Before you can begin scoring your child's papers, you need to set a grading standard. In traditional schools, teachers often use rubrics that assign point values to various goals or expectations for the paper. According to the International Reading Association website, a rubric decreases subjectivity when grading papers. You can use a ready-made rubric or create your own by assigning number scores to goals or expectations. For example, for an introductory paragraph you might give a zero for "disorganized and not engaging," a one for "provides a basic overview," a two for "in-depth overview" and a three for an engaging and concise presentation.
Just because your child isn't attending a public school doesn't mean that he won't need to meet state learning benchmarks. Using state educational standards to assess your child's papers helps to ensure that he is mastering the knowledge and skills that fit each subject and grade level. For example, Indiana's standards for fourth graders state that students at this grade level should be able to describe the organization of concepts, ideas or sequential events.
Even though your state has standards that you should use to measure your child's schoolwork while at home, the Common Core State Standards Initiative also provides milestones that your student should reach. These nationally unified standards outline grade-level learning goals in math and language arts. These research-based standards offer you a way to subjectively grade your child's papers while making sure that she is working at an age-appropriate level. As you read your child's papers, refer to the Common Core standards for her current grade. For example, according to the Common Core standards second grade students should be able to gather information and answer questions when a source is provided to them.
If grading a paper as a whole is challenging to you, break down the assignment into percentages for different elements of the paper. The Home School Legal Defense Association suggests dividing the total score into percentages for content, grammar and effort. Start with 100 percent and choose how much you want to weight each area. For example, if content is your high priority in this assignment you can score it at 70 percent. That leaves the remaining 30 percent for the other areas. You could split it with 20 for grammar and 10 for effort. If content is 70 percent, take that score out of 70 points. Do the same for 20 and 10 points. Add up each individual score to get the total. The total point value will equal the overall percentage for the paper. For example, a 66 in content, 18 in grammar and 9 in effort equals 93 percent.