New in GradingPal 2.0
Teach It to Grade Your Way
Save your marking style once, in your own words, and reuse it on every assignment you create. Tell GradingPal how strictly you score, what you reward, and how feedback should sound — then stop telling it.
Optional, like everything in this part of the product. Here’s what it does with no instructions at all.
Your Rubric Doesn’t Say How You Mark
A rubric says what is being assessed. It does not say how strictly, in what spirit, or with which assumptions — and those are the reasons two teachers hand back the same essay with different marks on it. You reward what a piece attempts rather than penalising what it misses. You accept g = 9.81 without a student restating it. You would rather ask a question than give the answer.
None of that is written down anywhere, which is why handing marking to software has always felt like handing over more than the labour. Grading instructions are where you write it down — once, in the words you would use explaining it to a student teacher.
Two Lists, and Why They’re Separate
Every assignment carries two instruction lists. Grading rules change how work is scored. Feedback instructions change how it talks to students. Both appear when you create an assignment and in its settings afterwards.
Grading Rules
What moves the score. The marking judgement itself.
- “Reward what the work does well, not what it fails to do.”
- “Accept g = 9.81 unless the question says otherwise.”
Feedback Instructions
How it writes to the student. Never the score.
- “Sound like me, not a bot.”
- “Ask a question instead of giving the answer.”
Keeping them apart matters more than it sounds. In one combined box, “be lenient” and “be encouraging” pull in different directions and you can never tell which of them moved a mark. Split, they do exactly what you meant: leniency on the scoring side, warmth on the writing side.
A Library, With the Wording in the Open
You do not have to start from a blank box. Browse ready-made instructions by category and add the ones that sound like you.
On the grading side
Marking approach · Fairness · What counts · Scanned work
On the feedback side
Voice · How it teaches
What You Read Is What It Does
Every card shows the exact wording that will be used — on screen, in full, never behind a link or a “see details”. There is no hidden layer between the sentence you read and the sentence that does the work. If you want to know what a setting is doing to your grading, you read it.
Recommended First
If you are new, the picks most teachers start with are surfaced at the top rather than buried in a list of everything.
Where an Instruction Comes From
Some ready-made instructions draw on established teaching practice, and those carry a small “Research backed” note naming the source — Bloom’s taxonomy, or Ron Berger’s work on critique, for instance. The note tells you where the idea comes from. It is not a claim that we have tested the instruction or measured its effect on grades.
Change Any of Them
Customising a ready-made instruction makes your own copy. The original stays exactly as it was for everyone else.
Or Just Type What You Mean
A plain text box and an Add button. Write it the way you would say it out loud, add it, done — a one-off never asks you to name it or file it anywhere.
Any instruction can be reworded for one assignment without changing your saved version, and the row shows that you reworded it. And when you find yourself typing the same thing twice, keeping it is one tap: give it a name and it joins your own instructions in the library, ready for every assignment after that.
Write It Once, Not Every Sunday
Any instruction — ours or yours — can be marked “always include this”.
All Your Classes, or Just Some
Apply it everywhere, or name the classes it belongs to. Pick one class and GradingPal pre-selects your other sections of the same subject, so three sections of Year 11 Physics cost no extra clicks and your Year 9 English class never sees a physics rule.
It Arrives Visible, Not Hidden
Inherited instructions appear on each new assignment as ordinary rows with an “Always on” badge. You can see every one of them before you grade, and remove any of them for a single assignment without touching the saved version.
Nothing Is Ever Applied Invisibly
If something is affecting how your work is graded, it is on the page in front of you. There is no set of hidden defaults doing work you cannot see.
What It Won’t Do, and Why It Tells You
You can type anything into the box. Two kinds of request get an answer rather than a silent attempt.
Things a Real Control Already Does
Ask for shorter feedback, or feedback in French, or for spelling to be checked, and GradingPal points you at the control built for it rather than quietly handling the same thing twice. Two mechanisms doing one job is how settings stop being predictable.
Things We Won’t Do at All
Detecting whether a student used AI to write something, and curving or ranking students against each other. Both are declined with a plain reason, at the moment you type them — not silently ignored, and not attempted badly.
One Teacher, Three Sections of Physics
Ms Rivera teaches three sections of Year 11 Physics. She writes “Accept g = 9.81 unless the question says otherwise”, saves it, and marks it always on for her physics classes. Every new physics assignment now starts with that rule already in place, visible at the top of the grading rules and removable if a particular question needs it stated. Her Year 9 English class never sees it. She wrote one sentence, once, in September.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if I never write any instructions?
GradingPal already grades against your rubric one criterion at a time, quotes the evidence behind every judgement, and flags what it cannot read. Instructions are for making it grade your way, not for making it work.
Do instructions apply to old assignments too?
No. An instruction marked always-on arrives on assignments you create after it, not retroactively. Existing assignments keep whatever they were graded with, so nothing you have already shared changes underneath you.
Can I use different instructions for different classes?
Yes. Mark an instruction for all your classes or name the ones it belongs to. Picking one class pre-selects your other sections of the same subject, so multiple sections cost no extra clicks.
Can I see the exact wording that gets used?
Yes. Every ready-made instruction shows its full wording on screen rather than behind a link, and anything you write is used as you wrote it. There is no hidden layer between what you read and what happens.
What does the “Research backed” note mean?
It names where an instruction’s idea comes from — established teaching practice such as Bloom’s taxonomy or Ron Berger’s work on critique. It is not a claim that we have tested that instruction or measured its effect on grades.
Can I write an instruction that changes a student’s grade directly?
No. Instructions shape how work is judged against your rubric; they do not set or adjust individual results. Every suggested score still comes to you for review, and you can override any of them.
Write One Instruction, Once
Tell GradingPal how you mark in a sentence you would say out loud, mark it always-on, and every assignment after that starts the way you would have marked it anyway.