What Does Grading Have to do With It?

Fridays are days where I try to take it a bit easier on students with the classroom work load; less notes and more activities/videos/no homework/extra in-class work time.  It means they are happier and I get more time to catch up with students who need a little extra prodding when it comes to late/missing homework.  Lately late/missing work has become an issue in my classroom and is always a constant debate topic among the staff.   I previously had a late policy with the high school that did not allow work to be turned in late and offered a penalty for my junior high students, but last spring we adopted a school-wide policy.  This means that I am required to take late work and therefore spend a lot of time now hunting down students and trying to extract homework from them.  Today was one of those days.

During prep time I always try to grade some homework or I try to find time during videos or while the students work, but unfortunately most of that gets left to the evenings at home.  This means that I could end up going a few days without having graded assignments and then one night a week grade several assignments and get the grade book caught up.  Students will find that one day everything might look okay on their PowerSchool and then the next they may be missing assignments they had forgotten about.  Many students have the work, but just forgot to turn it in.   There are, however, a few of the habitual offenders that require homework detentions or structured study hall time.  This whole late work thing had me really thinking today.  I spend so much time grading the late work and penalizing students that there has to be a better way of handling things.  I always think that getting a good score on an assignment would motivate students to do better.  It always seems like students don't want to turn things in because it is late and will be penalized.  I can't seem to get through to them effectively enough to get them to understand that some points is better than a zero.

As I have been reflecting on motivation and productivity, it leaves me very frustrated.  Each day I try to provide students with work time to get started on homework so that late work won't be such a problem, but it still is.  Inevitably there are always students who, no matter how much time I give them, will have late work.  Even those that at least get a start on it during class time are not guaranteed to get it completed outside of class and turn it in the next day.  Encouraging students to use their work time more productively and decrease the amount of late assignments is something that needs my consideration.  One of my co-workers approached me today (appropriately timed on her part) about a new grading style they learned about at a meeting earlier in the week.  She immediately thought of me.  It is about giving two scores:  one a late score and the other an achievement score.  This sounds extremely intriguing to me and potentially beneficial!  I am really excited to explore it further.  As part of our professional development this year, I am in a group investigating standards based grading.  I have been struggling with it applying to my classroom so this new style may be my standards based alternative.  This new grading style has piqued my interest for sure.