Tried It Tuesday - No Late Work Club

I know that I've blogged about our No Late Work Club several times before, like all of {these posts}, but I wanted to summarize what did and did not work this year for this new Tried It Tuesday linky!

When I first came up with this idea, it was called the No Late Homework Club. The point was to reward those students who didn't hand in any late assignments during the month of September. In October, we decided that each student was allowed one "oops" for each of the four core classes. When they had a second late assignment in a class, they became ineligible to attend for that month. And we give out PBIS bucks to use in the school store if they didn't have to use their "oops." We also changed the name from the No Late Homework Club to the No Late Work Club, since there was some debate that the work that was missing wasn't technically "homework." It was work that they had time in class to complete (and for some reason didn't finish and/or turn in, which seems like a bigger infraction to me). We tried to make a really big deal about it and made locker signs and invitations. Depending on numbers, we usually have two teachers that take all of the kids that didn't make it, and the other four teachers run the party.

So we let it run that way for a few months. The celebrations were:

• September - movie and snackes
• October - tailgate party (outdoor games and snacks - If we do this one again, we will structure it a LOT more.)
• November - technology party (Students may bring in PSPs, iPods, etc. We checked out a cart of laptops and the case of iPod Touches. This one would have went a LOT better if all of the Touches would have had all of the apps synced.)
• December - holiday crafts, coloring, and cookie decorating (Students were assigned to stations and rotated through the activities. It went very well.)
• January - movie and board games (Once again, we needed to structure this one better.)

At the beginning of February, we realized that students could have up to four missing/late assignments and still be eligible. That was not acceptable. We were also in the process of developing our Assignment Policy, so we bundled the two together. Here is the new policy:

Fifth Grade Assignment Policy

(per quarter)

1^st Late Assignment

Oops!

2^nd Late Assignment

15-Minute Classroom Detention

Parents Contacted

3^rd Late Assignment

30-Minute Lunch Detention

Parents Contacted

4^th Late Assignment

45-Minute Main Detention

Parents Contacted

5^th Late Assignment 45-Minute Main Detention

Parents Contacted

ASP 3x/Week

6^th Late Assignment and Beyond

Students will continue to serve a main detention for every additional late assignment.

If ASP is unsuccessful after two weeks, parents will be required to attend a meeting to discuss alternative solutions, such as Saturday restitution or in-school suspension.

ASP is our mandatory after-school program for students who struggle to get work done. This system may seem punitive, but it has been very effective. The "oops" acknowledges that everyone makes a mistake once in a while and it won't count against them. Very few students got more than two late assignments the whole quarter. The students who were chronic offenders were the same five to seven students that we had already targeted as needed extra support and interventions. And, as a side note, students with IEPs and 504s had the same accommodations for this policy, ie. if they are allowed double-time on assignments, then their work isn't considered "late" until then.

We changed the parties to quarterly, so we could make them bigger and better. We also decided that they were allowed one "oops" per quarter instead of one per class. Time to get ready for sixth grade! :)

In order to track all of this, I created a Google spreadsheet where teachers could mark missing assignments as they occurred. If a student had a missing assignment, we entered the teacher name and assignment under the appropriate column.

Our third quarter party was a big success. I blogged in detail about it {here}.

For the fourth quarter, we told students that behavior would be a factor, since it would be off-site and we would need to have students that we can trust to be a good example of our school. So I added a column where we can note behavior issues. We are looking at the options of bowling, roller skating, a matinee at the theatre, and a noon minor league baseball game. I'll keep you posted!

I'm also linking this up with What's Working Wednesday :)

And I'm also linking this up to Spark Student Motivation Saturdays.