You don’t want to be chasing after kids’ late assignments. It’s a headache.

For small homework assignments, I don’t accept it late. My philosophy is – they need to practice the concept for TODAY, tomorrow or next week is too late. I think if you’re nitpicking over 10% for daily homework, you’re going to be doing much too much work, chasing the kid down, figuring out which assignment it is, how much to deduct, etc. The kids that are chronic with this will make life miserable, and never catch on to the point – you have to do your work, and your boss expects it on time.

I do have various motivating tricks, though, for doing homework. One I’m going to use this year: on my roster, each kid is assigned a number. I’ll pull a number each day homework is due – the number that comes up = a kid. If that kid has the assignment done, extra point on the next quiz. I think I’ll put a special rubber stamp on it, and then leave it up to the kid to hang onto it and staple it to the next quiz. Cheap and cheerful.

For projects, I take off one letter grade per day. That’s because it’s a larger, high-stakes item. If I gave them a zero on it, they are likely to seriously damage their grade.

Overnight homework: 0 pts. = not done, 1 = incomplete, 2 = complete. No points for late work because it is either essential practice or preparation for the next day’s class.

Projects, writing assignments and other long term assignments: 10% off for one day late, 20% off for two days late; no points if more than 2 days late. I learned a long time ago to break these types of assignments into components with specific due dates. This way, chronic procrastinators (and parents monitoring grades) would not only see the immediate effects, but students would still have the possibility of full credit on the later stages of the assignments if they applied themselves. Grading rubrics help define this, and giving several smaller grades instead of one huge chunk of points avoids surprises and angry parents. You may drive yourself crazy if you try to monitor late assignments over as many as ten school days.

However, it’s your classroom, and do what you feel comfortable with. Good luck in your first year, you’ll need it