are missing assignments bad

Why it’s hard for students to “just turn in” missing assignments, and how to get them unstuck

Mar 29, 2023 | Blog

With the end of the semester on the horizon, many students may feel overwhelmed by low grades or feeling behind in some of their classes.

As a parent, it can be stressful to see that your student has overdue work, or get notifications from their teacher that they’re missing assignments. 

It’s even more frustrating when you’ve told them over and over again how important it is to “just turn it in”…but the work is still showing up as missing.

The reality is that no matter how simple it might seem to an outside observer, doing missing work is almost never as easy as “just getting it done.” If they haven’t done the work yet, there’s a good chance that something is getting in their way. 

If you can figure out what the problem is before jumping in to help them (or make them) do the work, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of success.

In our experience, there are usually 3 main reasons students resist submitting their missing work…even when it seems like “just turning it in” would be SO much easier!

Reason 1: They think it won’t make a difference

Once the due date for an assignment has passed, students often de-prioritize it and move on to focus on upcoming assignments instead. It’s tempting for students to justify this by thinking “there are lots of other assignments, missing one or two won’t matter.”

But what they often don’t realize is that because of the way most grading scales are weighted, even one or two zeros can have an enormous impact on their grade. Showing students the difference it makes to turn in just a few assignments can increase their motivation to get the work done. 

Here’s an example of the difference it can make to turn in just a few missing assignments before the end of the semester:

Overall grade with 3 missing assignments: 78.3%

Overall grade when assignments are turned in: 90.1%

It’s hard for students to calculate these averages in their head, so it can be really powerful for them to run the numbers and see firsthand exactly how much they have to gain from making up their missing assignments.

When we do calculations like this with our students, they are almost always surprised by how much this makeup work could improve their grades, and feel much more motivated to submit the assignments when they can see for themselves the difference it will make.

Reason 2: They think it’s too late

Another reason students often resist doing makeup work is that they think it’s too late to get credit for it. 

Even if they’ve done the math and know that submitting the work would make a difference in their grade, they still won’t want to turn it in if they think the teacher won’t accept it.

Especially for introverted or anxious students, it can be very intimidating to have conversations with their teachers. They might think they’ll get in trouble for asking to submit their work late, or worry that the teacher will say “no.”

The good news is that many teachers are flexible with their late work policies and allow students to turn in overdue assignments even when it is past the “official” deadline to submit them.

So if students can find the courage to ask for help, there is a good chance that their teachers will respond positively and allow them an opportunity to make up the work.

For students who are struggling to reach out to teachers, we often find it is helpful to roleplay these conversations in coaching sessions if they’re not sure what to say, or work with them to email their teachers if they’re not sure what to say.

Reason 3: They feel overwhelmed

Students who are behind on their work often have challenges keeping track of due dates, managing time, breaking down complex assignments, prioritizing work, staying focused, or following through with plans….which is why they fell behind in the first place. 

These challenges can become even more daunting when they are behind in their classes, and trying to complete makeup assignments on top of their normal workload.

This can feel so stressful that a lot of students avoid or put off doing makeup work even when they   know   how much it would improve their grade.

For these students to get their work submitted, it’s essential to help them find ways to…

• Break down the assignments so they have a realistic plan for getting the work done that they’re confident they can actually follow through with
• Lower the stress they feel while they are doing the work so they will be less tempted to avoid it
• Visualize the progress they are making so they can see that their efforts are making a difference

Providing support

When students have a lot of makeup work to complete, having some additional support to help them work through it can be invaluable. 

For some students, this may mean finding a tutor to help them with the content they didn’t understand when their teacher was first presenting the material. 

For other students, having a family member or friend nearby as a source of moral support to keep them company while they are working (and a motivating reward to look forward to as soon as the work is completed) can be enormously helpful.

Other students may benefit from working with an academic coach to help them get unstuck and started on their missing work. Sometimes, having someone else who is not a family member step in to help can reduce stress and conflict at home and make it easier for students to take the steps they need to get back on track in their classes. If you think this type of support would be helpful for your student, please feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to help! 

Missing assignments and what to do about them

• January 6, 2022
• Classroom Leadership , Growth , Missing assignments , Student Motivation

Have you ever looked at your grade book and been frustrated by the number of missing assignments? Zeros obviously have an adverse effect on student grades. To address this issue, there has been a lot of discussion about changing the way we grade or limiting the amount of homework given. These discussions should take place but I don’t want argue the pros and cons of those ideas. However, I do want to address the fact that we are ultimately concerned with students showing mastery. Missing work can make this challenging.

We (the adults) can adjust our thinking and strategies regarding missing work, however the constant truth is that mastery is the ultimate goal. For most students, it is going to be challenging for them to show mastery on assessments if they don’t complete the tasks and assignments that preceded the assessment. Why? Because there is a certain feedback loop that should take place between student and teacher before the student even attempts an assignment.

During my time in the classroom I did not find the magic bullet to solve the issue of students not turning in assignments. Zeros filled my gradebook with empty cells highlighted in yellow. However, I will share with you some things that helped me find some success in this area.

1. Talk to the student with the goal of problem solving

The problem ultimately is owned by the student. Keep this in mind and prevent yourself from burning out (I wish I learned this lesson earlier in my career). By listening to the student with the goal of helping them solve their problem, you are in position to offer valuable feedback. Feedback leads to potential adjustments that need to be made by the student. When students adjust based on feedback, they find opportunities.

2. Suggest a planner or digital organizer

Planning for the responsibilities and tasks that life will throw your way is a wise thing to do. Convincing students of this can be challenging. At the high school level, I have found it very difficult to get students to use a planner. I have had some success getting them to use apps. Currently, I use the To Do app by Microsoft and I highly recommend it. At the beginning of each day I sit down and type out all my goals (tasks) for the day. The ones that I complete, I make disappear and the ones I don’t can carry over to the next day.

3. Help the student discover their “Why”

My experience has taught me that students who don’t understand why they go to school tend to struggle keeping up with their school responsibilities. They may say the right thing regarding why they go to school but their missing work reveals something unspoken. You can help your students commit to excellence by helping them discover their “Why.” This revelation can lead to more motivation on the part of the student. Figuring out the “Why” can take some time but starting the conversation and helping the student begin that journey is very important. Here’s something that I would ask students to get started: What is it that you want to do in this world to make it better place for yourself and others?

4. Celebrate Progress

Sometimes, words of affirmation are what students needs to adopt habits that lead to work completion and submission. If you have a student how do used to accumulate a lot of missing work and is now making an attempt to change those habits, celebrate in a big way. Make sure the praise isn’t superficial, but identify specific things that you notice students doing differently. Praise tends to yield more of the desired behavior because students feel good when they receive it.

Missing work can be frustrating and can add extra tasks to your to do list. It can be especially frustrating if you aren’t getting support from parents or administration. Throughout it all, I encourage you to never give up. Remember that you can’t control the student and make them do the assignment, but you can help them problem solve why missing work is a challenge. Like all great teachers, we exhaust all of our tools, get some more and keep trying. You’ve got this.

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• More Networks

MISSED exam/assignment & need makeup (PROF advice)

GUIDE to talking to your professor about missing an assignment or exam

As a former professor, with over a decade of experience, I am going to share with you exactly what I would have wanted to hear from my students when they missed an exam or assignment.

And it’s probably not what you would think either.

Then I will let you know how often I would let students makeup a missing assignment or exam so you get a better understanding of your chances.

Finally, I will give you an email template of what to say to your professor when you miss an assignment or exam to help get you a second chance to complete it.

What does it mean to makeup an exam or assignment?

If a student wants to makeup an exam or assignment, this means that the student missed the exam or failed to turn in the assignment. And the student received a zero because they were not present to complete it or failed to turn it in before the deadline.

The professor would give the student an opportunity to complete the exam or assignment and turn it in after the deadline. The grade would replace the missing grade you have because you couldn’t take the exam or didn’t complete the assignment.

It is important to understand the difference between a makeup exam and retaking an exam because these are treated differently by your professors. While some professors may allow a makeup exam, they might not allow students to retake exams.

What is an excuse to makeup an exam or assignment?

If a student wants to makeup an exam or assignment, they want another chance to take it and earn a grade for the assignment. There are some excuses for missing an exam or assignment but it will vary based on the institution and the professor. Some of the excuses to MAKEUP a missed exam or assignment include :

Documented medical issues

Hospitalization

Student related activity

Religious holy days

Funeral of immediate relative

Military duty

Disability accommodations

Internet connection or technical issue (if online)

While I listed some reasons why your professor may allow you to makeup an exam or assignment, I will now tell you some reasons why your professor might NOT allow you to complete a makeup exam or assignment. Keep in mind that your professor may still allow you to complete it late regardless of your excuse.

Some of those reasons may include :

Forgot about it

Studied for another class

Busy with work

Car trouble

Wasn’t prepared

From reviewing the excuses above, you can tell that some of them are more important than others. For example, if you have a valid and documented reason to miss an assignment, then your professor is more likely to allow a makeup opportunity compared to excuses about your unprepardness.

And if you contacted them BEFORE you missed the assignment, you may get to make it up compared to students who reach out to their professors days or even weeks after the missed assignment or exam.

But if you were just unprepared and didn’t take the class seriously, they probably won’t give you another chance to do the assignment late.

One question you should ask yourself is if you didn’t complete the assignment because you were unprepared or unorganized, you may not be entitled to makeup the assignment. But if something traumatic or unavoidable happened, you may get to make it up.

Can you makeup an exam or assignment in college?

College students may be able to makeup an exam or assignment if their professor allows students to have a second chance. It will depend on the student’s excuse and if they have documentation. It will also depend on the professor’s policy.

Some professors are much more lenient when it comes to makeup assignments, while others have strict policies and won’t budge.

Usually there isn’t a university wide policy regarding missed assignments so your professor has a lot of discretion . Professors usually have the ability to let students makeup assignments. While it is not a guarantee, it is something that happens in college.

You won’t know if you can makeup the assignment if you don’t ask. And there is no harm in asking.

As a former professor, I allowed my students an opportunity to makeup an exam or assignment about 10% of the time. This would depend on my particular late policy I had that semester and the student’s excuse.

One time, there was a natural disaster and students couldn’t get online because the internet was completely down. The students really needed to access their online textbook to study. So, those students who were effected by the natural disaster were given an opportunity to complete it late.

Should you ask your professor to makeup an exam or assignment?

If you have a valid excuse, and talk to your professor early, you should ask your professor if you can makeup an assignment to replace the zero you received.

However, I think that anyone who cares about their course grade should ask their professor for a makeup opportunity. Because this zero will effect your overall grade and you never know what your professor will say.

They might allow you to make it up and you wouldn’t know because you didn’t ask. So, regardless if you have a decent excuse, you should still ask because you might be surprised by their answer.

If they say no, oh well. Nothing is lost. But if they say yes, you have a lot to gain by the second chance you’ve been given.

How to talk to your professor about missing an exam or assignment?

Do it quickly.

Go in person.

Explain your circumstances.

Bring documentation.

You don’t want to wait and talk to your professor about making up an assignment weeks after it was due. After so much time has passed, your professor isn’t going to let you complete it late.

However, if you go soon after the assignment was due or the exam date passed, your professor is more likely to give you have a second chance.

I want to mention that you aren’t required to provide medical documentation to your professor , at least not directly. I wouldn’t want to share my personal medical information with my professor. Now, if it’s just a doctor’s note excusing you from the class, that’s one thing, but if it’s your hospital discharge papers, that’s too personal.

If you have this documentation, you might need to talk to someone in the accommodation’s office to see if you can get some reasonable accommodations for your medical issues.

Just let your professor know that you are working on this process to keep them in the loop. I guess this process could be different depending on what country you live in and if you are at a private or public university.

You may want to try and get an EXTENSION on your assignment r ather than missing it and making it up. So, if you see a deadline for an assignment, and you are worried you cannot complete it, you should talk to your professor about getting an extension first.

But if you already missed the exam or assignment, that won’t help you. I will tell you what I wish my students would have said to me when they missed an assignment.

BEFORE you ask for a second chance, please review your professor’s syllabus. Sometimes students would email me about a missed assignment, but I had to explain to them that they could still complete it late for a penalty. They would have known that if they read the syllabus before sending me an email.

I think it’s important to look at your syllabus first because you might be able to turn it in or complete it late RIGHT NOW. And if you take the time to email your professor, it will cause delay. You may miss a deadline for a second chance because you are waiting on an email from your professor.

So, it’s really important to understand what your professor’s policies are in regards to late assignments or missed exams.

What to tell your professor when you miss an assignment

If you miss an exam or assignment in college, you need to talk to your professor immediately. Explain why you missed it. If you have documentation, provide it.

And then tell them that you want the opportunity to complete it late.

You can let them know you would even be willing to complete it for a late penalty.

I need to tell you that you should be honest in your communication to your professor. I don’t want you to simply copy and paste my example, but edit it to fit your needs. I am just sharing with you an example of what I would have liked to hear from my former students.

You should tell your professor the TRUTH when you are asking to makeup something in their course .

Email template to professor for missed exam

Here is an example of what I would have loved to have heard from my students when they missed an assignment.

Dear Professor, I missed our last exam because I was attending my grandfather’s funeral. I have a link to his obituary at the bottom of this email for verification. I was spending time with my family and grieving the loss of my closest grandfather when I missed our latest exam. The funeral was in another state so I had travel arrangements too. I would have sent an email earlier but I was in a frenzy. I would love the opportunity to complete the exam. If I don’t get to complete this exam, I worry that the zero I received will really hurt my overall grade in this course and this does not reflect my knowledge of the subject. By completing the exam, I will be learning the material better by studying. And the exam grade will let me know if I am on track and I can see my progress in the course. While I am concerned about the zero I received, I am more concerned about missing the opportunity to monitor my progress in this course to understand if I am missing important concepts. When I study for the exam, I will learn more of the class material. This will help me in the future. I am willing to take the exam at the most convenient time for you and with a penalty, if necessary. I would also be willing to take a modified version of the exam, if necessary. Thank you.

Look, you are really trying to let them know that the missing assignment is only half of your concern but your biggest concern is how missing the exam hurts your progress in the course.

Think about it for a second. If you don’t study and prepare for the exam, that is valuable information your will never learn. And if you want to complete an assignment late, the feedback that you get from your professor is critical to your college education.

How can you tell how well you are doing in the class if you don’t get to complete the assignments? Your professor will be glad that you are worried about this more than a grade.

But remember, if you don’t really care either way, you shouldn’t pretend. Just tell them the truth. This is just what I would have wanted to hear.

Can you makeup a final exam in college?

Since college final exams are at the end of the semester, students won’t typically be allowed an opportunity to makeup a final exam.

When I was a professor, we had to enter grades within a day or two after the final exam. This means that there was not an opportunity to allow students a chance to makeup the exam. There wouldn’t be enough time for them to take it before the college wanted grades submitted to them.

So, while you can ask if you can makeup a final exam, just know that there may be little your professor can do if they already submitted grades. Plus, a lot of professors may not even be on campus after the final exam so they won’t have the ability to let you make it up anyway.

What to do if you miss an exam or assignment in college?

If you miss an exam or assignment in college, you need to talk to your professor immediately. I recommend going to your professor in person because it makes it more personable. Let them know your circumstances, and ask them if you can makeup the assignment.

You should be prepared for them to say no. If they say no, and you are not given a second chance, you should ask them how your overall grade will be effected.

Sometimes a zero for an assignment could cause you to fail the class or make a really bad grade. You might be better off withdrawing from the course, if necessary. And if you are failing because of this grade , you should talk to your professor about failing instead.

This is something that your professor can answer for you. I wouldn’t do anything until you talk to your professor.

You will need to get back on track in the course to make up for this zero if you have a chance to pass.

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• Teaching Tips

Dealing With Students Missing Exams and In-Class Graded Assignments

Teachers often become more aware of students’ out-of-class activities than they might wish. Announcements and memos from the dean of students inform about sporting teams and their games and tournaments, forensics, service learning conferences, community-based work, and the like. And teachers quickly become familiar with student lifestyles and illnesses ¾ mono, strep throat, hangovers, the opening of deer and fishing seasons, quilting bees, family vacations, and their family mortality statistics. The relationship between exams and mandatory in-class work and the death of students’ cousins and grandparents is so high it should be a concern of the National Center for Disease Control. Given all this, it is a certainty that students will miss exams and other required activities. What is a teacher to do?

If you want to hear colleagues express frustration, ask them about make-up exams and assignments. Despite knowing intellectually that such absences will occur, teachers hope and pray, even in public institutions, that all of their students will take exams as scheduled. Alas, such prayers are rarely answered, and teachers are faced with the practical issues of keeping track of students who miss exams and assignments, as well as managing make-ups.

All of our advice, except that related to ethics, should be read through the filter of the type of institution where you teach, and the types of courses you teach and how large they are. For example, at a small liberal arts school, where teaching is a faculty member’s primary responsibility, more time may be spent with students who miss exams or assignments, and more creative (time consuming) alternatives may be practical as compared with someone teaching classes of 300 or 500 or more in a Research I institution.

Ethics Teachers are not to cause students harm; we must treat them fairly and equitably, and they must be allowed to maintain their dignity (Keith-Spiegel, Whitley, Balogh, Perkins, & Wittig, 2002). Whatever your procedures are for students who miss exams and required in-class work, they must be equitable, providing students equal chances to earn a good grade by demonstrating equal knowledge. The hard part may be balancing academic rigor and accountability for what students are to learn with a fair and manageable process for those who miss required exams and assignments.

Make-up Exams These should not be more difficult than the original test but must be, as best as you can design, alternate forms of the same exam. Exam banks that accompany texts make designing such alternate forms of multiple-choice tests relatively easy, and colleagues teaching two or more sections of the same course in a semester, who give alternate forms of exams, are often a good source of advice on this matter. Be thoughtful about the following:

• An essay make-up exam may be unethical if regular exams are multiple choice or short answer (or vice versa), since students must study differently and they may be more difficult.
• An oral exam may “punish” students who do not think well on their feet, or are more socially anxious.
• Scheduling make-up exams at inconvenient or undesirable times may express your frustration, but you or someone else will have to be there at the “inconvenient” time also, and such arrangements raise issues of foul play.
• It may be inequitable to students who meet all course requirements to allow their peers to do extra credit or drop their lowest grade instead of making up a missed exam.

In-class Assignments The same considerations exist for students who miss in-class required presentations, or other graded work. If possible, students who were to present should be given opportunities to make up the assignment using the same grading criteria.

Planning Ahead

Spell-out Missed Exam Procedure in Course Policies No matter how well you teach or what inducements or penalties you impose, some students will miss exams and required class activities. Good educational practice argues that you plan for this reality as you design your course, not two days before (or after) your first exam. You want as few surprises as possible once the course begins.

Put your policies in your syllabus. Have a section in your syllabus on exams and other graded work. Specify your policies and procedures if students know in advance they will be absent, or how to notify you if, for whatever reason, they were absent, and any effect, if any, absences will have on their grade.

Keep your policy clear and simple. Before finalizing your syllabus, ask a few students to read your make-up policy to determine if it can be easily understood. If your explanation of what students are to do in the case of missing an exam, and how their grade is affected, is not easily understood, revise it. In developing your policy, do you want students to:

• Notify you if they know they will miss, preferably at least 24 hours in advance, and give you the reason? Talking with you before or after class offers the best opportunity to provide feedback if the reason is questionable, to work out alternatives, and so forth. E-mail also can be useful.
• Notify you as soon as possible after missing an exam or required assignment and give the reason? Again, in person or e-mail work best.
• Present a letter from an authority (e.g., physician) documenting the reason? Keep in mind any student can “forge” such documentation or manipulate it in other ways, e.g., “Fred came to see me complaining of a severe headache.”
• Have their grades lowered if their absence is not “acceptable” (e.g., overslept versus seriously ill)? How will you decide what is acceptable? Our experience suggests that “legitimate” reasons for absence include, but are not limited to: illness of the student or a close relative, accident, court appearance, military duty, broken auto, hazardous weather, and university activities (e.g., athletics, forensics).

Policies should reflect the nature of the exam or graded assignment. If you are teaching an introductory course and each module largely stands alone, it may be appropriate for students to make up a missed exam late in the semester. But if you want students to demonstrate knowledge or competency on an exam or assignment because future course material builds on that which comes earlier, you want to give the students much less time to make up the missed work.

Common policies. A common procedure is for the teacher, teaching assistant, or departmental secretary to distribute and proctor make-up exams during prearranged times (Perlman&McCann, in press). You might also consider allowing students to take make-up exams during exam periods in other courses you are teaching.

Make your policies easy to implement. To maintain your sanity and keep your stress level manageable, you must be able to easily implement your policies. For example, even if you, a secretary, or a graduate student distribute and proctor make-up exams, problems can arise. For example:

• The secretary is ill or on vacation, or you are ill or have a conference to attend. You never want to change the time make-ups are available to students once these are listed in the course syllabus. Have backups available who know where make-up exams are stored, can access them, and can administer and proctor them.
• Too many students for the make-up space. Investigate room sizes and number of rooms available. You may need more than one room if some students have readers because of learning disabilities.
• Students often forget there is a common make-up the last week of the semester. Remind them often and announce this policy on class days when students are taking an exam, as this may be the only time some students who have missed a previous exam come to class.

Encourage appropriate, responsible, mature behaviors. Take the high road and let students know how they “should” behave. For example, one colleague includes this statement in the syllabus:

I expect students to make every effort to take required exams and make course presentations as scheduled. If you know in advance you will miss such a requirement, please notify me. If you are ill or other circumstances cause you to miss a required graded activity, notify me as soon as possible.

One of our colleagues states in her syllabus for a psychology of aging class, “It is very bad form to invent illnesses suffered by grandparents!” By giving students exemplars on how to behave appropriately, you can then thank them for their courtesy and maturity if they follow through, positively reinforcing such behaviors.

God lives in the details. Always err on the side of being “concrete.” If a make-up exam is at the university testing center, tell students where the testing center is. If you or a secretary hold make-up exams in an office, you may want to draw a map on how to get there. It is not uncommon for students to fail to find the office at the time of the exam, and wander around a large university building.

Students Who Miss Exams You have a variety of alternatives available on how to treat students who miss a scheduled exam. Select those that fit your course and the requirements of learning students must demonstrate.

Requiring make-up exams. If you collect all copies of your multiple choice or short answer exams, you may be able to use the same exam for make-ups. Our experience is that it is extremely rare that students deliberately miss an exam to have more time to study, whereas asking peers about specific exam questions more commonly occurs. Your experiences may be different. However, if you put exams on file at the university testing center, and students can take them weeks apart, you may want different forms. If you have concerns, you will need to prepare an equivalent, alternative form of the regular exam, as is often the case for essay tests.

Using procedures other than a make-up exam. Some faculty have students outline all text chapters required for an exam, use daily quiz scores to substitute for a missed exam, use the average of students’ exams to substitute for the one missed, score relevant questions on the comprehensive final to substitute for the missed test, or use a weighted score from the entire comprehensive final substituted for missed exam. Some teachers just drop one test grade without penalty (Buchanan&Rogers, 1990; Sleigh&Ritzer, 2001). Consider whether students will learn what you want from various alternatives and whether this work is equal to what students must demonstrate on exams before adopting such procedures. If your course contains numerous graded assignments of equal difficulty, and if it is equitable for students to choose to ignore a course module by not studying or taking the exam, you should consider this process.

Other teachers build extra credit into the course. They allow all students opportunities to raise their grades, offering a safety net of sorts for those who need to “make-up” a missed exam by doing “additional” assignments such as outlining unassigned chapters in the text.

Scheduling make-ups. Pick one or two times a week that are convenient for you, a department secretary, or teaching assistant, and schedule your make-ups then. Some faculty use a common time midway through the semester and at the end of the semester as an alternative.

Students Who Miss Other In-Class Assignments Allowing students to demonstrate learning on non-exam graded assignments can be tricky. Such assignments often measure different kinds of learning than exams: the ability to work in groups, critical thinking as demonstrated in a poster, or an oral presentation graded in part on professional use of language. But you do have some alternatives.

Keeping the required assignment the same. If the assignment is a large one and due near the end of the semester, consider using an “incomplete” grade for students who miss it. Alternatively, students can present their oral work or poster in another course you are teaching if the content is relevant and time allows it. The oral required assignment also can be delivered just to the teacher or videotaped or turned in on audiotape.

Alternative assignments. As with missed exams, you can weigh other assignments disproportionately to substitute for in-class graded work — by doubling a similar assignment if you have more than one during the semester, for example. The dilemma, of course, is not allowing students easy avenues to avoid a required module or assignment without penalty. For example, oral assignments can be turned in as written work, although this may negate some of the reasons for the assignment.

When we asked colleagues about alternatives for missed in-class graded assignments (as compared with exams), almost everyone cautioned against listing them in the course syllabus. They felt that students could then weigh the make-up assignment versus the original and choose the one that gave them the greatest chance of doing well, and also the least amount of anxiety (in-class presentations often make students nervous). They recommended simply telling students that arrangements would be made for those missing in-class required graded work on a case-by-case basis.

Students Who Miss the “Make-Up” On occasion, students will miss a scheduled make-up. Say something about this event in your syllabus, emphasizing the student’s responsibility to notify the instructor. We recommend that instructors reserve the right to lower a student’s grade by “x” number of points, or “x” letter grades. If you place exams at a university testing center, you may not find out the work has not been made up until the course is over, leaving you little choice but to give the student an “F” on that exam or assignment.

When the Whole Class Misses a Required Exam or Assignment On rare, but very memorable, occasions the entire class may miss an exam or assignment. For example, both authors have had the fire alarm go off during an exam. After a bomb threat cleared the building during his exam, the campus police actually contacted one author to identify whether a person caught on camera at a service station was a student calling in the bomb scare. (It was not.) The other author experienced the bomb squad closing a classroom building during finals week due to the discovery of old, potentially explosive, laboratory chemicals. Of course, the blizzard of the century or a flood might occur the night before your exam. What is a teacher to do?

The exam or graded assignment must be delayed. Prepare beforehand. Always build a make-up policy into your syllabus for the last exam or student presentation in a course. Talk with your department chair or dean about college or university policy. State that if weather or other circumstances force a make-up, it will occur at a certain time and place. This forethought is especially important if you teach at a northern institution where bad winter weather is not unusual. For exams and assignments during the semester, the policy that works best is to reschedule them (again, stating this in your syllabus) for the next regular class period. Call attention to this policy early in the semester, and post it on your course Web site. The last thing you want to do is call or e-mail everyone in the class to tell them an exam has been cancelled.

An exam or graded assignment is interrupted. Graded assignments such as oral presentations are easily handled. If time allows, continue after the interruption; if not, continue the next class period or during your designated “make-up” time.

If something interrupts an exam, ask students to leave their exams and answers on their desks or hand them in to you, take all personal materials, and leave immediately. A teacher can easily collect everything left in most classes in a few moments. Leave materials on desks if the class is large, or be the first person back to the room after the interruption. Fire alarms, bomb scares, and the like usually cause a lot of hubbub. Only if you have a lengthy two- or three-hour class, with time to allow students to collect themselves and refocus, and no concern about their comparing answers to questions during the delay, should the exam be continued that same day or evening.

If the interruption occurs late in the class period, you might tell students to turn in their work as they leave. You can then determine how you want to grade exams or the assignment, using pro-rated points or percentages, and assign grades accordingly.

If the interruption is earlier in the hour, the exam will have to be delayed, usually until the next class period. With a multiple-choice exam, we advise giving students the full (next) class period to finish their exams. If you are concerned about students comparing questions they have already answered, you will have to quickly develop an alternate exam.

A teacher’s decisions are more complicated if the exam is short answer or essay. Students may have skimmed all essay or short answer questions before an interruption. Will they prepare for those questions before the next class period? What if some students only read the first essay question but do not know the others they must answer? Preparing an alternate exam may be feasible, but students need to know you will do so, so they do not concentrate their studying on specific topics you will not ask about.

We know that such class interruptions are rare, but they can wreak havoc with students and teachers, be stressful, and raise issues of fairness that echo throughout the rest of the course. We advise teachers to talk with colleagues, and we have found a department brown bag on the topic fascinating. Your colleagues may have some creative and sound advice.

Summary A teacher needs to plan ahead. Take some time to think about what it means for you and students who miss required in-class work. A little preparation can save a lot of time and hassle later in the semester. Students deserve and will appreciate policies that are equitable and manageable.

Author’s Note: The authors are interested how teachers deal with missed or interrupted graded in-class work (and their horror stories). Contact us with your ideas and experiences at [email protected] .

References and Recommended Reading

• Buchanan, R. W., & Rogers, M. (1990). Innovative assessment in large classes. College Teaching, 38 , 69-74.
• Carper, S. W. (1995). Make-up exams: What’s a professor to do? Journal of Chemical Education, 72 , 883.
• Davis, B. G. (1993). Tools for teaching . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Keith-Spiegel, P., Whitley, B.G. E. Jr., Balogh, D. W., Perkins, D. V., & Wittig, A. F. (2002). The ethics of teaching: A casebook (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• McKeachie, W. J. (2001). Teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (11th ed.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Nilson, L. B. (2003). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (2nd ed). Bolton, MA: Anker.
• Perlman, B., & McCann, L. I. (in press). Teacher evaluations of make-up exam procedures. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 3 (2).
• Sleigh, M. J., & Ritzer, D. R. (2001). Encouraging student attendance. APS Observer, 14 (9), pp. 19-20, 32.

Do you know of any research related to taking points off an exam for students who take a make-up for whatever reason? It is mentioned in this article but I’m interested in evidence to back up that it is fair and/or punitive in a college setting with adult learners. Thank you. Gerri Russell, MS, RN

I teach introductory nutrition and other biology classes. If a student can prove that they missed an exam or assignment for a verifiable reason, even if they let me know ahead of time (usually technology related reasons), I let them make it up without taking points off. If they can’t prove it I take off points as follows: 10% off per day late during the first week after the assignment is due. Half credit earned after that. Even if they know there are always students who just miss things for no apparent good reason. I feel like this is fair because it gives them the responsibility for making it up, and I’d rather people become familiar with the material, rather than just not do it at all.

I think that the mid semester tests must be abolished from all colleges/universities in order to let them prepare for the final exams without any pressure of getting grades,this will not give rise to any decompetition then,so I personally feel that my suggestion will be very useful I want everyone to obey that

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About the Author

BARON PERLMAN is editor of "Teaching Tips." A professor in the department of psychology, distinguished teacher, and University and Rosebush Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh in the department of psychology, he has taught psychology for 29 years. He continues to work to master the art and craft of teaching. LEE I. MCCANN is co-editor of "Teaching Tips." A professor in the department of psychology and a University and Rosebush Professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, he has taught psychology for 38 years. He has presented numerous workshops on teaching and psychology curricula, his current research interests.

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End the Unfinished Work Battle: Catch-Ups and Pickles

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Are your students struggling to complete their work? Up to your eyeballs in missing or unfinished work assignments? Then you might need to institute a “Catch-up and Pickles” routine in your classroom as a way to win the missing or incomplete work battle! This is seriously my favorite unfinished work routine!

A few weeks ago, I posted a Reel on Instagram about some of my more “controversial ” grading practices. Between you and me… they really aren’t that controversial… just good teaching! But folks LOST THEIR MINDS! And honestly, it shed light on a bigger problem: the struggle of incomplete work.

Controversial Grading Practices

You’re probably wondering what those controversial grading practices were. I’ll let you watch the IG Reel to see all three, but the one that had most teachers up in arms was the belief of not putting anything less than 50% in the grade book.

This one line led to me being called many things, but most teachers asked, “What about missing or incomplete work?”

To which I responded that I rarely struggled with incomplete or missing work. I can think of one time I had to put a zero in the grade book because of a missing assignment – ONCE – in 13 years of teaching. Those are some pretty good odds!

Unfinished Work Routine

So, how can this be?

First, let’s clear up some things:

• No – I didn’t have perfect students who completed every assignment without asking.
• No – I didn’t work at fancy schools with high volumes of parents involved who made sure the work was completed at home.
• And, no – I didn’t work myself to death chasing down students.

I rarely had missing or incomplete work because I planned time in my week for students to work on missing or incomplete assignments.

Today, I’m sharing this simple yet HIGHLY effective routine that basically eliminated the struggle to get students to complete missing or incomplete assignments.

This magical weekly routine that solves the missing work problem is fondly called, “ Catch-up and Pickles. ” But, that’s really just a fancy name for a time set aside on a Friday morning so students can work on unfinished work.

What is Catch-Up and Pickles?

I shared about this concept a while ago in my “Small Group Time Exposed” post , but I feel like after all the hoopla that Reel caused, it warranted its own place on the blog!

Each day, I had 60 minutes of time built into my schedule for small group rotations. That worked great Monday through Thursday. But, I noticed that Fridays were a bit cramped. Not only did we have our spelling and vocabulary test that day but we would also have a reading comprehension assessment. Time is needed to complete all these assessments, and that ate into a portion of our small group time.

Rather than try and stuff the small group instruction into the 30 minutes that were left after completing everything else, I decided to transform that awkward time slot into productive work time.

So at the end of the week, instead of formal center rotations, I did a “Catch-Ups and Pickles” routine. Students who had not finished their work used this time to “Catch-Up,” while those who were done were allowed to “Pickles” a reading-based activity to complete.

For students, this time was dedicated to completing their work or choosing a preferred activity to complete.

For the teacher, this routine provided time to reteach lessons, pull students for  assessments , or conference with students one on one.

And let me just say… this was a wildly popular time in my classroom!

How to Find Time?

So the big question here is, how do you find the time? Everything you are required to teach in a day leaves very little time in your schedule for “makeup work,” but like I shared before… I was able to find time by reallocating the time I was using for reading centers. It wasn’t working for us on Fridays, so we changed it up.

I suggest you take a look at your schedule. Do you have some awkward or weird times?

I like the idea of doing Catch-up and Pickles on a Friday, so it’s easier to track the work that needs to be completed. But maybe Fridays don’t work for you. Look for a block of time (at least 20 mins!) and see if it works. If it doesn’t, restructure or choose a different time. This could even be something you do at the end of a unit in reading or math or on the last school day of the month.

Warning:  I wouldn’t do this one day a quarter… that’s too big a chunk of time to complete everything. Doing that is like saving all your laundry for a month and trying to do it all in one day. Someone will get overwhelmed, and it’s not going to get done.

How to Get Started with Catch Up and Pickles

Once you’ve found your time, it’s time to plan the “Catch-Up and Pickles” activities.

In my classroom, I allowed students to “catch up” on any work, whether it be math, reading, or something else entirely. You need to select what students will be working on. Maybe it’s just reading, so you do only reading makeup work.

Whatever you decide, be specific. The unstructured nature of this routine means that chaos could happen at any minute. Being clear on what students should be working on at this time (and reinforcing it each time you have a Catch-up and Pickles session) can help keep the crazies at bay.

Who is a Catch-Up and Who is a Pickle?

From there, you’ll need a system for knowing who is a “catch-up” and who is a “pickle.”

Right before we started, I’d scan my grade book for any missing assignments. Those students with missing work would go on my “catch up” list.

Another way I identified students was through their “Unfinished Work” folder. Any classwork that didn’t get completed went in there (not tests or quizzes, just classwork). Right before we’d begin, students would pull out their folders and check to make sure there wasn’t any work that needed to be completed. If there was, they were on the “catch-up” list.

Let me just say, just even having an “Unfinished Work” folder helped a great deal with handling incomplete work! It was much easier for students to keep track of their work. If they finished an assignment early, they could either grab a book to read or work on unfinished work from their folder. The finished work folder lived in their desk, and I always told them, “If you aren’t done, put it in your finished work folder!”

You can read more about the unfinished work folder here !

I kept this routine real simple, guys! No fancy slide shows…just a whiteboard and names. In one column, I’d write “catch-up” with the students’ names and a list of work they needed to complete. In the other column, I’d write “Pickles” with the names of students who had completed all their work. When a student completed assignments and turned them in, they could erase their name and put it under the “pickles” side instead.

Activity Idea for Pickles

Now, remember, the name of any student who had completed all their work or their I-Ready minutes would be placed in the Pickles column.

My students loved being a pickle! They loved the idea of choosing their own activities (even if they were reading-based).

Some activities my students could pick from:

• Writing and illustrating stories – Pretty popular! Especially the illustrating. I showed students how to make a mini-book with lined paper folded and stapled together.
• Playing an educational computer game – Probably the most popular!
• Creating or playing on the IPad – Don’t worry, I was very clear about which apps they could use during this time!
• Completing a reading center game – Students could do this with their friends. I’d put any stations we had completed that week in an area towards the back of the classroom, and students could grab one to play. This also worked well for any student who needed to complete a station activity for their “catch-up” activity. Need reading center ideas? These were always a hit !
• Free choice reading – They could choose their own book and where they’d like to sit and read. They could also read with a buddy.
• Helping a friend complete their work – This one was pretty popular! I allowed it as long as they weren’t just telling their buddies the answers. Honestly, it was a win-win: The student got help, and the student helping was learning more! Bonus- it freed me up to complete DRAs, fluency checks, or reteach skills as needed.
• Teacher assistant – Sometimes I needed help, so if they were done and didn’t want to do one of the other activities, I’d put them to work, helping to organize papers or filling the mailboxes with returned work.

Unfinished Work Routine- Catch-up and Pickles

So there you have it, teacher friends. This is the simple, routine way I kept my students on top of their work. I mean, what teacher wants to feel like they are constantly chasing students around trying to get them to finish their work? NOT ME! Now you don’t have to!

Free Catch Up and Pickles Download

Want to grab a few resources to help you get started? Click below and have this resource sent straight to your inbox! Now you can easily implement a Catch-up and Pickles routine in your classroom this week! This free download includes printable tracking sheets, whiteboard labels, and an editable PowerPoint file.

More Great Ideas!

Check out these other great ideas to try in your classroom!

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How to deal with missing & late-work: one teacher’s approach

Hey readers! It’s been a while since you’ve seen anything from us at Three Teachers Talk. We, like all of you, feel like we’ve been trudging through this year. Between the zooms, the Nearpods, the screencasts, the quarantines, the cleaning protocols, the bandwith issues…well, you get the picture. It’s been a lot.

Now we’re at the half-point of this year and so many are struggling with engagement. How do we “hold kids accountable” in the midst of all this? And what can we learn that might go beyond the crisis teaching we’re doing now? I’ve been loving following Tyler Rabin’s (@tylerrabin) journey around these issues and invited him to share his thinking with all of you.

We hope you’re safe. We hope you’re well. We hope this helps.

I’ve gone through this cycle more often than I’d like:

• Realize that grade penalties on late work are bad.
• Eliminate all grade penalties.
• Immediately get overwhelmed by late work and a lack of organization.
• Rush to reimpose late penalties.

I would argue that in most classrooms, grade penalties don’t exist because the teacher likes them; grade penalties exist because we don’t feel like we have an alternative.

On top of that, they work. For some things. The things they work for are the easily visible pieces. Do students hand more things in with grade penalties than without? Typically, yes. 

But, let’s also point out some of the things we know about how extrinsic motivators, especially punishments, impact student learning. This blog captures some of the key points from Daniel Pink’s work on motivation well, and the first point that we have to be aware of is that, while extrinsic motivation does increase short-term motivation, it actually hurts it long-term. This means that we can use it once or twice to convince someone to do something, but eventually that ends up no longer being motivating. Sound like any students you’ve had? 

The second piece is the more concerning piece. Extrinsic motivation increases someone’s drive to complete basic tasks, but it hinders their ability to engage in complex process. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe learning falls under the latter category. While I wish I could put this softly, I don’t know a way around the harshness of this fact: an emphasis on late penalties values compliantly completing a task more than it does the student’s ability to learn. 

Now, here’s where we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Late penalties are, in essence, a barrier to learning, but in most cases, there doesn’t appear to be a sustainable alternative for teachers. We don’t want to have to use grade penalties, but we are human. We need to have lives, and the constantly ebb and flow of late work is exhausting and time-consuming. 

This concept was weighing heavily on me a few months back. I too often criticize the act of using grade penalties without acknowledging the reality of our context or providing possible solutions. As I wrestled through this in an attempt to provide a solution, I recorded the most helpful info I could into the longest thread I’ve ever posted on Twitter. However, as it always goes on Twitter, it lacked the depth the conversation needs. 

As such, I’ve broken the thread into segments so that I can provide additional details about how to address the late work issue in meaningful ways without using grade penalties and without losing your sanity. 

Part 1: Organizing Assignments into Essential vs. Non-essential

This Tweet probably needs the most explanation. If you remove grade penalties and allow students to turn in ALL their work whenever they want, you will lose every ounce of free time you have. The key is to really identify the assignments that carry the most value. This isn’t to say that the non-essential assignments aren’t valuable, but the non-essential assignments should mean that their function is to allow students to practice specific skills and demonstrate their current level of understanding. They should have more than just that one opportunity to do that for each skill. But…I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Part 2: Non-essential Assignments – Multiple Attempts for Learning

The key with these assignments is that the student will have further opportunities to demonstrate their learning, but these missed assignments demonstrate a need for a different type of support, a support that grade penalties just frankly don’t offer. For your sake, don’t take late work that falls into this category. Tell the student that they missed this opportunity, but they will get another shot at it later. However, if you end there, kids will receive the message that every educator fears: deadlines and completing assignments aren’t important. 

This is why there must be a system or process set up to hold students accountable in a way that actually focuses on building those skills. Like I mentioned, my favorite is to have them stay after class and schedule their week with me. I can also put them on my list of students who receive my Remind messages about upcoming assignments. Somehow there has to be a clear next step for students who miss these assignments so that they know (a) you’re paying attention, (b) it’s important, and (c) you want them to get better at self-management and executive functioning. 

Part 3: Final Evaluation

All of this comes down to the fact that we should be averaging scores over time to determine a final score. Not only does that result in an inaccurate report of student learning, but it means that missing assignments will almost inevitably factor into the final grade (unless you drop scores, which I’m always a proponent of). 

At the end of a term, the goal is that you are doing a summative evaluation (preferably with the student) where you are looking through their data to determine their final scores. If this step isn’t happening, missing and late work usually ends up being a significant factor in a student’s grade. 

Now, I know a lot of people are thinking, “What about the student who doesn’t turn in ANY work?!” At some point, a lack of evidence is a lack of evidence, and that student hasn’t given you enough to demonstrate proficiency in the skill. I have found that this happens WAY less often than we think it does, though. 

Part 4: Authentic Consequences for Authentic Assessments

Tweets: 

While I probably don’t need to elaborate here, I want to make sure one word shines through: authentic. How are we creating experiences where students get to apply their learning in authentic ways so that the cost of not doing something is actually meaningful for the student? Is this a one-size-fits-all thing? Absolutely not. For a consequence to be meaningful, there must be an element of choice in it. The student has to have had some control and ability to bring in their full self – their passions, interests, goals, etc – to the project. That is when the consequences become powerful. 

Part 5: Final Thought

This is why I get so worked up about grade penalties. I know we do them because it feels like we don’t have an alternative, but so often these grade penalties are just kicking a horse who’s already down. These are students who often have already been told they’re bad at school, maybe not explicitly, but the message has been sent over and over. They don’t need another reminder that they can’t do it. We teach them nothing when we add penalties on top of self-doubt. What they need is someone who notices they are struggling, but instead of blaming the student and calling it good, that person goes, “Here’s how we’re going to do better next time. Let’s let this one go and move forward together.”

This is why we have to stop depending on grade penalties. They are a way of washing our hands of the responsibility of educating our kids, of helping them see their best selves. We can do better. It’s not easy, but we can do it, one small change at a time.

Tyler Rablin is a current instructional coach and National Board certified high school language arts teacher in Sunnyside School District in Sunnyside, WA. On the side, he is a consultant with Shifting Schools, contributing writer for Edutopia, and a Google for Education certified trainer. His educational passion is focused on the ways that meaningful technology integration, modernized assessment strategies, and strong cultures of learning can allow us to provide meaningful, powerful, and personal learning experiences for each of our students. In his personal life, he enjoys reading, running, and spending time hiking and camping with his wife and two dogs.

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Missing Assignments--and the Real World

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It’s a story that every teacher has heard--and if they’ve been in the classroom for a couple of years, recognizes from personal experience:

The teacher is relatively new, and working hard to build an effective practice (in this case, a band program). She goes away for three days, to a conference, leaving behind sub plans which involve sending students to the computer lab to craft a PowerPoint on composers. Only five of her 67 students submit any work. Her question to the Band Directors Group professional network: How do I not freak out on Monday? How do I handle this?

The post hit a nerve--she has about 50 responses so far. What’s surprising to me is how many are bent on blame and punishment: What an incompetent sub! Give ‘em all zeros! Candy and a free day for the five compliant ones! Make sure your administrator backs you up, then nuke ‘em--that’s how they learn.

Just what they learn from these retaliatory strategies--or the impact on a young teacher trying to nurture enthusiasm and membership in a school music program--seems unimportant. Kids blew off an assignment--make sure their grades reflect that choice. (The words “choice” and “choose” appear frequently in the comments.) Get tough. They deserve it.

I once wrote a blog about a similar experience I had as a teacher. I assigned a big project, giving my students six weeks to complete it, and a lot of what teachers call scaffolding: things to read, ideas to help them select and shape their work, graphic organizers and outlines, the option of working singly or together. I had more than 300 students at the time, and over 90% turned the project in on time.

When the work was turned in, I realized it would take me weeks to read/listen to the projects, provide feedback and grade them. I offered the 25 or so students who hadn’t completed the project a grace period of a week to turn something in--since I wanted to make sure they engaged with the assignment’s materials and ideas. All but one or two of the original non-completers finished the work--and what was submitted was mostly of acceptable quality. A handful were top-notch. I also got a couple of thank-you messages from parents.

That blog also drew a lot of ire. From teachers. The word most teachers chose was “unfair"---unfair to the kids who did the work on time. Unfair to let students think they would get a reprieve in the (here it comes) real world. Unfair to other teachers, who insist on meeting deadlines and punish kids who don’t.

I’ve been musing about this. These are the questions that emerge for me:

• What were the teacher’s learning goals for this assignment? Were they communicated to the students? If the goal was “keep kids busy and out of the band room for three days,” then the outcome was predictable, even if not defensible.
• How do our students--all our students, from kindergarten to Chemistry--perceive classes taught by substitutes? What do teachers say to their students about subs and days when they must be absent? What do teachers say to their students about what can be accomplished with three days in a computer lab?
• What does it tell our students when compliance matters more than acquiring knowledge or skills? When getting a good grade becomes the only goal?
• How “unfair” is it to students who must work or mind siblings, that other students have long blocks of discretionary time available for schoolwork? Can we ever provide equitable opportunity for all students, equitable access to time and materials for optimum learning?

The two mega-issues that emerge whenever teachers talk about missing assignments and justifying their actions toward late work are grades--always grades--and the idea that we owe kids “real” experiences to prepare them for the big, bad world where they will be presumably be working in a few years. Paul Thomas , in an excellent piece on grading and late work has this to say:

In my 30-plus years as an educator at nearly every level possible, I witness daily teachers and professors who fail to meet deadlines (regularly); talk, do other things (grade papers), stare at their computers/smart phones, etc., during meetings; and behave in a number of ways that they do not tolerate by students in their classes, behaviors that negatively impact students' grades. I also drive daily with adult motorists who exceed the speed limit without any punishment--as most of us have come to realize a grace zone of staying less than ten mph over that limit. In other words, the real world of rules is much fuzzier than the rules of formal schooling.

My fellow Education Week Teacher blogger Starr Sackstein has been pushing educator thinking on grades for years. She also had a brilliant blog on late work last week, where she wrote this:

As I have moved away from grades, one things I've noticed is that learning takes time and for different children, it takes different amounts of time. Doesn't mean they aren't learning. Doesn't even mean they are purposely not working. It just means they have a different process. Students like this require more time and there is no reason not to give it to them. The goal is by the end of the year that he will have achieved mastery in the skills and standards of the class. Not necessarily right now when the teacher determines it should be ready.

In the case of the young music teacher and the chorus of “Off with their heads!” that followed her post--a lot the recommendations felt like habitual, unexamined teacher practice: I always give half-credit for one day late OR I wouldn’t waste important class time talking about it--just tell them to check the on-line gradebook.

The only upside I see is that the novice teacher who asked for help got it--and there was enough variety in the responses to prove that there is no one right way to address common problems. I wish her well. And I’m guessing she won’t use the assignment again.

The opinions expressed in Teacher in a Strange Land are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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How to Never Miss an Assignment Again

Never miss an assignment again.

That which you had been dreading has happened. You either completely forgot about an assignment that was due or wasn’t able to finish and turn it in on time. While missing an assignment is something most college students are bound to face in a certain point of their academic trajectory, it can be a very unpleasant experience which can result in several complications with your marks in a specific subject. The best thing would indeed be not having to go through it.

However, with so many things going on at the same time, so many tests to revise for and a ton of other assignments due as well, it may often seem like science-fiction to be able to have everything prepared on time. True, it may be difficult, but it’s not impossible. In this article, we will give you some useful tips to help you organize yourself better and, as we say in Spain, “not get caught by the bull”… again.

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Let’s state the most important thing first, and that is

Forgive yourself. Regardless of the circumstances why you weren’t able to hand in your assignment on time. Acknowledging you’ve made a mistake and that you need to correct it is the first step towards improvement. Come to terms with what has happened and then let go; after all, there’s no use in torturing yourself over what you could have done differently once you can’t do anything else about it.

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Speak to your professor

If you weren’t able to complete your assignment because you or someone in your family have had a health-related problem, teachers are more likely to put themselves in your place and give you a chance to compensate for the mishap. Also, if you or one of your relatives have been ill, ask the doctor for a medical letter to show to your professor and prove that you’re not just making up an excuse.

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There’s (almost) nothing a good dialogue can’t solve

Even if you’ve missed your assignment deadline because you prioritized other things or simply because you procrastinated too much, talk to your lecturer if there’s anything else you could do in order not to fail the subject. Perhaps for this class, they’ll be taking the final exam’s marks more into account; or there are other assignments which would give you a good opportunity to make up for the incident. Keep in mind, however, that every professor is a world of their own. Just because Professor X told you that you could do a paper about tropical fish to compensate for the missed assignment doesn’t mean that Professor Y is willing to give you that chance. And furthermore, don’t try to have your way at all costs: if your professor says that there are no more opportunities, accept that no means no.

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Don’t let it happen again!

Whenever one of your professors proposes a new paper to turn in or a new project to present, take good note of it in your calendar or agenda so that you make sure not to forget about it and end up having the deadline catching up with you. Once you have the date in which your assignment is due in mind, you can start preparing it with enough anticipation.

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Get to work!

Go to your college or local library and start gathering the materials necessary for completing your project/assignment: read books, look up information online, take notes, write up some drafts… Of course, you don’t need to work yourself to death in a matter of a few days, on the contrary: dedicate every day a little time to your task, even if it isn’t more than an hour. If you start gathering up information and writing a couple of paragraphs since the very first day, you’ll see how you’ll have it done in time!

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“I’m stuck?! Help, please!”

Is your assignment topic too complicated? You don’t even know where to start? Are you at a total loss? Don’t worry we all have been there. If you see yourself struggling with your assignment, you can always ask your professor your doubts or request for a tutorship. If you address them in a polite manner and they see you truly interested in your work, they won’t refuse. Another tip that always helps is regularly attending your lectures: more often than not, your professors may drop little hints about what they’re looking for in an assignment… or even in the final exam! You can also resort to asking around your circle of college friends for some solidarity between partners. Keep in mind that at least two heads think more than one!

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If you follow these tips, you’ll see how you won’t miss another assignment again during your college years. But even if missing an assignment is not a very nice experience, think that you’re also a human after all and that it is impossible not to make a single mistake every now and then. Furthermore, there is always a valuable lesson to be learned from our slip-ups.

Do you think there are any other pieces of advice that should be taken into account for not missing your assignments’ and projects’ deadlines? If so, feel welcome to share them with us in the comment section.

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The Pathway 2 Success

Solutions for Social Emotional Learning & Executive Functioning

40+ Strategies and Supports for Students Who Are Failing Class

October 17, 2023 by pathway2success Leave a Comment

Sometimes, kids and teens struggle in keeping their grades up. With enough struggle, students can end up failing a class (or just be in danger of failing). This can be for a multitude of reasons from being absent too many times to not understanding the concepts to not turning in assignments. Regardless of the reasons, when kids and teens are failing a class, it’s a big problem. The good news is that there are strategies and interventions to help kid and teens get back on track.

We all play a role. An important note to mention about this article is that I have divided it up into three sections of strategies. These are strategies for the student, the educators, and the parents. There are so many strategies that they could be split up into three separate articles, but I purposefully kept them together. That’s because while it is ultimately up to a student to do the work required to pass a class, we all play a role in setting the stage, providing supports, and helping them get back on track. We’re in this together.

One more idea to keep in mind is that kids who are failing might feel like they are too far down the road to make their way back to a passing grade. Sometimes, it can feel hopeless for them. They need to know that adults are there to help them and that they can use strategies to help themselves too.

EDUCATOR STRATEGIES

Consider the underlying reason why a student might be failing. There are many reasons why a student might be failing a class. Finding the underlying reason can help get to the root of the problem. Is the student refusing to do work because they are struggling with some personal challenges? Is the student having trouble keeping ahead because they are juggling too many after school activities? Is the student not preparing enough for tests and quizzes? Sometimes, this isn’t always easy to find out, but it’s worth investigating.

Collaborate with other educators. Talk with other educators and compare how the student is doing in other classes. Is the student failing in just one class or across the board? Understanding this can set the stage for next steps.

Provide encouragement. Remind the student that they can improve their situation with hard work and strategies. It’s important to keep a supportive mindset with the student, since the goal is to empower them to make better choices.

Meet privately with the student. Talking 1:1 with the student in a private setting can have an impact. If possible, meet privately with the student by calling them out of study hall or homeroom for a short session. Use this time to identify the problem, discuss, and come up with potential strategies together. It’s important be open to listening to the student’s perspective. Sometimes, the problems and solutions they list can be extremely helpful information.

Provide a list of missing work. After talking with the student, provide a concrete list of assignments they can make up for full or partial credit. Creating a missing work list serves for a few different purposes. For one, it lets the student know exactly what they can do to get started improving their grade. Also, the list can be mailed home and sent to administration for record-keeping at the same time.

Teach executive functioning skills. So often, students are expected to plan, stay organized, manage their time and work through challenges. When students struggle with these skills, it greatly impacts their ability to perform well in classes. The good news is that young adults can learn and apply meaningful strategies to help them. Use lessons and activities to teach executive functioning skills to give students the foundational skills they need.

Involve school administrators. When a student is in danger of failing, it’s important to be open and share this early on with school administrators. This is for a few reasons. First, the administrator can step in and contact families to provide an extra layer of support and reminders. Also, it’s important for the administrator to know early on that you are implementing strategies and supports. There should be no surprises about a student failing a class, which is why it helps to involve admin early on.

Give a study hall check-in. Stop into the student’s study hall or resource room to give an extra check-in. Sometimes, a study hall time for kids can be overwhelming; they have so much work and they’re not sure exactly where to start. When you give a check in, be specific about what work they can do in that moment to help get back on the right track. The goal is to help them get started and then allow them to complete it independently. This also helps model healthy work habits.

Teach SEL skills directly. Many social-emotional skills are actually a prerequisite to success in the classroom. These include skills like working with others, managing emotions, problem-solving, and persevering through challenges. Consider teaching social-emotional skills to your student (or whole class) to provide a foundation of support.

Consider learning challenges and needs. It’s important to consider if a student may have learning challenges that may have gone previously unnoticed. How are the students’ reading, math, and writing skills? Do they need interventions and tutoring in school? Do you suspect the student has a learning disability? If so, these are important questions to bring up and discuss with your school team.

Provide a daily check-in. A quick check-in with a student can help them feel connected while also building accountability. Every student check-in might be a little different depending on what that student needs; some students might need an emotion check in while others might need a check of their homework log. Some students might need both to help them do and feel their best. This check-in can be implemented by many different educators depending on what works in schedules, from a school counselor, classroom teacher, or paraeducator.

Consider social-emotional challenges and needs. Consider if the student has unmet social-emotional needs. It goes without saying that sometimes social-emotional challenges can impact academic challenges in a huge way. Touch base with your school counselor or school social worker to discuss supports that can be given, such as a group or individual counseling time.

Continue building a relationship. Many times, kids and teens need to feel connected to fully open up about their challenges. Continue focusing on relationship-building strategies . This isn’t a quick-fix but it’s a necessary support along the way.

Build motivation together. When conferencing or meeting with your student, discuss what it means to be motivated. Brainstorm strategies to build motivation together. You can even use motivation workbook activities to help build strategies for getting started, staying focused, and meeting goals.

Contact families. Work with families early on to let them know their child is struggling. Sometimes, these conversations can be uncomfortable, so it’s important to be open, honest, and supportive.

Build organization skills. Being disorganized can severely impact a student’s success in the classroom. If this is an area of need for your student, consider giving extra support specifically with organization skills. This includes teaching how to use a planner, keeping binders in order, and having the right materials each day. If this isn’t something that can be directly taught during class time, it might be worth reaching out to the school counselor or school tutor to see if they can work on some of these skills with your student.

Encourage healthy homework habits to families. From setting up a homework spot to keeping electronics away, encourage some homework habits for success that can help your student.

Schedule a family conference. A face-to-face conference with families and the student themselves is important. This sets the tone that extra supports are needed. It may help to ask an administrator to be present at the meeting too. One important note here is that the student should join the meeting too.

Develop a guided study hall. A study hall is often unstructured independent time to work. While this is great for self-starting students, it can be a struggle for those who need more direction. Consider implementing a guided study hall. This time is a more structured small group of students who need extra support. It should be run by a teacher or paraeducator who can give extra reminders and strategies along the way. For example, a 7th grade guided study hall might have a list of today’s homework up on the board. That teacher can get kids started on an assignment and provide academic support, as needed.

Develop a contract with the student. A contract very clearly spells out all the expectations for the student. Outline what the student is responsible for. For example, you might write in that the student will complete daily homework each night and will review grades with their homeroom teacher on Friday. Add in other interventions from the school. Then, have all parties sign the contract.

Teach study skills. Some students do not know how to study for tests, write down homework, or prioritize their work. These are skills that are essential for success in the classroom. Use strategies to teach study skills to help students do their best.

Try peer tutoring. Peer tutoring is a research-based practice that can teach both the tutor and the student they are teaching. If your school doesn’t currently support peer tutoring, it is something to be creative with and consider. For example, your peer tutor could earn extra credit for helping during study hall.

Consider extra credit opportunities. Sometimes, extra credit can be a helpful option. Such assignments can serve to help a student improve their grade, boost confidence, and teach meaningful skills. Ultimately, this is a decision up to every individual teacher to decide what works best for them and their learners.

STUDENT STRATEGIES

Start with a growth mindset. A growth mindset means knowing that you can improve your skills with hard work and dedication. At first, failing a class might feel like an impossible-to-fix situation, but it’s often not. You can learn and implement strategies to help yourself make better choices and improve your grades.

Check your grades. Being aware is one of the first steps to helping you get back on track. Review your grades to figure out where you currently stand. You can write these down to chart them over time.

Talk to your teacher. Show responsibility by asking to meet with your teacher to work on your grade. Use this time to talk about your current grade and ask for suggestions on how to improve it. It also helps to come prepared with your own suggestions to show you truly want to improve.

Plan a dedicated daily homework time. Habits make it all happen. Start with a dedication daily time to work on homework assignments and study for assessments. Some students might do best working right away after school is over. Others might work best an hour after they get home to help them unwind from the day. Choose what works for you and stick with it.

Make a goal for yourself. Setting goals helps us accomplish tasks. Consider a measurable goal that you want to meet, such as getting a 70% or higher in math by the end of the quarter. Then, list out steps to get there. Check back in with your goal each week to make sure you’re on track. Consider meeting with an adult at home or at school to help you with writing this goal, if needed.

Keep up with current work. From this point forward, make sure you are staying on track with current assignments. Missing more work will set you further behind, so it’s important to stay up-to-date.

Make a missing assignment list. First, check to make sure your teacher will accept late work. Then, make a list of all the assignments you can turn in for credit. Try to not get overwhelmed with the amount of work if you have many missing assignments. Just get started on a few and turn those in to get some momentum.

Get organized. Being organized can help you accomplish tasks. Spend time tidying up your binders, backpack, and workspace. Then, tackle them on a regular basis to stay organized.

Use a homework log. Use a daily homework journal to record assignments. Some students prefer a paper notebook while others do well with a digital app. Find what works for you! Whatever you choose, make it a habit and consistently write in your assignments.

Participate in class. Make an effort to stay engaged in classroom learning by participating. One way to do this is to take notes while the teacher is teaching. These notes can help you later on when you need to study or review. Another strategy is to raise your hand to answer questions and share ideas. These strategies will help show your teacher that you are invested in learning.

Study with a friend. For whatever class you are struggling in, find a friend who can study with you.

Talk with a school counselor. A school counselor can help you with many things, from personal challenges you’re going through to making a plan to talk to a teacher about your grade. Consider signing up for time with your school counselor to work through some of those needs.

Ask for extra help. Asking for help is a strength! Consider reaching out to the classroom teacher and seeing if there is any extra help available. Be willing to stay after, come during your study hall, or even visit during lunch if that is what is needed.

Know when to put distractions away. This is a tough subject, but an important one! Phones and other digital devices can be extremely distraction during work and learning sessions. Know when you need to put them away to help you focus and accomplish tasks.

Be open to learn new study strategies. If you struggle with tests and quizzes, be open-minded to try new study strategies. Consider quizzing a friend back-and-forth with questions. Make flash cards. Make a mock test and quiz yourself with it. There are many different study strategies and habits to try.

Find an accountability partner. Ask a friend or trusted adult to help hold you accountable for doing your work and studying for tests. Just talking to someone about your progress and goals can help you develop greater self-awareness.

Get enough sleep. Getting enough sleep at night is important to help you doing and feeling your best. Consider coming up with a plan to get enough uninterrupted rest at night.

PARENT STRATEGIES

Provide encouragement. Be a positive force to help your child turn their grade around. Remember that your child may feel it is impossible to recover from their failing grade, making them want to give up entirely. Remind them that they can turn it around with support, strategies, and hard work.

Help your child cope with stress. Failing a class is a stressful situation for young adults. Sometimes, before we solve problems, we have to cope with the emotions first. Help your child build healthy coping strategies to manage stress with activities like deep breathing, listening to music, and mindful coloring.

Check grades together on a regular, planned basis. Checking through grades together helps holds students accountable. Plan a weekly time to review and stick with the schedule.

Create a dedicated work space. Set up an area where your child can complete their homework and studying each night. Set up some rules and expectations for the work space, such as no TV or cell phones while working at the space.

Check over the homework together. Before your child starts their homework , sit with them and review the homework for the night together. This provides an extra layer of accountability and structure.

Chat with the teacher directly. If a teacher hasn’t reached out to you personally, send an email or phone call to get in touch and discuss. Work together to come up with some actionable steps. If your child is continuing to fail, ask for an in-person meeting to discuss strategies.

Schedule consistent work session time. Habits make all the difference! Agree on a daily work session time each day for homework, studying, and organization. Then, put your plan in action.

Complete work together. Try sitting down with your child as they complete their work. Help them get organized and set up. Work through problems with them if needed.

Set a regular bed time. Sleep is incredibly important to helping kids and teens do their best. So often, young adults are chronically overtired. Set a nightly bed time and stick with it. This requires a lot of practice but is worth it!

Leave electronics away from bedrooms at night. Cell phones are distracting at all hours of the day, but especially during sleep hours. Your child needs uninterrupted sleep to perform their best during the day. Make it a nightly habit for everyone to leave their phones in a designated spot to charge before going to sleep for the night.

Learn about executive functioning skills. Read about executive functioning skills and how they play a critical role in learning.

Discuss consequences. Young adults need to be held accountable for their choices. Be up front with your child about consequences for not doing homework, getting to class on time, or finishing assignments in class. Then, make sure to follow through.

Plan incentives together. When needed, consider adding incentives for reaching goals. Try to gear incentives towards activities versus material items. For example, once your child meets a certain goal (all homework for a full week), you might allow them to go to the movies with a friend or choose the end of the week restaurant for dinner.

Create a contract. A written contract is a great way to keep all of the supports, strategies, consequences, and rewards all in one place. Write it out. Then, sign it together.

Celebrate successes. When your child shows improvement, celebrate together. This even means celebrating small wins, such as a better grade on a quiz or finishing homework for the week. Big progress starts with small steps and encouragement can go a long way.

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⭐ Kristina 💖 SEL & Executive Functioning 💻 Blogger at www.thepathway2success.com 👩‍🏫 Special Educator turned Curriculum Specialist Links here 👇

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The Case Against Zeros in Grading

Teachers can rethink their grading practices to make them more mathematically fair for students and allow for redemption for a missed assignment.

Let’s say a student fails to turn something in. What grade should they receive? I have asked this question of a lot of teachers lately, and here are the most common answers I’ve gotten: “Zero.” “Nothing.” “-5.” “An F.” “A K.” What?

I’m currently in my 19th year of teaching, and my answer to this question has evolved significantly over time. I was a staunch “Give them a zero. I don’t give points for doing nothing. You earn them.” However, in the past two years, my answer has evolved to include some nuance that I believe is more mathematically fair to students and allows for redemption.

Understand the Grade Band Reality

I’m a math teacher and I love number lines. So what does this have to do with grades? Let’s envision a number line with the traditional 0–100 grade scale on it. Way over on the right would be the A grade band (90–100). The B band would be from 80 to 90, a C from 70 to 80, and a D from 60 to 70.

When a student receives an F, that grade band doesn’t continue with that nice equal 10-point interval from 50 to 60. When we give students a zero, that zero is in grade purgatory! If we continued the equal-interval spacing of 10 points per letter, a zero would actually be a K. I think K stands for “Kill Grade.” Let me explain.

Think about a student who does consistent B (85) work. Their first two assignments are solid 85s, so the average is an 85. If this student doesn’t turn in the third assignment and receives a zero, their grade drops to an F (57). Because of that one zero, it will take that student 14 more 85s just to get their grade back to an 80.

To be clear, a student could have 15 total 85s in the grade book and one missing assignment (traditional zero), and their grade would still be C because of the way that zero mathematically affects the grading system .

Our students know this. They get in a hole because of some missing work or some zeros and they inherently know that they may never be able to get out of it no matter what they do. They can consistently turn in good work, but their grade hardly improves because of the math behind the K (the zero).

Think Philosophically to Redefine ‘0’

When I realized this, I had to philosophically understand what I wanted my grade book to be: an accurate reflection of student knowledge. I also don’t want my grading practices to be demotivating. I needed to make a change and wrap my head around “giving them something for nothing.” It seemed as wrong as the K grade. So here’s what I did: I had to reframe the concept of a zero.

If we think about grades on an equal-interval basis, each grade band is worth an equal value of 1. An F is 0, a D is 1, C is 2, B is 3, and A is 4. If we make each grade band equal, then failure isn’t disproportionately weighted. If we still have to use the 0–100 scale (which is mathematically skewed to failure), then we have to hack the traditional grade book and convert that 0–4 equal-interval scale into a 50–100 scale. Essentially, this makes 50 the new zero. We redefine the floor of our grading system to make it more mathematically accurate and less punitive. I’m not giving them something for nothing. I changed the narrative to redefine the floor at 50, so that failure isn’t worth more than success.

Let’s revisit our student who does consistent B work. The student does B-level work on two assignments and then misses one. Instead of giving that missing assignment a K (0), we give it an F (50). We use our new floor of 50 for a missing assignment. The student’s overall grade significantly drops to a 73, but it takes only four more Bs to get back into the B band. The F allows for redemption. The K doesn’t.

I spent this past summer involved in a study on Joe Feldman’s book Grading for Equity with 55 secondary teachers and administrators in my district in Sonoma, California. One of the practices discussed in the book that is an easy one to defend and implement is this idea of redefining the zero.

Many of my experienced colleagues are rethinking their use of the zero because they’ve seen the stark reality of what it takes to overcome a K. I encourage you to think philosophically about what you want your grading practices to encourage and convey to students. Are your grades an accurate reflection of what a student knows? Do your grading practices align with your teaching philosophies? Discussing my grading practices with colleagues was one of the best professional development exercises I have undertaken in 19 years.

Pushback Is Common but Manageable

The biggest pushback I have gotten from my colleagues has been related to the reporting of the redefined floor of 50 in the online grade book to parents and guardians. I agree that it’s confusing for a parent to see that an assignment is missing but at the same time the student received a “7/14.” The online grade book exacerbates the issue of “I don’t want to give them something for nothing.”

At my school site, there is no way around this, so we have to clearly communicate the rationale to parents with conversations or grade book comments, which is a good thing. However, this also unveils a bigger issue that can be raised with school administrators: reevaluation of our institutional systems to allow for a reimagined grading scale that is more mathematically sound and accurate.

I encourage you to find some like-minded and also some not-like-minded teachers and/or administrators and try this grading method. It makes you really have to defend your practices or develop new ones that might be contrary to what you experienced as a student.

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Tracking Missing Assignments For Students and Guardians

Published: April 18, 2023

As the end of the school year approaches, students need to get their missing assignments turned in. Not only does this help their overall grade—most class grades depend in part on assignment completion and grades—but completing more assignments helps students’ comprehension as well. Sure, some homework is “busy work”, but certainly not all. 

We talk a lot at Schoolytics about how teachers can handle missing assignments , including how to engage parents in their communications around missing work. 

But the student and family side is just as important, if not more so. Indeed, teachers only have so much influence over what students do between 3pm and 8am. 

Gaps in the student experience in Google Classroom

Students can see their missing assignments in Google Classroom. Helpfully, missing assignments from all classes are listed. 

However, the lack of search functionality (“Didn’t I have an assignment about the Pythagorean Theorem that I missed while I was out sick?”) is a real barrier to finding assignments to work on.  The inability to sort by anything other than date is too restrictive. This constraint, combined with the groupings for “This week”, “Last week”, and “Earlier”, makes the missing assignments view clunky. 

In addition, the “View all” expansion button is easily missed, especially for parents who are not familiar with the interface, leading some students to incorrectly conclude that they have only five missing assignments. 

What students really need is support with time management and prioritization skills (all part of executive functioning ). This manifests as understanding how to choose which missing work to tackle first and why.  When faced with dozens of missing assignments, where do you start? 

Perhaps they want to do assignments that are worth a lot of points.  Perhaps they need to ignore assignments due before a specific date because their teacher stopped accepting late work. Unfortunately, these filtering and sorting aids are not available in Google Classroom.

But students can get very granular with missing assignments in Schoolytics .  Sorting, filtering, and ranking are all possible.

In addition, Schoolytics gives students insights into their aggregate data, so they can see how they’re faring more generally.  This also helps them to see more clearly how they are progressing across all of their classes, and prioritize their time accordingly. 

Options for Guardians

Because Google Classroom lacks a robust parent experience , guardians have additional challenges in tracking missing assignments for their children. The guardian summaries are somewhat helpful, but are not clickable and only give parents a brief snapshot into what was missed over a period of time. There needs to be a summary of the severity of the problem.  Parents tend to ignore them for lack of actionable information.  

In Schoolytics, we focus on summarizing and distilling the information down so that guardians can know at a glance whether their child is significantly behind or just has a few things to hand in. And they can see all of their children in one view, thereby saving a lot of time trying to log in and out of Google Classroom accounts. Parents can set alerts, which are similar to summary emails, to keep tabs on missing work.

Thousands of parents, guardians, students, and educators use Schoolytics to unlock a deeper understanding of missing assignments. Want to learn more or share Schoolytics with your district? Get in touch with us today!

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A Better Way to Handle Missing Assignments

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So, you missed a class here’s what to do next.

An unexcused absence from class can be a big deal in high school. On top of missing lessons, in-class assignments, and pop quizzes (amongst other things), you might face disciplinary action, or the absence could impact your grade.

In college, things work differently. Knowing how to handle an absence in college comes down to understanding the attendance policy of each of your classes , as they might vary, and then figuring out how to stay on top of coursework if you do miss a class.

Here’re a few tips in case you need to navigate this in college.

Know the attendance policies of your classes

Each professor treats attendance differently, and they might even treat it differently depending on what class they’re teaching. Your professor will likely provide insight into their attendance policy on the first day of a class, and that policy is also likely to be outlined in the class’ syllabus. Your syllabus might even include what to do if you miss a class. It’s best to review these policies to know what to expect throughout the semester. Take note of what each professor expects in the event of your absence. If they require an email, you’ll want to send them one as soon as possible.

Beyond knowing the attendance policies of your individual classes , get familiar with any overarching attendance policies your college might have, too.

When to contact your professor if you miss a class

In most cases, contacting your professor isn’t necessary if you miss one class. However, if you’re in a class that relies heavily on attendance as part of your grade, and you were absent, it doesn’t hurt to reach out. If it’s a class that relies on attendance as a part of your grade, providing a legitimate reason for your absence, like a doctor’s note, could potentially help, too.

Not all classes make attendance a part of your grade, though, and in those cases, you should assess the kind of class you missed to decide what to do next. You likely don’t need to contact your professor if you missed a large lecture class. On the other hand, missing a smaller seminar class might warrant a quick note to your professor.

Reach out to your classmates if you miss a class

While you might not need to contact your professor if you miss a class, you should consider reaching out to a classmate or two. They can share any notes, handouts, or assignments you might’ve missed and keep you on track. Make it known that you’ll return the favor if they ever need help down the line.

Catch up on any missed work

While missing a class here and there isn’t likely to impact your grades, missing assignments absolutely will. You want to make sure that even if you miss a class here and there that you’re turning assignments in on time (this might be even more important in college than it is in high school).

If you missed an assignment or a pop quiz because you missed a class , reach out to your professor or a teaching assistant to see if there’s any way to catch up on the missed work or if there’s any way to do an extra credit assignment.

Final thoughts

Missing a class isn’t usually as big of a deal in college as in high school. However, some professors incorporate attendance into how they grade students. If that‘s the case, go the extra mile to communicate with your professor if you miss a class. 

Effects of Missing Assignments on Middle School GPA

Middle school is more than just a transitional phase between elementary and high school. It’s a critical period where foundational skills and attitudes toward learning are solidified. Academic performance during these years can significantly impact a student’s future, setting the stage for high school and even college opportunities.

The focus of this article is to dissect a specific but essential aspect of academic life: the effects of missing assignments on middle school GPA.

Why should you care? Missing assignments can do more than just lower a grade for a particular class; they can have ripple effects that impact a student’s overall Grade Point Average (GPA), emotional well-being, and even their future educational prospects.

We’ve organized this article into several key sections to give you a comprehensive understanding. We’ll explore what GPA is and why it’s vital in middle school, delve into the reasons why students might miss assignments, and discuss the direct and indirect consequences of such actions.

We’ll also provide practical solutions for students, parents, and educators looking to mitigate these effects.

Whether you’re a concerned parent, an educator seeking solutions, or a student wanting to understand the repercussions of missed assignments, this article has something for everyone. So, let’s embark on this educational journey to understand better how missing assignments could be the hidden iceberg, silently denting your middle school GPA.

Common Reasons for Missing Assignments in Middle School

When it comes to missed assignments, one might quickly jump to conclusions, labeling students as lazy or unmotivated. However, the reasons are often more complex and multifaceted. Understanding these factors is crucial for parents, educators, and the students themselves. Here are some of the common reasons for missing assignments in middle school:

Table of Contents

Academic Challenges

The first obstacle many middle schoolers face is the academic rigor itself. Middle school is often a significant leap from elementary school in terms of workload and complexity. Students are exposed to various subjects, each with its own set of expectations and assignments.

This shift can be overwhelming, causing students to miss deadlines as they try to cope with the increased academic pressure.

Emotional and Psychological Factors

Adolescence is a turbulent period filled with emotional and psychological changes. The transition from childhood to adulthood brings about an array of emotions that can significantly impact a student’s ability to focus and complete assignments.

Emotional stressors such as friendship troubles, identity issues, or even instances of bullying can lead to missed assignments, affecting their GPA inadvertently.

Time Management Issues

Let’s be honest; time management is a skill that even many adults struggle with. Imagine a middle schooler juggling multiple subjects, extracurricular activities, and social commitments. Poor time management can easily result in missed assignments.

Students may have the best intentions but find themselves ensnared in a web of procrastination and last-minute rushes, which seldom yield quality work.

Family and Environmental Factors

Last but not least, the environment in which the student is raised can be a significant factor. Family issues, such as parental divorce, financial instability, or even lack of a quiet space to study, can make it exceedingly difficult for students to complete their assignments on time. Understanding the family dynamics involved can offer deeper insights into the issue at hand.

For educators and parents alike, understanding these factors can offer valuable insights into how to support students better and improve their academic performance.

Once you get to the bottom of why assignments are being missed, you can start looking for effective solutions, such as teaching students how to calculate GPA in middle school , helping them understand each assignment’s impact on their overall grades.

By identifying and addressing the root causes of missed assignments, stakeholders can create targeted interventions that not only prevent missing future assignments but also help improve a student’s overall middle school experience.

Direct Effects of Missing Assignments on GPA

Missing assignments in middle school is not just a matter of a reduced grade in a particular subject; it can have a broader, more significant impact on a student’s overall GPA. The implications can be both immediate and far-reaching. Let’s dive into the specifics:

Short-term Academic Consequences

In the short term, missing assignments can result in immediate grade reductions. Assignments often account for a significant portion of the grade for a course, meaning each missing assignment chips away at the overall grade.

This not only lowers the subject grade but also has an immediate impact on the overall GPA, affecting eligibility for honor rolls or other merit-based recognitions.

Long-term Academic Consequences

Over a longer period, the effects can be even more severe. Consistently missing assignments can result in academic probation or even course failure, necessitating summer school or grade repetition.

When it comes to applying for high schools or even college scholarships, a low GPA can severely limit a student’s options. Schools often consider academic performance a key indicator of a student’s ability to succeed in more rigorous settings.

Case Studies and Statistics Supporting the Claims

The effects of missing assignments on GPA aren’t just theoretical. Various case studies and statistics offer real-world evidence of how missing assignments can affect academic performance.

For example, a study conducted by the National Association of School Psychologists found that students who regularly submitted their assignments had, on average, a GPA that was 0.6 points higher than those who frequently missed assignments.

For students who want to get a grasp on their academic standing without getting into the complexities of weighted and unweighted scores, using a simplified GPA calculator without credits can offer a quick snapshot of their current GPA.

This way, they can understand the urgent need to turn in every assignment and its significance in the larger academic picture.

Understanding the direct effects of missing assignments provides critical insights for students, educators, and parents alike. It underscores the importance of being diligent with schoolwork and opens avenues for timely interventions.

Indirect Effects of Missing Assignments on Middle School GPA

While it’s essential to consider the tangible impact on GPA when assignments are missed, we mustn’t overlook the subtler, indirect effects.

These can include emotional and psychological stressors, social repercussions, and the potential for a downward spiral in academic performance. Let’s explore these less obvious but equally important consequences.

Emotional and Psychological Impact

The stress of missing an assignment can lead to emotional and psychological issues, which, in turn, affect academic performance. The failure to complete an assignment can introduce a fear of falling behind or not being “smart enough,” impacting the student’s overall well-being and self-esteem.

This emotional weight often compounds, making it increasingly difficult for students to catch up and meet future deadlines.

Social Repercussions

When a student frequently misses assignments and sees a drop in GPA, they may also experience social repercussions. Classmates and teachers may begin to view them as unreliable or less dedicated, affecting social dynamics and teacher-student relationships.

This, too, can contribute to an overall decline in academic performance, as students may become disengaged or isolated, reducing their willingness to participate in class or seek help when needed.

The Downward Spiral – How One Missed Assignment Can Lead to More

It’s essential to recognize that missing assignments can set off a chain reaction. One missed deadline can throw off a student’s schedule, making it harder to meet subsequent deadlines. This creates a snowball effect, as each missed assignment adds pressure and stress, leading to more missed assignments and, ultimately, a significantly reduced GPA.

Understanding the difference between weighted and unweighted GPAs can be enlightening for students concerned about how these missed assignments could affect their academic record. A weighted GPA takes into account the difficulty of the courses, while an unweighted GPA treats all classes the same.

Knowing this difference can help students and parents create a more informed strategy for course selection and assignment prioritization, offering a more nuanced view of how GPA is affected.

Understanding both the direct and indirect effects of missing assignments provides a holistic view of the issue. This comprehensive understanding enables educators, parents, and students to devise effective strategies to combat the problem, ensuring a more successful and less stressful middle school experience.

Practical Solutions and Recommendations

While understanding the challenges and consequences of missing assignments is vital, finding practical solutions is equally crucial. In this section, we aim to provide actionable recommendations for students, parents, and educators to address the issue effectively.

Tips for Improving Time Management

One of the significant reasons students miss assignments is poor time management. Here are some tried-and-true tips to improve this crucial skill:

Create a Study Schedule: Having a dedicated timetable for homework and study can significantly reduce the likelihood of forgetting or delaying assignments.

Use Digital Tools : Apps like to-do lists or study planners can send reminders, making it less likely to miss deadlines.

Prioritize Tasks : Not all assignments have the same level of difficulty or require the same amount of time. Learning to prioritize can ensure that more critical or challenging tasks don’t get left behind.

Break it Down: For longer or more complex assignments, breaking them into smaller, manageable tasks can make them less intimidating and easier to complete on time.

Communication Strategies between Parents and Teachers

Effective communication between parents and teachers can play a significant role in helping students meet their academic responsibilities.

Regular Check-ins: Scheduled parent-teacher meetings can be instrumental in keeping track of a child’s academic performance.

Open Channels : Utilizing emails or dedicated communication platforms can help in conveying urgent issues and immediate concerns about a student’s performance or missed assignments.

Action Plans : Collaboratively develop an action plan to address missed assignments, thereby providing the student with a clear pathway to improvement.

Remedial Courses and Tutoring Options

Sometimes, the root cause of missed assignments is a lack of understanding of the subject matter. In such cases, additional educational support can be invaluable.

School Programs : Many schools offer after-school remedial programs that can help students catch up on missed content or reinforce learning.

Private Tutoring : Hiring a tutor can be a worthwhile investment for more personalized attention.

Online Courses : Various platforms offer topic-specific courses that can assist in clarifying concepts and improving academic performance.

Implementing these practical solutions can not only help in reducing the number of missed assignments but can also contribute to an overall improvement in GPA and academic well-being. The key is identifying and addressing the root issue with the appropriate strategies and support.

Is it Possible to Recover your GPA After Missing Multiple Assignments?

The quick answer is yes, but it will take concerted effort and strategic planning. Missing multiple assignments can significantly impact a middle school student’s GPA, but recovery is indeed possible. Students need to prioritize future assignments, perhaps dedicating extra study sessions or seeking additional support from teachers and parents.

Many schools offer retake or makeup opportunities that can help recover some lost points. Also, the further along a student is in their educational journey, the less impact a single grade has on the overall GPA, giving students the chance to bounce back if they make a focused effort.

How Do Educators Handle Missing Assignments?

Teachers and educators have different methods for handling missing assignments, varying from school to school and even from class to class. While some may offer grace periods or partial credit, others might implement a strict no-late-work policy.

It’s crucial for students and parents to understand these policies at the beginning of the academic year to avoid any surprises. Open communication with educators can often provide tailored solutions for unique circumstances, such as extensions or extra-credit opportunities.

Can Extra-Curricular Activities Compensate for a Lower GPA?

Extra-curricular activities are undoubtedly valuable, offering skills and experiences that go beyond the classroom. However, they rarely can fully compensate for a low GPA when it comes to academic evaluations.

While activities like sports, arts, or volunteer work can make a student more well-rounded and appealing to future schools or employers, the GPA still holds significant weight.

That said, a strong portfolio of extra-curricular activities might provide some cushioning against the negative effects of a lower GPA, especially if the student can demonstrate leadership, dedication, or exceptional skills in these areas.

The ripple effects of missing assignments in middle school can extend far beyond the immediate academic moment. As we’ve explored, the impact is multifaceted, directly influencing a student’s GPA in the short and long term.

But the consequences are not merely academic; they seep into emotional well-being and social interactions, creating a cycle that can be challenging to break.

The subject matter should not be brushed off as a mere phase or rite of passage in a student’s life. It is a pivotal issue that calls for a concerted effort from students, parents, and educators alike.

Understanding the gravity of this issue is the first step toward constructive change. Knowledge arms you with the tools to make informed decisions, whether you’re a student contemplating skipping an assignment, a parent concerned about your child’s academic performance, or an educator seeking to understand the root cause of low-class performance.

It’s not just about the numbers on a report card; it’s about setting the foundation for academic success and life skills like responsibility, time management, and self-discipline.

In facing this challenge, being proactive rather than reactive is the key. This approach ranges from implementing robust time management strategies to fostering open lines of communication between parents and teachers.

It could also mean seeking extra educational support when needed. We’ve discussed several actionable steps that can make a meaningful difference, and the onus is on each one of us to adapt and apply these solutions to our unique circumstances.

In conclusion, missing assignments are not a simple problem, nor do they have a one-size-fits-all solution. They are a pressing issue that requires understanding, attention, and, most importantly, action.

Let this article serve as a guide and a call to action for everyone involved in the academic journey of middle school students. Let’s work collectively to turn the tide, improving not just individual GPAs but the broader landscape of middle school education.

Related Posts

Difference Between Weighted and Unweighted GPA in Middle School

What Is a Good GPA for a Middle School Student?

How Do Honor Classes Affect Middle School GPA?

About the author.

Peter Watson

Meet Peter Watson, the Brain behind MiddleSchoolGPATool.com John is a seasoned educator, data enthusiast, and the founder of MiddleSchoolGPATool.com. With over a decade of experience in academia, John recognized the critical gap in accessible and reliable GPA tools specifically tailored for middle school students. Thus, MiddleSchoolGPATool.com was born.

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Give Fs for Missing Grades Instead of Zeros

Because of the way averages work, it's hard to overcome a zero..

Posted September 30, 2022 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

• Report card grades should measure students' overall performance and knowledge.
• When calculating a grade by averaging performance, more extreme values are weighted more heavily than those close to the mean.
• Because grades typically run from A to F (100 to 50), giving students a zero for a missed assignment significantly affects their grade.
• Assigning a 50 instead of a zero penalizes missed assignments but balances the possibility of bringing a grade up.

Report card grades are supposed to measure how well students have performed in class.

• Performance is a construct: What we are trying to measure.
• Report card grades are measures: They mean to capture the construct.

If grades are valid , people with high grades will perform better than those with lower grades. Although we hope that grades also reflect learning–people who learned more have higher grades–we know that's not always true. Being sick, having a chaotic home that makes it hard to do homework or study, or reading ability can all affect grades differently than they affect learning.

Measures of Central Tendency

Report card grades typically reflect central tendencies. Measures of central tendency are intended to be a single number (or grade) that captures the full construct (performance). A report grade usually captures several different assignments, which often vary.

Psychologists use three indicators of central tendencies–the mean, the median, and the mode. Each minimizes a different type of error.

• The mode is the most common value. In the figure below, students have five grades: a 75, three 85's, and a 95. If you had to guess what grade someone got on an assignment and said "85," you'd be wrong fewer times (have less error) with that guess than by guessing anything else.
• The median is the value that is in the middle of the distribution. If you use "85" to reflect how well a student did, you are wrong by 10 points for their 75, by 0 points for all three 85's, and you're wrong by 10 points for that 95 they got. In other words, your summed error is 20. The median minimizes summed error.
• The mean or average is when we take all the numbers in a distribution, add them together, and divide by how many numbers there are. Have you ever considered why that is a good measure of central tendency? What the average does is minimize summed squared error. So your "error" for a mean of 85 and a grade of 75 is 10. For 85, it is zero, and for 95, it is 10. The squared error is thus 10 2 + 0 2 + 0 2 + 0 2 + 10 2 : 200. No number will give you a smaller summed square error than the mean.

Because you are squaring errors to determine the mean, it is sensitive to outliers (sensitive to values far from the center). That's why many of us were taught always to use means unless a distribution was very lopsided .

When a distribution is lopsided, you have large errors. When you have large errors in lopsided distributions, most of us were taught that's when you use medians. In other words, means are the standard because they are the 'fairest'. Medians were invented to fix this unusual problem means have. That's not actually the case. Medians minimize error. Means minimize BIG errors. We are weighting large errors by squaring them and moving the mean until we find the number that does that best.

I understand means, medians, and modes. What’s that got to do with giving zeros for missing assignments?

In the figure above, if you calculate a report card grade using the mean, median, or mode all, you will get the same grade–an 85 or B.

Let's look at what happens if a student misses an assignment, and the teacher uses an average to compute their grade.

In this example, the students got 85s on the first four assignments. What happens on Assignment 5?

• Student 1 got an 85 on Assignment 5 and earned their expected 85.
• Student 2 aced it! They got a 100, raising their grade from an 85 to an 88 (a three-point gain).
• Student 3 did poorly on Assignment 5, earning a 60. This dropped their report grade by five points to an 80.

All of these changes are more or less what we expect.

But now look at Student 4, who missed the last assignment. They were assigned a zero. This dropped them a full 17 points (from 85 to 68).

Notice that doing as well as possible–getting a 100 like Student 2–can only raise your grade by three points. However, doing as poorly as possible– skipping the assignment–drops your grade by 17 points.

Why? Because averages are very sensitive to outliers. One hundred is only 15 points higher than the average of the first four grades. It is relatively close to the central tendency. On the other hand, a zero is a full 85 points lower. It has a very large error, and the average has to move a lot to minimize the sum squared error.

That's because the functional range of grades is not zero to 100. No teacher I've ever seen has a class with an average of 50 and a range from zero to 100. Instead, most teachers hope for an average of perhaps 85. In reality, grades go from F (a 50) to A+ (100). That's the functional range for grades.

What if we assigned the lowest grade in the functional range for missing assignments instead of a zero?

As I wrote in the beginning, grades are meant to assess performance. What would happen if we assigned a solid F for missing grades? In other words, what if we assigned 50s for missing grades instead of zeros? Look at the last column, with Student 5. When assigned a 50, Student 5's grade drops seven points after the last assignment–from an 85 to a 78. That's a significant penalty but not insurmountable.

Is assigning students 50s for missing grades instead of zeros fair? Let's look at the students. The student who got four Bs and a D (Student 3) would earn an 80 on their report card (B-). The student who got four Bs and missed the last assignment and got a 50 for it (Student 5) would earn a 78 (C+). Had that student's teacher followed the more standard practice of assigning a zero for the missing assignment, they would have earned a 68 (D+).

Deciding how to calculate grades needs to reflect the teacher's belief about which grade best reflects the student's performance. It needs to be consistent across students–unbiased. But given the functional range of grades 50 to 100, there is an argument to be made that counting missing assignments as 50s produces fairer grades than assigning them zeros.

Nancy Darling, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at Oberlin College.

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Never Miss an Assignment Again

Angela Ruth

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Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021

Everybody makes mistakes, but nobody wants to. Missing an assignment is a common mistake that we have all made at some point. While sometimes a solution can be as simple as pushing back the deadline, missing major assignments can cost you your job or a good grade in your classes.

Whether you’re struggling with school assignments, work projects, or balancing them both, this guide will help you never miss another assignment no matter what:

Write Down Everything

Start by writing absolutely everything you can about your project or assignment. Then, put every assignment due date into your Calendar with no exceptions. Even the smallest of deadlines are worth taking note of. You can use multiple calendars to spread out tasks by topic; just remember to have them all pulled into one Calendar — like the Calendar app, so you don’t miss a date.

Using an online Calendar means you can have access to your assignment list no matter where you are. Having direct access wherever you are will come in handy. Remember when you’ve had a paper due at midnight while you’re at a friend’s house and need to log on really quickly to upload your information? Your online Calendar will sync across all devices. You want to be able to check due dates on your smartphone as well as when you’re sitting at a computer.

If you like to physically write things down, go ahead! The action of writing things down can help improve memory , which is extremely important if you’re hoping to never miss an assignment again.

Give Yourself Plenty of Reminders

Even when everything is written down in your Calendar, there’s still a chance that you will forget an upcoming due date. However, a healthy dose of reminders ensures that not even the smallest detail gets overlooked over time. After all, a lot can happen between the day you write down as assignment due date and the day it actually arrives.

For example, you can set a reminder the day before an assignment is due for school to make sure that you have it completed. As you clock into work, a morning reminder will remind you of the tasks you need to complete by the end of your shift. These reminders force you to look at your Calendar after you fill it in initially.

Check Your Email to Start the Day

Last-minute changes happen, often due to circumstances out of your control. Even so, you should be aware of these changes so that you don’t get caught off guard. Checking your email at the beginning of each day should do the trick.

By starting your day off by scanning emails , you’ll be able to see the message your manager sent you at midnight notifying you that they expect your next assignment to be completed a day earlier. If you neglected to check your email in the middle of the night or at the start of your shift, you would be completely unaware of this change until it might be too late to do anything about it.

An email from your professor might contain a new assignment list for the following week. If you miss this email, you won’t be able to change up your Calendar in time to adjust your timetable and study schedule.

Communicate With Others

To avoid mishaps with upper management, make an effort to communicate often. Set clear expectations with your manager about how and when to communicate, so you’re not always getting the brunt of last-minute adjustments.

If your work gives you too many assignments, you’re more likely to miss a deadline or two due to the heavy workload. Your workload is another thing you can communicate with your superiors. If you don’t make it known that you’re feeling overwhelmed, nothing will change.

Communicating with coworkers and peers is also essential. We’ve all had a poor experience doing a group project where certain members of the group fail to pull their weight. Staying connected with them won’t be easy, but it will ensure that their feet-dragging won’t be the reason a project isn’t ready to submit on time. A reliable project member can also help you stay on top of deadlines as they arrive by sharing the responsibility.

Learn From Your Mistakes

Most of the time, when you miss an assignment, it’s because a mistake was made, even if only a small one. To stop missing assignments, learn from the mistakes you make to avoid repeating them. Over time, you’ll be a master of punctuality and completing deadlines.

Some mistakes we’ve already covered, in a sense. For example, failing to write down your due dates leaves a lot of room for error regarding late assignments. If this has happened to you, learn from your mistakes by vowing to write everything down from this point forward.

If you’re making an active effort to learn and improve, mistakes only need to happen once before you learn from them. For example, after putting a deadline on the wrong day in your Calendar once, you’ll be a lot more careful in the future.

Stop Procrastinating

Flexible due dates are the worst for chronic procrastinators. The due date will keep getting pushed back until its breaking point, and often ends up coming in late because of it. Staying on top of all your assignment means kicking procrastination to the curb .

If you have a problem with procrastinating, try to find a sense of urgency. Give yourself rewards for getting tasks done early. Use your Calendar to put together a work plan that ensures you’re chipping away at month-long projects. Do whatever it takes to avoid cramming in work at the last minute.

Don’t get too comfortable even when these tips start to show results. You need to stay on top of your game in order to meet all your deadlines with precision. You’ll be able to form better habits along the way but never let up, and you’ll never miss an assignment again.

Image Credit: ketut subiyanto; pexels; thank you!

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My name is Angela Ruth. I aim to help you learn how Calendar can help you manage your time, boost your productivity, and spend your days working on things that matter, both personally and professionally. Here's to improving all your calendars and becoming the person you are destined to become!

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