Deadlines: Assigned, Extended, or Flexible?

In my shift to standards-based grading, I knew I needed to address deadlines for assignments. For the majority of my career, I have accepted work beyond its due date without penalty: If it is worth my time assigning, it is worth my students’ time to complete. If I assign a summative task to assess learning, being late does not assess my students’ demonstration of the learning target. I know there is the argument that we are teaching “responsibility” by keeping hard deadlines, but I need to teach and assess my students on their learning in English Language Arts. I can address professionalism through conversation (with students, parents, counselors, or case managers); my school does not have a way to separately assess professionalism and responsibility as some schools do.

THIS YEAR: DEADLINES AND REVISIONS

This year, now that my workshop procedure is in full swing, I thought I’d relax my deadlines a bit: I’d give a deadline, but I wanted students to know if they needed more time, they could take it. When I sat down to score the majority of assignments, I would leave an F for the related standards to show I did not have evidence of student learning (I know this is not ideal, but it let students and parents know an assignment was incomplete). Once they completed it, they filled out a hard copy “ticket” with the name of the assignment and related standard(s) and my co-teacher or I would rescore (this was also the process for any part/standard of a single writing assessment a student wanted to revise).

MY CONCERNS

However, I am beginning to get too many students not complete a task by the deadline for assignments. I know that every student learns at a different pace, but I am getting students who have not attempted an assignment by the deadline. I work to get to as many students as possible during workshop, but I cannot get to everyone in one (or sometimes two or three) days (at least not in-depth with every students every two days). I stagger my writing assessments, but some get assigned within a couple days of each other (single-paragraph responses following a multi-paragraph task, perhaps).

I fear I’ve swung too far on the pendulum and need to re-center just a bit on how I frame deadlines in class.

MOVING FORWARD

I still will accept completed work without penalty (I am still attaching points/grades to assignments), but I need to strengthen my language and stance on deadlines to send a clear message to my students. This will help them maintain schedules and work goals (see the “Readers-Writers Workshop” portion of this post for student daily work logs, which I still employ).

Also, in allowing for flexibility, I had been utilizing our workshop time but would tell students that an assessment would be due at the end of the day. I think I will be shifting this language to “the end of the class” beginning next semester. We always have more than one day to complete a writing assessment (two days, a week, whatever time based on the requirements of the assessment), so having it due at the end of a class period will allow a stricter deadline. I have noticed students do work with a little more focus when the end is more tangible or closer.

This will also allow me to check student completion at a set deadline (I have not always scored an assessment within a week). If I can at least mark “submitted” (without a score) in the gradebook, I can get a better feel for who has completed the assignment and who I need to better follow up with. Some students get lost when we balance two assignments at once (even when they are staggered and overlap just a bit).

Deadlines can be flexible, and students learn at different rates. However, I need to establish a system that helps both me and my students stay organized and on-task so we can work together in achieving our learning targets.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, conundrums, and solutions!