Monday, March 09, 2009

Cutting Down on Excuses

A reader writes.

I put all of my handouts online now, and I get new excuses, such as "I couldn't open your document" or "My internet was down last night." I still tell these students that they can call a friend and get it emailed or go by a library and print it. They just shrug their shoulders and take the late grade or no grade. Just today, I had a student announce in class that she even had [another teacher] try to help her open a grammar worksheet on my website, and he couldn't open it. I asked the rest of the class to show how many of them had successfully opened the document, and everyone but this student had a hand in the air.

True, there may be less lost hard copies, but there are just as many creative excuses when it comes to teenagers and homework.


Easy solution: set your blog so that each of your students will receive an email copy of each post. Then when you post worksheets or assignments, they will receive them automatically. For students who claim to have 'problems' getting assignments, I copy mom or dad to the blog's subscription so that they also receive an email containing each assignment.

Sure has cut down on 'problems'.

1 comment:

  1. What is the easy solution for adding 100 emails to my blog?

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.