Grading Science Notebooks Makes Me Wanna....

SCREAM!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!  

 But this year... that is NOT going to be me. (Hopefully)  I have an "idea" on what to do, and I got it at the CAMT Conference a few weeks ago.  First of all, it involves these stickers... and lots of them... but they're cheap and worth it...

  You can get them at Wal-mart or Staples.  I use them for all sorts of stuff.  Anyway... here is the idea:

1) On the first day of school (or whenever I assign notebooks), I will have students place a sticker on the  front cover of their notebook. I am going to alternate the colors so that I only repeat the color 4-5 times.  So if I have a class of 20 kids, and only 4 colors, 5 students will each have the same color.  This is important for my sanity! :)

2) I am going to tell students that I will be taking  Science notebook grades this year.  I will go over my rubric for what I am looking for in their notebooks and how I will be grading them--- which also involves these stickers.  I will pick 1-2 entries per week to grade and place a sticker on the top right hand corner of that page entry.  The stickers will mean a certain grade.
      For example :  Blue sticker = 100
                             Green sticker = 90
                             Yellow sticker = 80
                             Red sticker = 70
                             Red sticker with minus sign = 60
Grading:
 I will never grade notebooks for the current week.  I will always grade last week's entries.  First I will collect the books by saying "Today I will be collecting (insert color code sticker color here) notebooks.  At the end of class, please place them here."  I will only have 5 to grade :)  (Do a little dance :)  )

When I grade, I will turn to an entry from last week that may have something special, like a graph showing an experiment, or a paragraph explaining what happened during lab, or a foldable showcasing their learning.  This will be the same on each and every student.  I will place the appropriate grade sticker in the corner for them.  

3)The next day, I will return journals first thing (since I wont hoard them for weeks on end since I only had 5 to grade) and announce the color journal I will collect at the end of the day.  This way students can have feedback for their work promptly, and I wont have to:
a) break my shoulder carrying a million journals in my bag 
b) stay up all night grading 
c) hear their constant "When am I going to get my journal back?" which is what happens when I try to grade 20 in one night.  No bueno.

The above is pretty much set in stone... that is what I am going to do.... but wait... that's not all.... (I know I write a LOT)...

Here is the little seed idea that is starting to take root in my head from CAMT-

It's a doozy and I am not really sure about it yet.......... It involves a tic tac toe board and having the stickers be removable.  
The kids remove their stickers and place them on a tic-tac-toe board that is on the inside front cover of their journal.  They want to make a tic-tac-toe with the best dots that they have. Why do they want to make a tic-tac-toe??? Great question.... but this I do not know yet, but here are my thoughts.... any suggestions are most appreciated! :)

After 9 entries have been graded, students must turn in their tic-tac-toe boards. 

1)  Whatever sticker color that made the tic-tac-toe, will go into the gradebook as a test grade... or count twice... not sure yet???  By having them turn in their boards, I can see who is doing a superb job in their journaling, and who needs some help.

2) Their tic tac toe will be worth a certain amount of bonus points on the upcoming test

3) their tic tac toe board is worth a certain prize

4) Suggestions are WELCOME :)

I am leaning towards a test grade right now, so they begin to understand how important it is to take good notes and communicate one's thinking so others can understand.

I don't think I was able to communicate clearly in this post. I want to make it fun... hence tic tac toe... but I just am not sure.   I know how to grade Math journals which I posted here.  Just unsure as to how to grade Science.  Any suggestions??? What do you think about the stickers???