Those of us who have been teaching for many years know that even with late penalties, we still consistently receive late work from a subset of our students each term. If our goal is to build student capacity in this area, a consequence or a punishment is not necessarily what will help them as they work to build new habits.

If you want to build a good relationship with your students and hold them accountable to learning outcomes, it’s critical to have a late-work policy grading policy that promotes a growth mindset.

A week filled with cumulative exams may be a high school rite of passage. But are such exams the most authentic demonstrations of a student’s learning?

When students have ownership over how to give their learning back to you, and they can be creative in how that happens, cumulative exams are an effective means to learn what students know. 

​Students, like all people, need the particular knowledge that is useful in service of some desired end.  The best assessments provide students with a genuine performance task that matters to them and that may even impact the world.