piece I never worry about losing one.CT
4. Elizabeth K. - February 23, 2010 at 07:20 pm
I like grading in pencil for all the reasons Erin enumerates, but I was advised long ago that it was a bad idea, as it makes it too easy for students to change the grade. I wanted to think better of students, but I've been given this advice more than once.
Perhaps I should follow Erin's example and write the comments in pencil but keep the ink for the final score.
5. Janice - February 23, 2010 at 08:02 pm
I prefer to grade electronically as CT said -- I can type a lot faster than I can scrawl and I either send off Word copies with the mark-up or export to PDF for students who're using non-compatible systems. I'd really like to find a universally compatible and non-proprietary alternative, though!
Barring the electronic comments, it's a pen of whatever colour is plentiful and available if I'm forced to mark hard copies. Right now that's blue ink as I bought a box of blue pens with a bit of comfy padding on them to ease my nerve-damaged grip.
6. Aimee - February 24, 2010 at 06:39 am
Dear Erin, Thanks so much for this post. I, too, only grade in pencil. I think that started in graduate school, when I was a 22 year-old writing instructor at a private liberal arts school, and I never was quite sure that what I was giving as feedback made sense! While I have much more confidence as a grader 15 years later, my MPs not only make the grading process faster, but also more pleasant: My MPs come from museum gift shops and other tourist attractions. I am worse than a kid at the end of museum visit, as I make a beeline right for the store. The CT Science Center has great pencils, as does the American Museum of Natural History, as we just discovered. When in a pinch, I also use Smencils, which amuses my students to no end. The magic comes in the positive associations: Holding the pencil, I realize that, despite how it feels from 3-7 in the morning when I am grading a batch of papers, I have not, and will not, be grading forever, and that the academic life that requires me to grade 8 hours a week in the middle of the night also allows me the free-time and resources to do many other fun things too. (Parents, beware, however: You will find a need to protect your beloved MPs. Last week I found that my Philadelphia Museum of Art pencil was mysteriously swapped for a Sponge Bob Square Pants pencil with a terrible eraser!)
7. William Patrick Wend - February 24, 2010 at 05:51 pm
I also grade electronically. I send it back to them in whatever format (doc, docx, odt, wps, etc) they send it to me with colour coded annotations. I then save a copy of their paper in odt format for my own records.
8. Erin E. Templeton - February 24, 2010 at 10:13 pm
I like the idea of shopping for pencils at different museums--one of my favorite pencils as a child was one I got at some Natural History museum, and a good 1/2 was a plastic tube filled with tiny polished stones. You could remove the eraser and pour them out if you wanted to, but I was too afraid that I would lose the stones if I did that, so I guarded it rather preciously . . . Thanks for your comment!
9. Erin E. Templeton - February 24, 2010 at 10:16 pm
I like the green implications as well--hadn't ever thought of it that way! I also like purple and turquoise ink, and Kaitlyn, I too have to record in a paper grade book. I use a spreadsheet to calculate grades, but I always enter them first into the gradebook. It's just part of my ritual. That and I'm afraid of losing things in the event of techno-disaster.
10. George H. Williams - February 25, 2010 at 07:34 am
Nice post! I like the comparison to the wands in the Harry Potter series: everyone has to figure out what works best for them and not assume there's a "one size fits all" approach.
When I grade in paper rather than in pixels, I tend to use a pen, but I'd forgotten the advantages of grading in pencil that you describe. Additionally, the line created by a sharpened pencil (or a mechanical pencil) is so much finer than that created by the pens I typically use, and this gives me a little more space to insert interlinear comments.
I still remember my professor -- Dr. Graves in "Advanced Expository Writing" -- who commented on our writing with a mechanical pencil. It just seemed so... precise. It left me with the sense that this was someone who took her time and was careful in reading our work.
11. Kaitlin - February 25, 2010 at 11:57 am
I had that too! I think it was from the Peabody Museum in New Haven or the Springfield Science Museum, but I'm sure lots of Natural History Museums have that kind of souvenir.
The hard part about getting pencils/pens from museums is that, unfortunately, they run out at some point. I had a pen that I loved from the Museo del Prado in Madrid, and I used it so much that it ran out rather quickly. When I returned to Madrid 10 years later, they didn't sell that particular pen any more.
On that same note, my current favorite pen is one I got at the Hotel Union Square in San Francisco. Instead of the cheap Bics you often get, it's a nice one with a grip. I'm trying very hard not to lose it or have it run out too soon!
12. Rana - February 25, 2010 at 03:25 pm
On hard copies, I grade in pencil, using a mechanical pencil with a padded barrel and a .5 HB lead. (Yes, I'm that nitpicky.) For the eraser, I like those ones that come in a holder and can be advanced a bit at a time.
These days I've been doing more grading on e-copies of assignments. For long ones, I'll use MS Word to add marginal comments. For both long and short ones, I like to generate a comments rubric hitting the main things I'm looking for - title, thesis, evidence, writing style, proofreading, other comments, etc. Then I go through it, writing summations as necessary. I mostly use Scrivener for this, because it is minimalist and works better in the background when I have multiple files open.
Grades themselves get recorded in ink on the paper (usually in a strange color, like turquoise or hot pink), and in Excel and the online gradebook.
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