By June, teachers are exhausted and eager to leave grading behind. Yet the end of the year is also when the lessons of the past months are freshest. A structured review of essay assessment can save time and improve results when the next school year begins.

Nick Tasler's Your Year of Wonders treats a year as a unit of deliberate growth, and a year-end review is a natural way to capture that growth. Reflecting on what worked and what did not turns experience into improvement. Teachers who do this regularly tend to refine their practice faster.

A simple keep, change, drop framework makes the review manageable. Sort your assessment practices into three groups and decide what to do with each. This prevents the overwhelming sense that everything needs to be reinvented.

What to Keep

Identify practices that clearly helped students or saved time. These might include a rubric that students understood, a comment bank that made feedback faster, or a revision cycle that led to visible improvement. Keeping what works preserves your gains and provides a stable foundation.

• Rubrics that produced consistent scores and clear student understanding
• Feedback routines that students used in later drafts
• Workflows that reduced grading time without lowering quality
• Assignments that revealed meaningful differences in student skill
• Reflection activities that prompted real changes in student writing

What to Change

Look for practices that worked partially or inconsistently. A rubric descriptor that confused students could be rewritten, while a feedback process that took too long might benefit from new tools. Choose a small number of changes to implement so that you can evaluate them properly.

Consider testing AI-assisted first-pass grading or a revised comment bank as an experiment. Define what success will look like, such as reducing grading time by a certain amount. Clear targets make it easier to decide whether the change should continue.

What to Drop

Some practices consume time without improving learning. Long marginal comments that students never read, redundant assignments, or overly complex rubrics are common examples. Letting go of them frees effort for more effective work.

Be honest about habits that persist out of tradition rather than usefulness. Ask whether students would miss the practice if it disappeared. If the answer is no, it may be a candidate for removal.

Documenting for Next Year

Record your decisions in a short document that you can consult in August. Include rubrics, comment banks, and notes about timing. This prevents you from forgetting insights and gives you a head start.

Share your summary with colleagues who might benefit from your experience. A department that compares year-end reviews can identify common challenges and coordinate improvements. Over time, these reviews build a shared knowledge base that strengthens writing instruction.