End of Quarter Make-up Assignments

Make-up work policy is one of those classic problems of practice in teaching. There is a TON of important thinking to do, and not a lot of straightforward, always-true directions to go in. But there has got to be some serious potential value to be gained from understanding how to do meaningful make-up work. I tried something new this year, and it had a solid positive impact, so I wanted to reflect on it here.

What I've done in the past

• I usually have a "no make-up work" policy. Instead, I leave assignments and grades open for a super long time, and if kids need to make something up, they can just do the assignment they were supposed to do in the first place.
• I like this because it's a pretty straightforward workflow for me. No need to make or grade extra work. I also value the way this policy doesn't create the opportunity for students to intentionally drop an assignment, in expectation of a make-up assignment (assumed to be 'easier').
• A down-side to this policy is that sometimes the make-up work doesn't translate well from how it was executed in class to how a student would make it up, after the fact. For example, when designing tasks, I try to aim for a challenge level above "what most students can do alone" but below "what most students could figure out with a group of peers." But more often than not, when a student is completing make-up work, they're doing so individually, and so challenge level is often mis-matched. Similarly, I'll often design tasks that reward student collaboration, which again limits what a student can do if they're making up work individually.

The new thing I tried this year

• I kept my normal make-up work policy. But I also added an "End of Quarter Make-up Assignment" at the end of Q3. Here is a copy of the assignment.
• At the end of third quarter, I was looking at my grades and saw that they were surprisingly low. In particular, I saw that there were many otherwise well-performing students who experienced sudden drops from Q1/Q2 to Q3. Given that we'd done a major school-wide schedule shift Q3, and that this year was a mess in general, I figured that many students may have just fumbled a few assignments. Inspired by a colleague, I made a "Q3 Make-up Assignment" for the spring break between Q3 and Q4.
• To make the assignment, I went through all ~10 assignments in Q3 (all individual Desmos activities), and picked out the four most important assignments. I then just pasted them together as one big assignment, one big Desmos activity. I emailed students individually (using a mail-merge), letting them know about the assignment, and the positive impact it could have on their grade. I contacted their folks, letting them know that the assignment was available, and how valuable it could be for their progress in the class.
• On the last day of Q3, before spring break, I presented it in class to the subgroup of students who were not passing the class, or close to not passing. I didn't want to present it to anyone who didn't "need" it, in an effort to minimize the negative effect that make-up work sometimes has (students may rather wait for the make-up assignment).
• The assignment was due the first day back after spring break. I generally don't assign work to be completed over break. However, given that this was an extra make-up assignment, I figured it was as actually a good a time, so students could get caught up without continuing to fall behind. I ended up letting the due date roll for about a month *after* the intended due date, anyways. That said, 90% of students who completed the make-up assignment completed it over spring break anyways. (Heck, almost 50% completed it within 48 hours of being assigned.)

Important ideas when planning for this

• This is not supposed to be a major intervention for students who are majorly not on track in the whole class. A one-off assignment, done independently over break, is not going to get that job done. However, there are often some students who just need a quick "tune-up." These are students who typically can complete work independently, but maybe didn't get a few important assignments done because of executive dysfunction, or just logistics. So let me make one big straightforward assignment that has them do all that work, but hopefully meaningfully reduces the executive demand.
• Don't make new work. At most, just copy-paste the biggest chunks of important assignments from that term. This is important, because the actual yield on this "intervention" isn't necessarily gonna be that high.
• Use a mail-merge to send customized emails to students identifying their current grade, and grade if they complete the make-up assignment. A lot of times, grades and make-up assignments can be overwhelming, and students can get discouraged, even if getting caught up is super doable. If students can unambiguously see the positive impact of this assignment on something that's important to them (their grade), it may be easier for them to get motivated.
• Contact families, letting them know that I have prepared this make-up assignment for their student, when it's due, and what impact it could have on their grade. Family contact is always a little more complicated, so modify as needed. But this definitely improved the traction this assignment got.
• This assignment is optional, technically. If completed, I'll go back and update grades to reflect the newly complete work. But if a student doesn't complete the assignment, their grade won't drop further.

Important questions I still have

• When designing this make-up assignment as I have, I am assuming that some students have low grades for reasons unrelated to the actual content. I'm assuming that some students simply need me to strip away as many non-content barriers (logistics, due dates, coming to class at the right time, managing multiple assignments) as possible. In this way, I am accommodating a need that many students have for a reduced demand for executive functioning.
• How can I prepare, launch, and support this make-up assignment in a way that actually builds student capacity for executive functioning? The way I did it this year was very much a "give someone a fish" kind of support, as opposed to a "teach them to fish" support. What do I need to understand about the work, and my students, to understand how much of this particular struggle is productive? 
• Idea: instead of me reaching out to families to let them know, as a way of almost strong-arming students into getting it done, find a way to get students to bring it up with their folks on their own, so the message is coming from them. In that way, the students are managing their own accountability to their families.
• Idea: have a simple way of customizing how the assignment is put together. It'd be great if kids could see the full menu of activities, look at their own grades, and then go up and pick the 3-4 tasks they need to work on over break. I can almost see it: students walk into class, look at their individual grade report, and highlight the 3-4 most important assignments. They then go to the front of the room where the tasks are laid out in straightforward packets of some kind, and they assemble their own packet of make-up work. I guess the ultimate goal for this is to make this always available...like, there's no reason this can only happen right before breaks, or even that everyone needs to do it at the same time.
• This assignment is a "middle of the road" intervention, targeted at students who are not passing simply because they haven't kept up with assignments. This is not a good fit for students who aren't passing because there are major chunks of learning that haven't yet happened.
• Question: what's the intervention for those students? I ask this almost rhetorically--I know there isn't typically a one-shot intervention that will help students in that situation, and instead it's more about having a strong big-picture system, with lots of different layers of support.
• Question: What's the fair/effective way to determine which kids fit this intervention?
• What about the students who aren't passing, want to do this assignment independently over break, but upon attempting it realize the assignment is out of the range of what they can complete independently? That's a discouraging feeling, with negligible payoff, so I'd just as soon a student not have to experience it.
• When compiling work to put into a the Q3 make-up assignment, here's the idea I was working from: "If a student can complete all four of these activities, and do well, they should pass the quarter." I only ended up doing this after Q3. But what if I had done it after every quarter? Then I would theoretically have four big make-up assignments, each roughly "worth" a quarter of work. If a student did *only* the quarterly make-up assignments, but did them well...how would I feel about them passing the class?
• Answer: I'd feel poorly about that. I'd be discouraged that a full-year course was distilled to ~16 tasks which could be completed independently and asynchronously. I'd feel like I'd gone all in on the "transactional" nature of a lot of modern high school education. You give me a certain amount of work, I trade that for a credit. You accumulate those credits, and trade them for a degree.

Big picture take away

• This last point is an important (read: HUGE) caveat here. And it helps me to understand what the role of this intervention is. It's not a magic fix-all (unsurprising). We can maximize the positive effects, and minimize the negative effects, by targeting it at the students whose situations match what this end-of-quarter make-up assignment is meant to help with. Understanding exactly who those students are, and how to run this intervention with them, requires me to have a deep understanding of what the intervention does (and doesn't do). It also requires to me to try and understand my students as much as possible, and what they need (and don't need).

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this big picture take away is actually not a terrible philosophy to have around interventions in general. Which is both discouraging and reassuring at the same time. At the very least, however, I am glad I tried this out this year, though I don't think this is going to be an "every quarter, every year" kind of thing. I can add this to my "teacher toolbox," in case I am faced with a similar context in the future.