🚌 My Favorite Printable Grading Sheet [+ Template]
Steal this FREE template for longer lasting grading sheets.
I was born too late for physical grade books. At least as a teacher.
Oh, I remember them as a student alright. In the early 2000's, teachers clutched them during fire drills. Grades meant bringing triplicated reports to the teacher's desk as they figured grades by hand. With calculators.
When I started teaching, schools still supplied spiral bound grade books and lesson planning books. Instead, I started by copy-pasting names to spreadsheets. Printable grade sheets saved time writing names. But they faced different problems.
Poor visuals meant short lifespans.
You see, after crawling less than halfway across the page, my eyes lost the names. So I’d stop frequently to find names and print new sheets every three weeks, wasting time and paper.
Eventually the wasted paper got me. I had to redesign the grade sheet.
Two problems stood out: (1) My eyes couldn't follow left to right because (2) printouts lacked visual anchors. So I went to work.
Eventually I settled on two changes: (1) Names repeated mid-sheet and (2) I broke the grid into sections—every five lines. This allowed easier reading left and right, up and down. See below.
What happened? Grade sheets lasted weeks longer, saving time and paper. They'd last so long on average that I'd need new staples as the sheet fell apart!
And I'm making them available. For free.
How do you use it? Just input your names on the left and they will repopulate the middle. That's it! Feel free to widen column widths and delete name spaces accordingly.
Let me know if you have any questions or feedback.
🎁 New to the blog? Check out my recent starter pack as well as a Google Drive Folder with FREE classroom resources! Also, The Honest School Times has your schooling satire.
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It's the little things like this that can take up so much time and energy to perfect as a teacher. I love it when teachers share things that work for them for others to use. Would it be awesome to make money off of everything we spend hours making or perfecting as a teacher? Yes. But I love it when teachers share things in the hopes that it makes another teacher's life easier. Thank you!