students doing assignment

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And #11 Successful Students Learn Independently

16 Dealing With Assignments

Understanding your first assignment.

The number of assignments you will receive in a semester often surprises students. For some students, figuring out how to manage assignments is a new experience. For others who have had assignments in the past, the amount of work needed to complete assignments at the college level is what is unexpected. Most of the assignments you will receive will take longer than one session of study to complete. You will likely need to work on your assignment over several days or weeks. In this section, we will provide you with advice on how to understand the requirements of your assignment, and how to manage and track the tasks you will need to complete. We will provide you with some time management tips and an assignment tracker to try.

Assignment Terms

Assignment questions, outlines and marking schemes, breaking down large assignments.

How to breakdown assignments into tasks

• Understand the assignment: Read the assignment instructions carefully, and make sure you understand what is required. If you do not understand what you need to do, ask your professor as soon as possible.
• Create a task list: What are the smaller tasks you need to do to complete this assignment? Smaller tasks are activities like conducting research at the library or setting up group meetings for a group project.
• Create a timeline: Create a timeline that includes all the tasks that need to be completed. Consider how much time you will need to complete that task and when you will work on it. Set due dates for each task.
• Brainstorm ideas: Before you start writing, brainstorm ideas for the assignment. Think about the main points you want to cover, any research you need to do, and any supporting evidence you might need.
• Create an outline: Once you have a list of ideas, create an outline for your assignment. An outline can help you organize your thoughts and make sure you cover all the necessary points.
• Schedule time for research: Do your research before you begin writing. As you find sources, gather the information you will need to create a reference and take notes about essential information the source will provide and where this information fits in with your outline.
• Schedule time for revision: Plan to review your work before you submit. This can include checking your work against the assignment instructions or rubric, making changes to the content, and proofreading.

Here is an example of this process:

Key Takeaway from video

• Breaking down a large or medium-sized assignment into smaller pieces can help reduce stress, ensure completion of all parts of the assignment, and allow you to get other important tasks done too.

Using an Assignment Tracker

Time Management Considerations

Time management is the practice of organizing and prioritizing one’s activities and tasks effectively in order to maximize productivity and achieve one’s goals. For college students, time management involves creating a plan for allocating their time efficiently and balancing academic responsibilities with social activities, work, and personal obligations. It requires identifying tasks and goals, setting realistic deadlines, and using tools such as schedules, to-do lists, and reminders to stay on track. Effective time management helps students to reduce stress, increase productivity, and achieve academic success while still enjoying a balanced lifestyle.

• Procrastination:  Students tend to put off starting a large writing assignment until the last minute, leaving themselves with insufficient time to complete the assignment.
• Lack of Planning:  Many students do not adequately plan their time for the writing process, which can result in poor time management and a lower quality of work.
• Perfectionism:  Students may spend too much time trying to perfect every aspect of their writing, which can lead to time wastage and increased stress.
• Break the Task into Smaller Parts:  Instead of attempting to complete the entire assignment in one sitting, break it down into smaller, more manageable parts, and set specific deadlines for each.
• Create a Schedule:  Create a schedule for the writing process and stick to it. This will help you stay on track and ensure that you have enough time to complete the assignment.
• Avoid Distractions:  Avoid any distractions that can lead to time wastage, such as social media, television, and video games.
• Set Priorities:  Set priorities for your writing tasks, focusing on the most critical aspects of the assignment first.
• Use Writing Tools : Utilize writing tools such as spell check, grammar check, and citation generators to save time and reduce the need for extensive revisions.
• Take Breaks:  Taking regular breaks can help you stay focused and prevent burnout, ensuring that you produce your best work.

Avoiding Procrastination

Key Takeaways

Want more? The Learning Portal has more ideas for Managing Assignments.

A Guide for Successful Students 2nd ed. Copyright © 2023 by Irene Stewart, Aaron Maisonville, and Nicolai Zriachev, St. Clair College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to do homework: 15 expert tips and tricks.

Coursework/GPA

Everyone struggles with homework sometimes, but if getting your homework done has become a chronic issue for you, then you may need a little extra help. That’s why we’ve written this article all about how to do homework. Once you’re finished reading it, you’ll know how to do homework (and have tons of new ways to motivate yourself to do homework)!

We’ve broken this article down into a few major sections. You’ll find:

• A diagnostic test to help you figure out why you’re struggling with homework
• A discussion of the four major homework problems students face, along with expert tips for addressing them
• A bonus section with tips for how to do homework fast

By the end of this article, you’ll be prepared to tackle whatever homework assignments your teachers throw at you .

So let’s get started!

How to Do Homework: Figure Out Your Struggles 

Sometimes it feels like everything is standing between you and getting your homework done. But the truth is, most people only have one or two major roadblocks that are keeping them from getting their homework done well and on time. 

The best way to figure out how to get motivated to do homework starts with pinpointing the issues that are affecting your ability to get your assignments done. That’s why we’ve developed a short quiz to help you identify the areas where you’re struggling. 

Take the quiz below and record your answers on your phone or on a scrap piece of paper. Keep in mind there are no wrong answers! 

1. You’ve just been assigned an essay in your English class that’s due at the end of the week. What’s the first thing you do?

A. Keep it in mind, even though you won’t start it until the day before it’s due  B. Open up your planner. You’ve got to figure out when you’ll write your paper since you have band practice, a speech tournament, and your little sister’s dance recital this week, too.  C. Groan out loud. Another essay? You could barely get yourself to write the last one!  D. Start thinking about your essay topic, which makes you think about your art project that’s due the same day, which reminds you that your favorite artist might have just posted to Instagram...so you better check your feed right now. 

2. Your mom asked you to pick up your room before she gets home from work. You’ve just gotten home from school. You decide you’ll tackle your chores: 

A. Five minutes before your mom walks through the front door. As long as it gets done, who cares when you start?  B. As soon as you get home from your shift at the local grocery store.  C. After you give yourself a 15-minute pep talk about how you need to get to work.  D. You won’t get it done. Between texts from your friends, trying to watch your favorite Netflix show, and playing with your dog, you just lost track of time! 

3. You’ve signed up to wash dogs at the Humane Society to help earn money for your senior class trip. You: 

A. Show up ten minutes late. You put off leaving your house until the last minute, then got stuck in unexpected traffic on the way to the shelter.  B. Have to call and cancel at the last minute. You forgot you’d already agreed to babysit your cousin and bake cupcakes for tomorrow’s bake sale.  C. Actually arrive fifteen minutes early with extra brushes and bandanas you picked up at the store. You’re passionate about animals, so you’re excited to help out! D. Show up on time, but only get three dogs washed. You couldn’t help it: you just kept getting distracted by how cute they were!

4. You have an hour of downtime, so you decide you’re going to watch an episode of The Great British Baking Show. You: 

A. Scroll through your social media feeds for twenty minutes before hitting play, which means you’re not able to finish the whole episode. Ugh! You really wanted to see who was sent home!  B. Watch fifteen minutes until you remember you’re supposed to pick up your sister from band practice before heading to your part-time job. No GBBO for you!  C. You finish one episode, then decide to watch another even though you’ve got SAT studying to do. It’s just more fun to watch people make scones.  D. Start the episode, but only catch bits and pieces of it because you’re reading Twitter, cleaning out your backpack, and eating a snack at the same time.

5. Your teacher asks you to stay after class because you’ve missed turning in two homework assignments in a row. When she asks you what’s wrong, you say: 

A. You planned to do your assignments during lunch, but you ran out of time. You decided it would be better to turn in nothing at all than submit unfinished work.  B. You really wanted to get the assignments done, but between your extracurriculars, family commitments, and your part-time job, your homework fell through the cracks.  C. You have a hard time psyching yourself to tackle the assignments. You just can’t seem to find the motivation to work on them once you get home.  D. You tried to do them, but you had a hard time focusing. By the time you realized you hadn’t gotten anything done, it was already time to turn them in. 

Like we said earlier, there are no right or wrong answers to this quiz (though your results will be better if you answered as honestly as possible). Here’s how your answers break down: 

• If your answers were mostly As, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is procrastination. 
• If your answers were mostly Bs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is time management. 
• If your answers were mostly Cs, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is motivation. 
• If your answers were mostly Ds, then your biggest struggle with doing homework is getting distracted. 

Now that you’ve identified why you’re having a hard time getting your homework done, we can help you figure out how to fix it! Scroll down to find your core problem area to learn more about how you can start to address it. 

And one more thing: you’re really struggling with homework, it’s a good idea to read through every section below. You may find some additional tips that will help make homework less intimidating. 

How to Do Homework When You’re a Procrastinator  

Merriam Webster defines “procrastinate” as “to put off intentionally and habitually.” In other words, procrastination is when you choose to do something at the last minute on a regular basis. If you’ve ever found yourself pulling an all-nighter, trying to finish an assignment between periods, or sprinting to turn in a paper minutes before a deadline, you’ve experienced the effects of procrastination. 

If you’re a chronic procrastinator, you’re in good company. In fact, one study found that 70% to 95% of undergraduate students procrastinate when it comes to doing their homework. Unfortunately, procrastination can negatively impact your grades. Researchers have found that procrastination can lower your grade on an assignment by as much as five points ...which might not sound serious until you realize that can mean the difference between a B- and a C+. 

Procrastination can also negatively affect your health by increasing your stress levels , which can lead to other health conditions like insomnia, a weakened immune system, and even heart conditions. Getting a handle on procrastination can not only improve your grades, it can make you feel better, too! 

The big thing to understand about procrastination is that it’s not the result of laziness. Laziness is defined as being “disinclined to activity or exertion.” In other words, being lazy is all about doing nothing. But a s this Psychology Today article explains , procrastinators don’t put things off because they don’t want to work. Instead, procrastinators tend to postpone tasks they don’t want to do in favor of tasks that they perceive as either more important or more fun. Put another way, procrastinators want to do things...as long as it’s not their homework! 

3 Tips f or Conquering Procrastination 

Because putting off doing homework is a common problem, there are lots of good tactics for addressing procrastination. Keep reading for our three expert tips that will get your homework habits back on track in no time. 

#1: Create a Reward System

Like we mentioned earlier, procrastination happens when you prioritize other activities over getting your homework done. Many times, this happens because homework...well, just isn’t enjoyable. But you can add some fun back into the process by rewarding yourself for getting your work done. 

Here’s what we mean: let’s say you decide that every time you get your homework done before the day it’s due, you’ll give yourself a point. For every five points you earn, you’ll treat yourself to your favorite dessert: a chocolate cupcake! Now you have an extra (delicious!) incentive to motivate you to leave procrastination in the dust. 

If you’re not into cupcakes, don’t worry. Your reward can be anything that motivates you . Maybe it’s hanging out with your best friend or an extra ten minutes of video game time. As long as you’re choosing something that makes homework worth doing, you’ll be successful. 

#2: Have a Homework Accountability Partner 

If you’re having trouble getting yourself to start your homework ahead of time, it may be a good idea to call in reinforcements . Find a friend or classmate you can trust and explain to them that you’re trying to change your homework habits. Ask them if they’d be willing to text you to make sure you’re doing your homework and check in with you once a week to see if you’re meeting your anti-procrastination goals. 

Sharing your goals can make them feel more real, and an accountability partner can help hold you responsible for your decisions. For example, let’s say you’re tempted to put off your science lab write-up until the morning before it’s due. But you know that your accountability partner is going to text you about it tomorrow...and you don’t want to fess up that you haven’t started your assignment. A homework accountability partner can give you the extra support and incentive you need to keep your homework habits on track. 

#3: Create Your Own Due Dates 

If you’re a life-long procrastinator, you might find that changing the habit is harder than you expected. In that case, you might try using procrastination to your advantage! If you just can’t seem to stop doing your work at the last minute, try setting your own due dates for assignments that range from a day to a week before the assignment is actually due. 

Here’s what we mean. Let’s say you have a math worksheet that’s been assigned on Tuesday and is due on Friday. In your planner, you can write down the due date as Thursday instead. You may still put off your homework assignment until the last minute...but in this case, the “last minute” is a day before the assignment’s real due date . This little hack can trick your procrastination-addicted brain into planning ahead! 

If you feel like Kevin Hart in this meme, then our tips for doing homework when you're busy are for you. 

How to Do Homework When You’re too Busy

If you’re aiming to go to a top-tier college , you’re going to have a full plate. Because college admissions is getting more competitive, it’s important that you’re maintaining your grades , studying hard for your standardized tests , and participating in extracurriculars so your application stands out. A packed schedule can get even more hectic once you add family obligations or a part-time job to the mix. 

If you feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions at once, you’re not alone. Recent research has found that stress—and more severe stress-related conditions like anxiety and depression— are a major problem for high school students . In fact, one study from the American Psychological Association found that during the school year, students’ stress levels are higher than those of the adults around them. 

For students, homework is a major contributor to their overall stress levels . Many high schoolers have multiple hours of homework every night , and figuring out how to fit it into an already-packed schedule can seem impossible. 

3 Tips for Fitting Homework Into Your Busy Schedule

While it might feel like you have literally no time left in your schedule, there are still ways to make sure you’re able to get your homework done and meet your other commitments. Here are our expert homework tips for even the busiest of students. 

#1: Make a Prioritized To-Do List 

You probably already have a to-do list to keep yourself on track. The next step is to prioritize the items on your to-do list so you can see what items need your attention right away. 

Here’s how it works: at the beginning of each day, sit down and make a list of all the items you need to get done before you go to bed. This includes your homework, but it should also take into account any practices, chores, events, or job shifts you may have. Once you get everything listed out, it’s time to prioritize them using the labels A, B, and C. Here’s what those labels mean:

• A Tasks : tasks that have to get done—like showing up at work or turning in an assignment—get an A. 
• B Tasks : these are tasks that you would like to get done by the end of the day but aren’t as time sensitive. For example, studying for a test you have next week could be a B-level task. It’s still important, but it doesn’t have to be done right away.
• C Tasks: these are tasks that aren’t very important and/or have no real consequences if you don’t get them done immediately. For instance, if you’re hoping to clean out your closet but it’s not an assigned chore from your parents, you could label that to-do item with a C.

Prioritizing your to-do list helps you visualize which items need your immediate attention, and which items you can leave for later. A prioritized to-do list ensures that you’re spending your time efficiently and effectively, which helps you make room in your schedule for homework. So even though you might really want to start making decorations for Homecoming (a B task), you’ll know that finishing your reading log (an A task) is more important. 

#2: Use a Planner With Time Labels

Your planner is probably packed with notes, events, and assignments already. (And if you’re not using a planner, it’s time to start!) But planners can do more for you than just remind you when an assignment is due. If you’re using a planner with time labels, it can help you visualize how you need to spend your day.

A planner with time labels breaks your day down into chunks, and you assign tasks to each chunk of time. For example, you can make a note of your class schedule with assignments, block out time to study, and make sure you know when you need to be at practice. Once you know which tasks take priority, you can add them to any empty spaces in your day. 

Planning out how you spend your time not only helps you use it wisely, it can help you feel less overwhelmed, too . We’re big fans of planners that include a task list ( like this one ) or have room for notes ( like this one ). 

#3: Set Reminders on Your Phone 

If you need a little extra nudge to make sure you’re getting your homework done on time, it’s a good idea to set some reminders on your phone. You don’t need a fancy app, either. You can use your alarm app to have it go off at specific times throughout the day to remind you to do your homework. This works especially well if you have a set homework time scheduled. So if you’ve decided you’re doing homework at 6:00 pm, you can set an alarm to remind you to bust out your books and get to work. 

If you use your phone as your planner, you may have the option to add alerts, emails, or notifications to scheduled events . Many calendar apps, including the one that comes with your phone, have built-in reminders that you can customize to meet your needs. So if you block off time to do your homework from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, you can set a reminder that will pop up on your phone when it’s time to get started. 

This dog isn't judging your lack of motivation...but your teacher might. Keep reading for tips to help you motivate yourself to do your homework.

How to Do Homework When You’re Unmotivated 

At first glance, it may seem like procrastination and being unmotivated are the same thing. After all, both of these issues usually result in you putting off your homework until the very last minute. 

But there’s one key difference: many procrastinators are working, they’re just prioritizing work differently. They know they’re going to start their homework...they’re just going to do it later. 

Conversely, people who are unmotivated to do homework just can’t find the willpower to tackle their assignments. Procrastinators know they’ll at least attempt the homework at the last minute, whereas people who are unmotivated struggle with convincing themselves to do it at a ll. For procrastinators, the stress comes from the inevitable time crunch. For unmotivated people, the stress comes from trying to convince themselves to do something they don’t want to do in the first place. 

Here are some common reasons students are unmotivated in doing homework : 

• Assignments are too easy, too hard, or seemingly pointless 
• Students aren’t interested in (or passionate about) the subject matter
• Students are intimidated by the work and/or feels like they don’t understand the assignment 
• Homework isn’t fun, and students would rather spend their time on things that they enjoy 

To sum it up: people who lack motivation to do their homework are more likely to not do it at all, or to spend more time worrying about doing their homework than...well, actually doing it.

3 Tips for How to Get Motivated to Do Homework

The key to getting homework done when you’re unmotivated is to figure out what does motivate you, then apply those things to homework. It sounds tricky...but it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it! Here are our three expert tips for motivating yourself to do your homework. 

#1: Use Incremental Incentives

When you’re not motivated, it’s important to give yourself small rewards to stay focused on finishing the task at hand. The trick is to keep the incentives small and to reward yourself often. For example, maybe you’re reading a good book in your free time. For every ten minutes you spend on your homework, you get to read five pages of your book. Like we mentioned earlier, make sure you’re choosing a reward that works for you! 

So why does this technique work? Using small rewards more often allows you to experience small wins for getting your work done. Every time you make it to one of your tiny reward points, you get to celebrate your success, which gives your brain a boost of dopamine . Dopamine helps you stay motivated and also creates a feeling of satisfaction when you complete your homework !  

#2: Form a Homework Group 

If you’re having trouble motivating yourself, it’s okay to turn to others for support. Creating a homework group can help with this. Bring together a group of your friends or classmates, and pick one time a week where you meet and work on homework together. You don’t have to be in the same class, or even taking the same subjects— the goal is to encourage one another to start (and finish!) your assignments. 

Another added benefit of a homework group is that you can help one another if you’re struggling to understand the material covered in your classes. This is especially helpful if your lack of motivation comes from being intimidated by your assignments. Asking your friends for help may feel less scary than talking to your teacher...and once you get a handle on the material, your homework may become less frightening, too. 

#3: Change Up Your Environment 

If you find that you’re totally unmotivated, it may help if you find a new place to do your homework. For example, if you’ve been struggling to get your homework done at home, try spending an extra hour in the library after school instead. The change of scenery can limit your distractions and give you the energy you need to get your work done. 

If you’re stuck doing homework at home, you can still use this tip. For instance, maybe you’ve always done your homework sitting on your bed. Try relocating somewhere else, like your kitchen table, for a few weeks. You may find that setting up a new “homework spot” in your house gives you a motivational lift and helps you get your work done. 

Social media can be a huge problem when it comes to doing homework. We have advice for helping you unplug and regain focus.

How to Do Homework When You’re Easily Distracted

We live in an always-on world, and there are tons of things clamoring for our attention. From friends and family to pop culture and social media, it seems like there’s always something (or someone!) distracting us from the things we need to do.

The 24/7 world we live in has affected our ability to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time. Research has shown that over the past decade, an average person’s attention span has gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds . And when we do lose focus, i t takes people a long time to get back on task . One study found that it can take as long as 23 minutes to get back to work once we’ve been distracte d. No wonder it can take hours to get your homework done! 

3 Tips to Improve Your Focus

If you have a hard time focusing when you’re doing your homework, it’s a good idea to try and eliminate as many distractions as possible. Here are three expert tips for blocking out the noise so you can focus on getting your homework done. 

#1: Create a Distraction-Free Environment

Pick a place where you’ll do your homework every day, and make it as distraction-free as possible. Try to find a location where there won’t be tons of noise, and limit your access to screens while you’re doing your homework. Put together a focus-oriented playlist (or choose one on your favorite streaming service), and put your headphones on while you work. 

You may find that other people, like your friends and family, are your biggest distraction. If that’s the case, try setting up some homework boundaries. Let them know when you’ll be working on homework every day, and ask them if they’ll help you keep a quiet environment. They’ll be happy to lend a hand! 

#2: Limit Your Access to Technology 

We know, we know...this tip isn’t fun, but it does work. For homework that doesn’t require a computer, like handouts or worksheets, it’s best to put all your technology away . Turn off your television, put your phone and laptop in your backpack, and silence notifications on any wearable tech you may be sporting. If you listen to music while you work, that’s fine...but make sure you have a playlist set up so you’re not shuffling through songs once you get started on your homework. 

If your homework requires your laptop or tablet, it can be harder to limit your access to distractions. But it’s not impossible! T here are apps you can download that will block certain websites while you’re working so that you’re not tempted to scroll through Twitter or check your Facebook feed. Silence notifications and text messages on your computer, and don’t open your email account unless you absolutely have to. And if you don’t need access to the internet to complete your assignments, turn off your WiFi. Cutting out the online chatter is a great way to make sure you’re getting your homework done. 

#3: Set a Timer (the Pomodoro Technique)

Have you ever heard of the Pomodoro technique ? It’s a productivity hack that uses a timer to help you focus!

Here’s how it works: first, set a timer for 25 minutes. This is going to be your work time. During this 25 minutes, all you can do is work on whatever homework assignment you have in front of you. No email, no text messaging, no phone calls—just homework. When that timer goes off, you get to take a 5 minute break. Every time you go through one of these cycles, it’s called a “pomodoro.” For every four pomodoros you complete, you can take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes.

The pomodoro technique works through a combination of boundary setting and rewards. First, it gives you a finite amount of time to focus, so you know that you only have to work really hard for 25 minutes. Once you’ve done that, you’re rewarded with a short break where you can do whatever you want. Additionally, tracking how many pomodoros you complete can help you see how long you’re really working on your homework. (Once you start using our focus tips, you may find it doesn’t take as long as you thought!)

Two Bonus Tips for How to Do Homework Fast

Even if you’re doing everything right, there will be times when you just need to get your homework done as fast as possible. (Why do teachers always have projects due in the same week? The world may never know.)

The problem with speeding through homework is that it’s easy to make mistakes. While turning in an assignment is always better than not submitting anything at all, you want to make sure that you’re not compromising quality for speed. Simply put, the goal is to get your homework done quickly and still make a good grade on the assignment! 

Here are our two bonus tips for getting a decent grade on your homework assignments , even when you’re in a time crunch. 

#1: Do the Easy Parts First 

This is especially true if you’re working on a handout with multiple questions. Before you start working on the assignment, read through all the questions and problems. As you do, make a mark beside the questions you think are “easy” to answer . 

Once you’ve finished going through the whole assignment, you can answer these questions first. Getting the easy questions out of the way as quickly as possible lets you spend more time on the trickier portions of your homework, which will maximize your assignment grade. 

(Quick note: this is also a good strategy to use on timed assignments and tests, like the SAT and the ACT !) 

#2: Pay Attention in Class 

Homework gets a lot easier when you’re actively learning the material. Teachers aren’t giving you homework because they’re mean or trying to ruin your weekend... it’s because they want you to really understand the course material. Homework is designed to reinforce what you’re already learning in class so you’ll be ready to tackle harder concepts later.

When you pay attention in class, ask questions, and take good notes, you’re absorbing the information you’ll need to succeed on your homework assignments. (You’re stuck in class anyway, so you might as well make the most of it!) Not only will paying attention in class make your homework less confusing, it will also help it go much faster, too.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking to improve your productivity beyond homework, a good place to begin is with time management. After all, we only have so much time in a day...so it’s important to get the most out of it! To get you started, check out this list of the 12 best time management techniques that you can start using today.

You may have read this article because homework struggles have been affecting your GPA. Now that you’re on the path to homework success, it’s time to start being proactive about raising your grades. This article teaches you everything you need to know about raising your GPA so you can

Now you know how to get motivated to do homework...but what about your study habits? Studying is just as critical to getting good grades, and ultimately getting into a good college . We can teach you how to study bette r in high school. (We’ve also got tons of resources to help you study for your ACT and SAT exams , too!)

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Should Students Get a ‘Do Over’? The Debate on Grading and Re-Doing Assignments Deepens

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A student fails a test. Should the teacher allow a redo?

Based on recent Education Week polling and coverage, it depends on whom you ask.

Somewhat surprisingly, teachers and school leaders are not necessarily in agreement over this.

In a nationally representative poll of teachers this winter by the Edweek Research Center , respondents voted “the chance to redo assignments” 11th out of 24 options offered when asked what they thought was most likely to motivate students. The factor teachers thought would most likely motivate students? That turned out to be “offering more hands-on experiences.”

Incidentally, that same question posed to students ages 13 to 19 drew a much different response. Student respondents chose “a chance to redo assignments if I get a low grade” as the leading factor (out of 24 options) that would motivate them to work harder.

In a separate (but less scientific) poll posed to readers of Education Week’s The Savvy Principal newsletter, readers—who are mainly principals and other K–12 school leaders—were asked: Should students be allowed to redo assignments when they get a failing grade? Among 241 respondents, 83 percent said yes; 17 percent said no.

One school leader, who responded in the affirmative to the poll question, elaborated on her response: “Allowing students to revise and resubmit work fosters student reflection on their work, a growth mindset, and the opportunity to improve skills and deepen knowledge. Students learn it’s not about getting work done, it’s about getting it done well,” said Christine Davis, interim principal at Eric S. Smith Middle School in Ramsey, N.J.

Another school leader had a different take. “When we allow students to redo work,” wrote Robert Stephens, the head of Episcopal Day School in Pensacola, Fla., “we are inadvertently teaching them that there are no consequences for poor performance that results from bad decisions.”

What’s behind these differing opinions on the re-do?

Rick Wormeli, a former classroom teacher, educational consultant, and author of Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessment & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom, has given a lot of thought to the re-do, and grading, in general. He has analyzed what grading represents; in what context it can motivate students; and how teachers can use it as part of the learning process.

Wormeli this week shared his insights with Education Week.

Teachers-in-training lack preparation on the how’s and why’s of assessments

Wormeli recalls an exit interview he had as a graduating college senior who had studied education in the 1980s.

“I scolded my professors and dean,” Wormeli recalled. “I said, ‘You guys gave me a stats course, but the real thing that students [studying to be teachers] worry about is: How do I grade my tests and quizzes? How do I know if my tests accurately report what kids learn?’”

Even today, Wormeli said, not many instructors who teach university courses for pre-service teachers have a strong background on ethical, accurate, and equitable grading practices. A proponent of such practices, Wormeli volunteered to serve on the assessing and reporting committee in the Northern Virginia school district where he taught. It allowed him the opportunity to raise questions about the purpose of grading and challenge existing notions and norms.

Challenging traditional notions of grading

“There are a lot of teachers that promote assessment as ‘gotcha accountability’ rather than assessment as instruction,” said Wormeli, who refers to this way of seeing the grading process as “transactional.”

Assigning poor grades to students is akin to acknowledging that you’ve caught them falling short, explained Wormeli. “It’s a hurtful and antiquated notion of assessment,” he said.

A low grade, particularly when there isn’t the opportunity to redo the assignment and raise the grade, breeds resentment, Wormeli said.

Grading as part of the learning process

Wormeli describes grades, when used most effectively, as part of the learning process. And if grades offer feedback as part of that process, they can be perceived as a piece of an evolving continuum.

“When teachers use grades as a way to provide students with feedback, then that feedback should be accompanied by considering how to help kids make it actionable,” Wormeli said.

Improving upon an existing grade by re-doing assignments would be the logical action step. “Redos” happen in the professional world all the time, he pointed out.

“In every single profession, we’ve found that reiteration is how someone becomes competent,” Wormeli said. “How is that achieved? Not by ‘one and done.’”

Wormeli has trained countless teachers; among them were people who entered the teaching profession as their second careers. “What’s really cool is that, in training of second-career teachers—software engineers, military personnel, etcetera—they all say ‘Of course you do re-do’s.’”

Changing teachers’ mindset about the re-do

Wormeli is familiar with the arguments teachers make against re-dos, especially the complaint that it will take too much of their time. He counters: It’s the re-learning that takes the time. And it’s the student who must do the heavy lifting, he said.

“I have to get across to a lot of teachers that it’s in the re-learning where you mature,” he said. “In the plan of re-learning, students have to submit to that plan.”

Denying a re-do gives students an escape from learning whatever was on the original assignment, Wormeli explained. Conversely, allowing students to redo an assignment signifies that what matters is that they learn the material.

“It’s a cultural mindshift,” he said. “It’s amazing how motivated kids are when they own their learning.”

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Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that he or she will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove her point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, he or she still has to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and she already knows everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality she or he expects.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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5 tips on writing better university assignments

Lecturer in Student Learning and Communication Development, University of Sydney

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Alexandra Garcia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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University life comes with its share of challenges. One of these is writing longer assignments that require higher information, communication and critical thinking skills than what you might have been used to in high school. Here are five tips to help you get ahead.

1. Use all available sources of information

Beyond instructions and deadlines, lecturers make available an increasing number of resources. But students often overlook these.

For example, to understand how your assignment will be graded, you can examine the rubric . This is a chart indicating what you need to do to obtain a high distinction, a credit or a pass, as well as the course objectives – also known as “learning outcomes”.

Other resources include lecture recordings, reading lists, sample assignments and discussion boards. All this information is usually put together in an online platform called a learning management system (LMS). Examples include Blackboard , Moodle , Canvas and iLearn . Research shows students who use their LMS more frequently tend to obtain higher final grades.

If after scrolling through your LMS you still have questions about your assignment, you can check your lecturer’s consultation hours.

2. Take referencing seriously

Plagiarism – using somebody else’s words or ideas without attribution – is a serious offence at university. It is a form of cheating.

In many cases, though, students are unaware they have cheated. They are simply not familiar with referencing styles – such as APA , Harvard , Vancouver , Chicago , etc – or lack the skills to put the information from their sources into their own words.

To avoid making this mistake, you may approach your university’s library, which is likely to offer face-to-face workshops or online resources on referencing. Academic support units may also help with paraphrasing.

You can also use referencing management software, such as EndNote or Mendeley . You can then store your sources, retrieve citations and create reference lists with only a few clicks. For undergraduate students, Zotero has been recommended as it seems to be more user-friendly.

Using this kind of software will certainly save you time searching for and formatting references. However, you still need to become familiar with the citation style in your discipline and revise the formatting accordingly.

3. Plan before you write

If you were to build a house, you wouldn’t start by laying bricks at random. You’d start with a blueprint. Likewise, writing an academic paper requires careful planning: you need to decide the number of sections, their organisation, and the information and sources you will include in each.

Research shows students who prepare detailed outlines produce higher-quality texts. Planning will not only help you get better grades, but will also reduce the time you spend staring blankly at the screen thinking about what to write next.

During the planning stage, using programs like OneNote from Microsoft Office or Outline for Mac can make the task easier as they allow you to organise information in tabs. These bits of information can be easily rearranged for later drafting. Navigating through the tabs is also easier than scrolling through a long Word file.

4. Choose the right words

Which of these sentences is more appropriate for an assignment?

a. “This paper talks about why the planet is getting hotter”, or b. “This paper examines the causes of climate change”.

The written language used at university is more formal and technical than the language you normally use in social media or while chatting with your friends. Academic words tend to be longer and their meaning is also more precise. “Climate change” implies more than just the planet “getting hotter”.

To find the right words, you can use SkELL , which shows you the words that appear more frequently, with your search entry categorised grammatically. For example, if you enter “paper”, it will tell you it is often the subject of verbs such as “present”, “describe”, “examine” and “discuss”.

Another option is the Writefull app, which does a similar job without having to use an online browser.

5. Edit and proofread

If you’re typing the last paragraph of the assignment ten minutes before the deadline, you will be missing a very important step in the writing process: editing and proofreading your text. A 2018 study found a group of university students did significantly better in a test after incorporating the process of planning, drafting and editing in their writing.

You probably already know to check the spelling of a word if it appears underlined in red. You may even use a grammar checker such as Grammarly . However, no software to date can detect every error and it is not uncommon to be given inaccurate suggestions.

So, in addition to your choice of proofreader, you need to improve and expand your grammar knowledge. Check with the academic support services at your university if they offer any relevant courses.

Written communication is a skill that requires effort and dedication. That’s why universities are investing in support services – face-to-face workshops, individual consultations, and online courses – to help students in this process. You can also take advantage of a wide range of web-based resources such as spell checkers, vocabulary tools and referencing software – many of them free.

Improving your written communication will help you succeed at university and beyond.

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• Student assessment

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Teaching Students to Manage Their Digital Assignments

Predictable routines can teach students how to use organizational tools and help them develop their executive function skills.

You just wrapped up an invigorating conversation with your 10th-grade students. They contributed brilliant ideas, and you’re looking forward to reading the written reflections you assigned for homework. But when you log into Google Classroom the next day to grade their work, you find that nearly half of your students didn’t submit the assignment. Only two-thirds of them even opened the document.

Sound familiar? 

So many students who are engaged in real-world learning activities struggle to complete assignments in the digital world. Digital work is often out of sight and out of mind the moment they leave our classrooms. It can cause teachers and parents to wonder if being organized is even possible in our tech-focused society. 

1-to-1 Devices are Permanent Fixtures in Today’s Classroom 

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic pushed most schools into a virtual teaching model, students spent much of their instructional time on a device. A 2019 study out of Arlington Public Schools found that middle school students spent 47 percent of their time and high school students spent 68 percent of their time on a device. Findings from the study suggest that devices are frequently used for “reference and research, presentations and projects, and feedback and assessment.” 

By the return to in-person learning, 90 percent of students had access to a one-to-one device for school, and it’s evident that technology in the classroom (and workplace) is here to stay.  

Teaching Digital Organization Skills is Key

Although they have access to a myriad of digital organization tools ( myHomework , Evernote , Google Keep , and Coggle , to name a few), students may still struggle to organize their assignments and complete them from start to submission. We often assume that students can transfer organizational skills from the real world to the digital world, and we often ask them to quickly and seamlessly transition from hard-copy work (reading a chapter in a novel, completing a science experiment) to digital work, such as writing a reflection in Google Docs and submitting it to a learning management system (LMS). 

Digital files are perceivable to the human brain, but they aren’t tangible in the same way that binders, notebooks, and folders are. And while an LMS may aid students’ access to information, it doesn’t do the heavy lifting of organizing information and prioritizing tasks. These actions are highly demanding cognitive skills that students can be taught and practice in the digital world—even if students have already perfected them in the analog world. 

Teachers can prioritize strategic, direct instruction of organizational and other executive functioning skills for a tech-focused world. 

Streamline Your Classroom Resources 

The first step in helping students organize digital work is to organize your classroom resources on the back end. In coordination with your department, grade level, or district, choose one LMS and three to four instructional resources, and stick with them for the entire year. For example, you could select Google Classroom as your LMS and use PearDeck, Google Calendar, and EdPuzzle as instructional resources. 

Though it’s tempting to adopt new and exciting technology as it evolves, a revolving door of programs is difficult for students to juggle and can lead to app fatigue. 

Teachers can further streamline their classroom resources by color-coding folders and files in their chosen LMS, posting log-in directions in easily accessible locations, and offering a landing page in their LMS that holds all of the links to digital resources. 

Create Predictable Routines Around Digital Work 

Next, it’s important for teachers to create clear and predictable routines around organizing digital assignments.   

One routine that I’ve developed in my classroom is a living table of contents document. I create and print out a blank table of contents for each unit, and students house them in their binders. I then project the table of contents at the start of each class with the day’s newest assignments, and students fill in these new items on their hard copies when they settle in. Each assignment is numbered, and assignments located online that won’t appear in their binders are labeled with an “S” (for us, that stands for Schoology) to note that the assignment is in our LMS.

Another predictable routine is entering homework assignments into Google Calendar or agenda books together at the end of every class. Prompting students to write down their homework may seem elementary, but even older students appreciate the predictability and consistency of this routine because it reduces anxiety (rushing to write it down before the teacher moves on) and frees up brain space for critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving.

If you’re not sure that your current routine is clear and predictable, consider whether or not students could replicate your system in your absence. If students can’t get through the routine on their own, your routine may need to be articulated more clearly (such as being posted somewhere in the classroom), or it may need to be implemented more consistently.

Model a Variety of Organizational Strategies 

Similar to the process of how academic skills are acquired, teachers can model organizational skills for students. Consider creating opportunities to demonstrate strategies such as how and where to save documents, how to sync information across devices, how to share calendar events with peers and parents, and how to plan for long-term projects. 

You can also help students get more comfortable with organizational strategies by sharing “think-alouds” for task initiation, task prioritization, and time management. Consider using common language for reminding and prompting. For example, at the start of every new assignment, you could say something like, “Now that I’m ready to start, I’m going to open up Schoology, Google, and a Word document and close out of other tabs.”

Because executive functioning skills are not innate, providing language for them allows students to identify them, replicate them, and use tools to do them more quickly. Prioritizing these skills can improve student outcomes and prepare students for an increasingly tech-focused world.

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7 Teacher Ideas for Supporting Students Who Aren’t Doing Any Work at All

We asked. You answered.

What do you do when your students aren’t doing any work? Whether you are a new teacher or a veteran, we all struggle with this. We want to teach and help our students learn, not spend hours taking away points in Class Dojo or making exceptions. So it did not surprise me when I saw a teacher post, “Warning vent ahead: I am so tired of students not doing their work. I want to celebrate those who do, but penalize those who don’t” in our WeAreTeacher HELPLINE Facebook group .

I can relate to her frustration. But penalizing students who aren’t doing any work doesn’t solve the problem. There are ways we can help students who aren’t doing any work. We asked you, and you answered.

How we respond to missing or late work says a lot about what we think it means to be a teacher.

There’s a reason why the Facebook discussion over this topic generated so many comments. We want our students to learn, but in order for us to determine if they have learned, we need them to do the work. If students don’t do any work this feels impossible. As one teacher, Mary, put it, “I feel like I am a project manager sometimes more than a teacher. I’m dependent on the kids to their work so I can do my job.” So what do we do? A common thread in the comments was: before we put a zero in our grade books, it’s worth evaluating if the work we’re asking students to do is meaningful. Do they have the skills they need to complete it? Is it too much? Not enough? If we know we are asking students to do work that is fair, we can shift our attention to why they aren’t doing it. Here are some ways teachers are helping students who aren’t doing any work.

1. Mark it missing, and ask what’s going on. Their answer might surprise you.

After 21 years of teaching, I realize that kids have issues we aren’t aware of. Mark it missing. Then ask the kid what’s going on. Their answer might surprise you. Compassion and understanding have to be at the front of all we do. —Michelle

I am showing grace, but they must show effort and communication with me. Yes, zeros happen but can be overturned. Students need to follow through. —Tara

2. Invite students to reflect on why they aren’t doing any work.

I have an online form that the students fill out when they submit assignments after the due date. One field they have to fill out explains why it’s late. That has been eye-opening, and when they tell me what’s going on, I often offer grace and no penalty for being late. —Chris

We have to reach out and give students a hand who aren’t doing any work by getting them started on the missing assignment, helping them to clarify their thinking, or even making ourselves available during the day or after hours to help them achieve success. —Shelly

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3. Teach students coping strategies.

I saw an increase in work getting done when I taught students coping strategies. Begin or end a class with meditation exercises to help students get focused. Check in with students during independent work. These are simple and small ways to support your students .—Kerith

4. Ask students to write a weekly email and set goals.

I have my students send a weekly email home that includes what we have been doing in class and a picture of the grades from Powerschool. They also have to include a goal on how they will get missing assignments in. I email this to parents with me cc’d in and goes in as a grade. —Lea

5. Consider grading assessments, but not homework or other types of practice.

I grade the assessments only and make sure they align with the standards. This will give them a grade based on what they know and can do. If they do not complete the assessments, give an incomplete. —Caitlin

Keep it simple. We’re grading them on the work that they do, not the work that they don’t do. —Kevin

6. Try positive reinforcement and celebrate students’ small wins.

I created a board called “Make yourself PROUD!” I post weekly the names of the students that are on task and send home certificates every month. —Kristy

Kids want to do well. Sometimes they just need more encouragement. Although it is exhausting to see so many half-assed assignments. I just try to convey that it’s not what I expect from them. I have a copy-paste response: This assignment is designed to demonstrate your understanding. Please review the material and when you turn in an example of your understanding, your grade will reflect that! You got this! Go give it another go!—Tuesday

7. Even when you’ve tried everything, never give up on your students.

Separating behavior from assessment is critical! We cannot possibly understand all of the reasons why students may not be completing their work . It is easy to just say they are lazy/choosing not to do the work and should be punished so they learn accountability but this is not really in the best interest of the child. Many students do not respond well to this punitive system and will continue to fail. —Caitlin

I finally came to the conclusion that I have my core students who deserve attention because they participate and do their assignments. For the others, after months of messages home and DoJoing the names of students who have done their homework, I can keep the light on…be excited and encouraging when they do appear. —Marie

Looking for more? Here are some ideas for how to address missing work.

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Plus, 5 practical ways teachers can respond to, “i don’t get it.”.

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Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center

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How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?

Prepared by allison boye, ph.d. teaching, learning, and professional development center.

Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning.  And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment.  This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved.

First Things First…

Before assigning any major tasks to students, it is imperative that you first define a few things for yourself as the instructor:

• Your goals for the assignment . Why are you assigning this project, and what do you hope your students will gain from completing it? What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you aim to measure with this assignment?  Creating assignments is a major part of overall course design, and every project you assign should clearly align with your goals for the course in general.  For instance, if you want your students to demonstrate critical thinking, perhaps asking them to simply summarize an article is not the best match for that goal; a more appropriate option might be to ask for an analysis of a controversial issue in the discipline. Ultimately, the connection between the assignment and its purpose should be clear to both you and your students to ensure that it is fulfilling the desired goals and doesn't seem like “busy work.” For some ideas about what kinds of assignments match certain learning goals, take a look at this page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons.
• Have they experienced “socialization” in the culture of your discipline (Flaxman, 2005)? Are they familiar with any conventions you might want them to know? In other words, do they know the “language” of your discipline, generally accepted style guidelines, or research protocols?
• Do they know how to conduct research?  Do they know the proper style format, documentation style, acceptable resources, etc.? Do they know how to use the library (Fitzpatrick, 1989) or evaluate resources?
• What kinds of writing or work have they previously engaged in?  For instance, have they completed long, formal writing assignments or research projects before? Have they ever engaged in analysis, reflection, or argumentation? Have they completed group assignments before?  Do they know how to write a literature review or scientific report?

In his book Engaging Ideas (1996), John Bean provides a great list of questions to help instructors focus on their main teaching goals when creating an assignment (p.78):

1. What are the main units/modules in my course?

2. What are my main learning objectives for each module and for the course?

3. What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit and throughout the course?

4. What are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?

5. If I could change my students' study habits, what would I most like to change?

6. What difference do I want my course to make in my students' lives?

What your students need to know

Once you have determined your own goals for the assignment and the levels of your students, you can begin creating your assignment.  However, when introducing your assignment to your students, there are several things you will need to clearly outline for them in order to ensure the most successful assignments possible.

• First, you will need to articulate the purpose of the assignment . Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007). Being transparent with your students and explaining why you are asking them to complete a given assignment can ultimately help motivate them to complete the assignment more thoughtfully.
• If you are asking your students to complete a writing assignment, you should define for them the “rhetorical or cognitive mode/s” you want them to employ in their writing (Flaxman, 2005). In other words, use precise verbs that communicate whether you are asking them to analyze, argue, describe, inform, etc.  (Verbs like “explore” or “comment on” can be too vague and cause confusion.) Provide them with a specific task to complete, such as a problem to solve, a question to answer, or an argument to support.  For those who want assignments to lead to top-down, thesis-driven writing, John Bean (1996) suggests presenting a proposition that students must defend or refute, or a problem that demands a thesis answer.
• It is also a good idea to define the audience you want your students to address with their assignment, if possible – especially with writing assignments.  Otherwise, students will address only the instructor, often assuming little requires explanation or development (Hedengren, 2004; MIT, 1999). Further, asking students to address the instructor, who typically knows more about the topic than the student, places the student in an unnatural rhetorical position.  Instead, you might consider asking your students to prepare their assignments for alternative audiences such as other students who missed last week's classes, a group that opposes their position, or people reading a popular magazine or newspaper.  In fact, a study by Bean (1996) indicated the students often appreciate and enjoy assignments that vary elements such as audience or rhetorical context, so don't be afraid to get creative!
• Obviously, you will also need to articulate clearly the logistics or “business aspects” of the assignment . In other words, be explicit with your students about required elements such as the format, length, documentation style, writing style (formal or informal?), and deadlines.  One caveat, however: do not allow the logistics of the paper take precedence over the content in your assignment description; if you spend all of your time describing these things, students might suspect that is all you care about in their execution of the assignment.
• Finally, you should clarify your evaluation criteria for the assignment. What elements of content are most important? Will you grade holistically or weight features separately? How much weight will be given to individual elements, etc?  Another precaution to take when defining requirements for your students is to take care that your instructions and rubric also do not overshadow the content; prescribing too rigidly each element of an assignment can limit students' freedom to explore and discover. According to Beth Finch Hedengren, “A good assignment provides the purpose and guidelines… without dictating exactly what to say” (2004, p. 27).  If you decide to utilize a grading rubric, be sure to provide that to the students along with the assignment description, prior to their completion of the assignment.

A great way to get students engaged with an assignment and build buy-in is to encourage their collaboration on its design and/or on the grading criteria (Hudd, 2003). In his article “Conducting Writing Assignments,” Richard Leahy (2002) offers a few ideas for building in said collaboration:

• Ask the students to develop the grading scale themselves from scratch, starting with choosing the categories.

• Set the grading categories yourself, but ask the students to help write the descriptions.

• Draft the complete grading scale yourself, then give it to your students for review and suggestions.

A Few Do's and Don'ts…

Determining your goals for the assignment and its essential logistics is a good start to creating an effective assignment. However, there are a few more simple factors to consider in your final design. First, here are a few things you should do :

• Do provide detail in your assignment description . Research has shown that students frequently prefer some guiding constraints when completing assignments (Bean, 1996), and that more detail (within reason) can lead to more successful student responses.  One idea is to provide students with physical assignment handouts , in addition to or instead of a simple description in a syllabus.  This can meet the needs of concrete learners and give them something tangible to refer to.  Likewise, it is often beneficial to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete an assignment, given that students – especially younger ones – might need guidance in planning and time management (MIT, 1999).
• Do use open-ended questions.  The most effective and challenging assignments focus on questions that lead students to thinking and explaining, rather than simple yes or no answers, whether explicitly part of the assignment description or in the  brainstorming heuristics (Gardner, 2005).
• Do direct students to appropriate available resources . Giving students pointers about other venues for assistance can help them get started on the right track independently. These kinds of suggestions might include information about campus resources such as the University Writing Center or discipline-specific librarians, suggesting specific journals or books, or even sections of their textbook, or providing them with lists of research ideas or links to acceptable websites.
• Do consider providing models – both successful and unsuccessful models (Miller, 2007). These models could be provided by past students, or models you have created yourself.  You could even ask students to evaluate the models themselves using the determined evaluation criteria, helping them to visualize the final product, think critically about how to complete the assignment, and ideally, recognize success in their own work.
• Do consider including a way for students to make the assignment their own. In their study, Hass and Osborn (2007) confirmed the importance of personal engagement for students when completing an assignment.  Indeed, students will be more engaged in an assignment if it is personally meaningful, practical, or purposeful beyond the classroom.  You might think of ways to encourage students to tap into their own experiences or curiosities, to solve or explore a real problem, or connect to the larger community.  Offering variety in assignment selection can also help students feel more individualized, creative, and in control.
• If your assignment is substantial or long, do consider sequencing it. Far too often, assignments are given as one-shot final products that receive grades at the end of the semester, eternally abandoned by the student.  By sequencing a large assignment, or essentially breaking it down into a systematic approach consisting of interconnected smaller elements (such as a project proposal, an annotated bibliography, or a rough draft, or a series of mini-assignments related to the longer assignment), you can encourage thoughtfulness, complexity, and thoroughness in your students, as well as emphasize process over final product.

Next are a few elements to avoid in your assignments:

• Do not ask too many questions in your assignment.  In an effort to challenge students, instructors often err in the other direction, asking more questions than students can reasonably address in a single assignment without losing focus. Offering an overly specific “checklist” prompt often leads to externally organized papers, in which inexperienced students “slavishly follow the checklist instead of integrating their ideas into more organically-discovered structure” (Flaxman, 2005).
• Do not expect or suggest that there is an “ideal” response to the assignment. A common error for instructors is to dictate content of an assignment too rigidly, or to imply that there is a single correct response or a specific conclusion to reach, either explicitly or implicitly (Flaxman, 2005). Undoubtedly, students do not appreciate feeling as if they must read an instructor's mind to complete an assignment successfully, or that their own ideas have nowhere to go, and can lose motivation as a result. Similarly, avoid assignments that simply ask for regurgitation (Miller, 2007). Again, the best assignments invite students to engage in critical thinking, not just reproduce lectures or readings.
• Do not provide vague or confusing commands . Do students know what you mean when they are asked to “examine” or “discuss” a topic? Return to what you determined about your students' experiences and levels to help you decide what directions will make the most sense to them and what will require more explanation or guidance, and avoid verbiage that might confound them.
• Do not impose impossible time restraints or require the use of insufficient resources for completion of the assignment.  For instance, if you are asking all of your students to use the same resource, ensure that there are enough copies available for all students to access – or at least put one copy on reserve in the library. Likewise, make sure that you are providing your students with ample time to locate resources and effectively complete the assignment (Fitzpatrick, 1989).

The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few:

Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates, News release, Dialogues, Videos, Collages, Plays, Power Point presentations

Ultimately, the success of student responses to an assignment often rests on the instructor's deliberate design of the assignment. By being purposeful and thoughtful from the beginning, you can ensure that your assignments will not only serve as effective assessment methods, but also engage and delight your students. If you would like further help in constructing or revising an assignment, the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center is glad to offer individual consultations. In addition, look into some of the resources provided below.

Online Resources

“Creating Effective Assignments” http://www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Assignments.htm This site, from the University of New Hampshire's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning,  provides a brief overview of effective assignment design, with a focus on determining and communicating goals and expectations.

Gardner, T.  (2005, June 12). Ten Tips for Designing Writing Assignments. Traci's Lists of Ten. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/034.shtml This is a brief yet useful list of tips for assignment design, prepared by a writing teacher and curriculum developer for the National Council of Teachers of English .  The website will also link you to several other lists of “ten tips” related to literacy pedagogy.

“How to Create Effective Assignments for College Students.”  http:// tilt.colostate.edu/retreat/2011/zimmerman.pdf     This PDF is a simplified bulleted list, prepared by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University, offering some helpful ideas for coming up with creative assignments.

“Learner-Centered Assessment” http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/learner_centered_assessment.html From the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this is a short list of suggestions for the process of designing an assessment with your students' interests in mind. “Matching Learning Goals to Assignment Types.” http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu/How_to/design_assignments/assignments_learning_goals.html This is a great page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons, providing a chart that helps instructors match assignments with learning goals.

Additional References Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitzpatrick, R. (1989). Research and writing assignments that reduce fear lead to better papers and more confident students. Writing Across the Curriculum , 3.2, pp. 15 – 24.

Flaxman, R. (2005). Creating meaningful writing assignments. The Teaching Exchange .  Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008 from http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/pubs/teachingExchange/jan2005/01_flaxman.pdf

Hass, M. & Osborn, J. (2007, August 13). An emic view of student writing and the writing process. Across the Disciplines, 4. 

Hedengren, B.F. (2004). A TA's guide to teaching writing in all disciplines . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Hudd, S. S. (2003, April). Syllabus under construction: Involving students in the creation of class assignments.  Teaching Sociology , 31, pp. 195 – 202.

Leahy, R. (2002). Conducting writing assignments. College Teaching , 50.2, pp. 50 – 54.

Miller, H. (2007). Designing effective writing assignments.  Teaching with writing .  University of Minnesota Center for Writing. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008, from http://writing.umn.edu/tww/assignments/designing.html

MIT Online Writing and Communication Center (1999). Creating Writing Assignments. Retrieved January 9, 2008 from http://web.mit.edu/writing/Faculty/createeffective.html .

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Teaching excellence & educational innovation, creating assignments.

Here are some general suggestions and questions to consider when creating assignments. There are also many other resources in print and on the web that provide examples of interesting, discipline-specific assignment ideas.

Consider your learning objectives.

What do you want students to learn in your course? What could they do that would show you that they have learned it? To determine assignments that truly serve your course objectives, it is useful to write out your objectives in this form: I want my students to be able to ____. Use active, measurable verbs as you complete that sentence (e.g., compare theories, discuss ramifications, recommend strategies), and your learning objectives will point you towards suitable assignments.

Design assignments that are interesting and challenging.

This is the fun side of assignment design. Consider how to focus students’ thinking in ways that are creative, challenging, and motivating. Think beyond the conventional assignment type! For example, one American historian requires students to write diary entries for a hypothetical Nebraska farmwoman in the 1890s. By specifying that students’ diary entries must demonstrate the breadth of their historical knowledge (e.g., gender, economics, technology, diet, family structure), the instructor gets students to exercise their imaginations while also accomplishing the learning objectives of the course (Walvoord & Anderson, 1989, p. 25).

Double-check alignment.

After creating your assignments, go back to your learning objectives and make sure there is still a good match between what you want students to learn and what you are asking them to do. If you find a mismatch, you will need to adjust either the assignments or the learning objectives. For instance, if your goal is for students to be able to analyze and evaluate texts, but your assignments only ask them to summarize texts, you would need to add an analytical and evaluative dimension to some assignments or rethink your learning objectives.

Name assignments accurately.

Students can be misled by assignments that are named inappropriately. For example, if you want students to analyze a product’s strengths and weaknesses but you call the assignment a “product description,” students may focus all their energies on the descriptive, not the critical, elements of the task. Thus, it is important to ensure that the titles of your assignments communicate their intention accurately to students.

Consider sequencing.

Think about how to order your assignments so that they build skills in a logical sequence. Ideally, assignments that require the most synthesis of skills and knowledge should come later in the semester, preceded by smaller assignments that build these skills incrementally. For example, if an instructor’s final assignment is a research project that requires students to evaluate a technological solution to an environmental problem, earlier assignments should reinforce component skills, including the ability to identify and discuss key environmental issues, apply evaluative criteria, and find appropriate research sources.

Think about scheduling.

Consider your intended assignments in relation to the academic calendar and decide how they can be reasonably spaced throughout the semester, taking into account holidays and key campus events. Consider how long it will take students to complete all parts of the assignment (e.g., planning, library research, reading, coordinating groups, writing, integrating the contributions of team members, developing a presentation), and be sure to allow sufficient time between assignments.

Check feasibility.

Is the workload you have in mind reasonable for your students? Is the grading burden manageable for you? Sometimes there are ways to reduce workload (whether for you or for students) without compromising learning objectives. For example, if a primary objective in assigning a project is for students to identify an interesting engineering problem and do some preliminary research on it, it might be reasonable to require students to submit a project proposal and annotated bibliography rather than a fully developed report. If your learning objectives are clear, you will see where corners can be cut without sacrificing educational quality.

Articulate the task description clearly.

If an assignment is vague, students may interpret it any number of ways – and not necessarily how you intended. Thus, it is critical to clearly and unambiguously identify the task students are to do (e.g., design a website to help high school students locate environmental resources, create an annotated bibliography of readings on apartheid). It can be helpful to differentiate the central task (what students are supposed to produce) from other advice and information you provide in your assignment description.

Establish clear performance criteria.

Different instructors apply different criteria when grading student work, so it’s important that you clearly articulate to students what your criteria are. To do so, think about the best student work you have seen on similar tasks and try to identify the specific characteristics that made it excellent, such as clarity of thought, originality, logical organization, or use of a wide range of sources. Then identify the characteristics of the worst student work you have seen, such as shaky evidence, weak organizational structure, or lack of focus. Identifying these characteristics can help you consciously articulate the criteria you already apply. It is important to communicate these criteria to students, whether in your assignment description or as a separate rubric or scoring guide . Clearly articulated performance criteria can prevent unnecessary confusion about your expectations while also setting a high standard for students to meet.

Specify the intended audience.

Students make assumptions about the audience they are addressing in papers and presentations, which influences how they pitch their message. For example, students may assume that, since the instructor is their primary audience, they do not need to define discipline-specific terms or concepts. These assumptions may not match the instructor’s expectations. Thus, it is important on assignments to specify the intended audience http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm (e.g., undergraduates with no biology background, a potential funder who does not know engineering).

Specify the purpose of the assignment.

If students are unclear about the goals or purpose of the assignment, they may make unnecessary mistakes. For example, if students believe an assignment is focused on summarizing research as opposed to evaluating it, they may seriously miscalculate the task and put their energies in the wrong place. The same is true they think the goal of an economics problem set is to find the correct answer, rather than demonstrate a clear chain of economic reasoning. Consequently, it is important to make your objectives for the assignment clear to students.

Specify the parameters.

If you have specific parameters in mind for the assignment (e.g., length, size, formatting, citation conventions) you should be sure to specify them in your assignment description. Otherwise, students may misapply conventions and formats they learned in other courses that are not appropriate for yours.

A Checklist for Designing Assignments

Here is a set of questions you can ask yourself when creating an assignment.

• Provided a written description of the assignment (in the syllabus or in a separate document)?
• Specified the purpose of the assignment?
• Indicated the intended audience?
• Articulated the instructions in precise and unambiguous language?
• Provided information about the appropriate format and presentation (e.g., page length, typed, cover sheet, bibliography)?  
• Indicated special instructions, such as a particular citation style or headings?  
• Specified the due date and the consequences for missing it?
• Articulated performance criteria clearly?
• Indicated the assignment’s point value or percentage of the course grade?
• Provided students (where appropriate) with models or samples?

Adapted from the WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10e.cfm .

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How to write the best college assignments.

By Lois Weldon

When it comes to writing assignments, it is difficult to find a conceptualized guide with clear and simple tips that are easy to follow. That’s exactly what this guide will provide: few simple tips on how to write great assignments, right when you need them. Some of these points will probably be familiar to you, but there is no harm in being reminded of the most important things before you start writing the assignments, which are usually determining on your credits.

The most important aspects: Outline and Introduction

Preparation is the key to success, especially when it comes to academic assignments. It is recommended to always write an outline before you start writing the actual assignment. The outline should include the main points of discussion, which will keep you focused throughout the work and will make your key points clearly defined. Outlining the assignment will save you a lot of time because it will organize your thoughts and make your literature searches much easier. The outline will also help you to create different sections and divide up the word count between them, which will make the assignment more organized.

The introduction is the next important part you should focus on. This is the part that defines the quality of your assignment in the eyes of the reader. The introduction must include a brief background on the main points of discussion, the purpose of developing such work and clear indications on how the assignment is being organized. Keep this part brief, within one or two paragraphs.

This is an example of including the above mentioned points into the introduction of an assignment that elaborates the topic of obesity reaching proportions:

Background : The twenty first century is characterized by many public health challenges, among which obesity takes a major part. The increasing prevalence of obesity is creating an alarming situation in both developed and developing regions of the world.

Structure and aim : This assignment will elaborate and discuss the specific pattern of obesity epidemic development, as well as its epidemiology. Debt, trade and globalization will also be analyzed as factors that led to escalation of the problem. Moreover, the assignment will discuss the governmental interventions that make efforts to address this issue.

Practical tips on assignment writing

Here are some practical tips that will keep your work focused and effective:

–         Critical thinking – Academic writing has to be characterized by critical thinking, not only to provide the work with the needed level, but also because it takes part in the final mark.

–         Continuity of ideas – When you get to the middle of assignment, things can get confusing. You have to make sure that the ideas are flowing continuously within and between paragraphs, so the reader will be enabled to follow the argument easily. Dividing the work in different paragraphs is very important for this purpose.

–         Usage of ‘you’ and ‘I’ – According to the academic writing standards, the assignments should be written in an impersonal language, which means that the usage of ‘you’ and ‘I’ should be avoided. The only acceptable way of building your arguments is by using opinions and evidence from authoritative sources.

–         Referencing – this part of the assignment is extremely important and it takes a big part in the final mark. Make sure to use either Vancouver or Harvard referencing systems, and use the same system in the bibliography and while citing work of other sources within the text.  

–         Usage of examples – A clear understanding on your assignment’s topic should be provided by comparing different sources and identifying their strengths and weaknesses in an objective manner. This is the part where you should show how the knowledge can be applied into practice.

–         Numbering and bullets – Instead of using numbering and bullets, the academic writing style prefers the usage of paragraphs.

–         Including figures and tables – The figures and tables are an effective way of conveying information to the reader in a clear manner, without disturbing the word count. Each figure and table should have clear headings and you should make sure to mention their sources in the bibliography.

–         Word count – the word count of your assignment mustn’t be far above or far below the required word count. The outline will provide you with help in this aspect, so make sure to plan the work in order to keep it within the boundaries.

The importance of an effective conclusion

The conclusion of your assignment is your ultimate chance to provide powerful arguments that will impress the reader. The conclusion in academic writing is usually expressed through three main parts:

–         Stating the context and aim of the assignment

–         Summarizing the main points briefly

–         Providing final comments with consideration of the future (discussing clear examples of things that can be done in order to improve the situation concerning your topic of discussion).

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Lois Weldon is writer at  Uk.bestdissertation.com . Lives happily at London with her husband and lovely daughter. Adores writing tips for students. Passionate about Star Wars and yoga.

7 comments on “How To Write The Best College Assignments”

Extremely useful tip for students wanting to score well on their assignments. I concur with the writer that writing an outline before ACTUALLY starting to write assignments is extremely important. I have observed students who start off quite well but they tend to lose focus in between which causes them to lose marks. So an outline helps them to maintain the theme focused.

Hello Great information…. write assignments

Well elabrated

Thanks for the information. This site has amazing articles. Looking forward to continuing on this site.

This article is certainly going to help student . Well written.

Really good, thanks

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Creative Ways to Design Assignments for Student Success

There are many creative ways in which teachers can design assignments to support student success. We can do this while simultaneously not getting bogged down with the various obstructions that keep students from both completing and learning from the assignments. For me, assignments fall into two categories: those that are graded automatically, such as SmartBook® readings and quizzes in Connect®; and those that I need to grade by hand, such as writing assignments.  

For those of us teaching large, introductory classes, most of our assignments are graded automatically, which is great for our time management. But our students will ultimately deliver a plethora of colorful excuses as to why they were not completed and why extensions are warranted. How do we give them a little leeway to make the semester run more smoothly, so there are fewer worries about a reading that was missed or a quiz that went by too quickly? Here are a few tactics I use. 

Automatically graded assignments: 

Multiple assignment attempts  

• This eases the mental pressure of a timed assignment and covers computer mishaps or human error on the first attempt. 
• You can deduct points for every attempt taken if you are worried about students taking advantage. 

Automatically dropped assignments  

• Within a subset or set of assignments, automatically drop a few from grading. This can take care of all excuses for missing an assignment. 
• Additionally, you can give a little grade boost to those who complete all their assignments (over a certain grade). 

Due dates  

• Consider staggering due dates during the week instead of making them all due on Sunday night.  
• Set the due date for readings the night before you cover the material, so students are prepared.  

Requirements  

• If we want our students to read, then make a reading assignment a requirement of a quiz. 

The tactics above might be applied to written assignments, too. An easy way to bolster a student’s interest and investment in these longer assignments is to give them a choice. This could be in the topic, location of study, or presentation style. For example, if you want them to analyze the susceptibility of a beach to hurricane threat, why not let them choose the location? In this way, you will also be gaining a lot of new information for your own use. 

With a small amount of effort, we can design our classes, so students concentrate on learning the subject matter rather than the logistics of completing the assignments. 

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A survey conducted by the Associated Press has revealed that around 58% of parents feel that their child has been given the right amount of assignments. Educators are thrilled that the majority has supported the thought of allocating assignments, and they think that it is just right.

However, the question arises when students question the importance of giving assignments for better growth. Studies have shown that students often get unsuccessful in understanding the importance of assignments.

What key purpose does an assignment have? They often question how an assignment could be beneficial. Let us explain why a teacher thinks it is best to allot assignments. The essential functions of assigning tasks or giving assignments come from many intentions. 

What is the Importance of Assignment- For Students 

The importance of the assignment is not a new concept. The principle of allocating assignments stems from students’ learning process. It helps teachers to evaluate the student’s understanding of the subject. Assignments develop different practical skills and increase their knowledge base significantly. As per educational experts, mastering a topic is not an impossible task to achieve if they learn and develop these skills.  

Cognitive enhancement 

While doing assignments, students learn how to conduct research on subjects and comprise the data for using the information in the given tasks. Working on your assignment helps you learn diverse subjects, compare facts, and understand related concepts. It assists your brain in processing information and memorizing the required one. This exercise enhances your brain activity and directly impacts cognitive growth. 

Ensured knowledge gain   

When your teacher gives you an assignment, they intend to let you know the importance of the assignment. Working on it helps students to develop their thoughts on particular subjects. The idea supports students to get deep insights and also enriches their learning. Continuous learning opens up the window for knowledge on diverse topics. The learning horizon expanded, and students gained expertise in subjects over time.      

Improve students’ writing pattern 

Experts have revealed in a study that most students find it challenging to complete assignments as they are not good at writing. With proper assistance or teacher guidance, students can practice writing repetitively.

It encourages them to try their hands at different writing styles, and gradually they will improve their own writing pattern and increase their writing speed. It contributes to their writing improvement and makes it certain that students get a confidence boost. 

Increased focus on studies 

When your teachers allocate a task to complete assignments, it is somehow linked to your academic growth, especially for the university and grad school students. Therefore, it demands ultimate concentration to establish your insights regarding the topics of your assignments.

This process assists you in achieving good growth in your academic career and aids students in learning concepts quickly with better focus. It ensures that you stay focused while doing work and deliver better results.         

Build planning & organization tactics

Planning and task organization are as necessary as writing the assignment. As per educational experts, when you work on assignments, you start planning to structurize the content and what type of information you will use and then organize your workflow accordingly. This process supports you in building your skill to plan things beforehand and organize them to get them done without hassles.   

Adopt advanced research technique

Assignments expand the horizon of research skills among students. Learners explore different topics, gather diverse knowledge on different aspects of a particular topic, and use useful information on their tasks. Students adopt advanced research techniques to search for relevant information from diversified sources and identify correct facts and stats through these steps.  

Augmenting reasoning & analytical skills 

Crafting an assignment has one more sign that we overlook. Experts have enough proof that doing an assignment augments students’ reasoning abilities. They started thinking logically and used their analytical skills while writing their assignments. It offers clarity of the assignment subject, and they gradually develop their own perspective about the subject and offer that through assignments.     

Boost your time management skills 

Time management is one of the key skills that develop through assignments. It makes them disciplined and conscious of the value of time during their study years. However, students often delay as they get enough time. Set deadlines help students manage their time. Therefore, students understand that they need to invest their time wisely and also it’s necessary to complete assignments on time or before the deadline.  

What is the Importance of Assignment- Other Functions From Teacher’s Perspective: 

Develop an understanding between teacher and students  .

Teachers ensure that students get clear instructions from their end through the assignment as it is necessary. They also get a glimpse of how much students have understood the subject. The clarity regarding the topic ensures that whether students have mastered the topic or need further clarification to eliminate doubts and confusion. It creates an understanding between the teaching faculty and learners. 

Clarity- what is the reason for choosing the assignment 

The Reason for the assignment allocated to students should be clear. The transparency of why teachers have assigned the task enables learners to understand why it is essential for their knowledge growth. With understanding, the students try to fulfill the objective. Overall, it fuels their thoughts that successfully evoke their insights. 

Building a strong relationship- Showing how to complete tasks 

When a teacher shows students how to complete tasks, it builds a strong student-teacher relationship. Firstly, students understand the teacher’s perspective and why they are entrusted with assignments. Secondly, it also encourages them to handle problems intelligently. This single activity also offers them the right direction in completing their tasks within the shortest period without sacrificing quality. 

Get a view of what students have understood and their perspective 

Assigning a task brings forth the students’ understanding of a particular subject. Moreover, when they attempt an assignment, it reflects their perspective on the specific subject. The process is related to the integration of appreciative learning principles. In this principle, teachers see how students interpret the subject. Students master the subject effectively, whereas teachers find the evaluation process relatively easy when done correctly. 

Chance to clear doubts or confusion regarding the assignment  

Mastering a subject needs practice and deep understanding from a teacher’s perspective. It could be possible only if students dedicate their time to assignments. While doing assignments, students could face conceptual difficulties, or some parts could confuse them. Through the task, teachers can clear their doubts and confusion and ensure that they fully understand what they are learning.   

Offering individualistic provisions to complete an assignment 

Students are divergent, and their thoughts are diverse in intelligence, temperaments, and aptitudes. Their differences reflect in their assignments and the insight they present. This process gives them a fair understanding of students’ future and their scope to grow. It also helps teachers to understand their differences and recognize their individualistic approaches.  

Conclusion:

You have already become acquainted with the factors that translate what is the importance of assignments in academics. It plays a vital role in increasing the students’ growth multifold. 

TutorBin is one of the best assignment help for students. Our experts connect students to improve their learning opportunities. Therefore, it creates scopes of effective education for all, irrespective of location, race, and education system. We have a strong team of tutors, and our team offers diverse services, including lab work, project reports, writing services, and presentations.

We often got queries like what is the importance of assignments to students. Likewise, if you have something similar in mind regarding your assignment & homework, comment below. We will answer you. In conclusion, we would like to remind you that if you want to know how our services help achieve academic success, search www.tutorbin.com . Our executive will get back to you shortly with their expert recommendations. 

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Smart Classroom Management

How To Handle Students Who Don’t Do Any Work

You can encourage them. You can empathize with them. You can coax and cajole them.

You can gently ask if there is anything bothering them or keeping them from trying.

You can lighten their load, bribe them with incentives, or offer choices, accommodations, and a buddy to sit with.

You can work with them one on one and whisper assurances or gently convey the threat of consequences.

And you may get them going for a time.

You may prod them through an extra sentence or paragraph or persuade them to give half an effort.

But in doing so, you make a deal with the devil and do them more harm than good.

You see, by spending extra time with reluctant students, by coddling, appeasing, and buying into any of an unlimited number of justifications for their inaction, you create even more resistance.

You enable their behavior and make them weaker and less motivated .

You hide from them the realities of life and at the same time crush the development of a true work ethic—which is the only way to empower future success, no matter their circumstances.

So they sit there, subjected to the same doomed and disheartening strategies year after year.

Many have teams of professionals meeting about them, designing intervention plans for them, and assigning labels to them they don’t understand.

Meanwhile, these same students who are assumed to be too attentive-averse or ill-equipped to succeed rush home at the end of another wasted day and play the same video game for three hours without a break.

It’s all a bunch of hooey.

Yet, this failed approach, that merely acts as cover for students as well as those whose job it is to educate them, is promoted and recommended time and again by educational leaders and school districts across the country.

It’s baffling. But nothing changes. The same strategies will be trotted out again this year.

So what’s the solution? Well, providing the students are able to do the work—which, except in the rare circumstance of total misplacement, should be every student in your class—the best thing you can do for them is expect hard work.

Note: Within education, the word expect has been tremendously watered-down. For our purposes, it’s true meaning is to foresee, presuppose, and believe in strongly.

What follows are three steps to get reluctant students to start producing real work and making real improvement.

1. Teach great lessons.

This is your number one job and the very essence of being a teacher. Somehow, it’s been lost in a sea of less important or completely unimportant responsibilities.

You must produce clear, compelling lessons that students want to pay attention to.

Your classroom management skills must be strong enough to have the opportunity to capture their attention, and then you must be able to do so through your passion, your humor, your creativity, and most important your content knowledge.

You must be able to draw them in, absorb them in the moment, and maintain their state of flow— where time slows, mind-energy focuses, and concerns and worries of the past and future fade away.

You must set your students up for success by checking thoroughly for understanding. In this way, before you send them off to work independently they know exactly what to do and how to do it.

Being exceptional in whole-class instruction covers a multitude of potential learning and motivational problems, most notably those that cause students to struggle getting down to work.

Note: For more on how to teach compelling lessons, see The Happy Teacher Habits .

2. Let them be.

Once you’ve done your job, once you’ve provided your students everything they need to succeed, you now must shift responsibility to actually do the work over to them.

They need to know, and be reminded of each day, that it’s all up to them—every last bit of it—that you’re not going to turn around and reteach what you just taught minutes before.

This sends the message more than anything else you can do or say that they really can do it and that you believe in them and expect them to succeed.

Therefore, if after giving your signal to get started they just sit there, then let them sit.

Let them face the hard choice right now, in this moment, rather than when they’re 19 years old and it’s too late, to try and succeed or to do nothing and fail.

When you kneel down next to them to help, excuse, or placate, you let them off the hook. You allow them to avoid and delay this critical choice—to the point where they no longer believe in themselves or their abilities.

Forcing their hand is the change-agent they desperately need to upend their downward trajectory. When the decision to either succeed or fail comes so directly and honestly every day, the pressure to make the right one builds and grows stronger and harder to avoid.

It weighs heavily on their shoulders, especially combined with the intrinsic carrot of pride in success dangling just in front of them. Until, overwhelmed, the dam breaks.

You look over one day and find them immersed in their work. And when you do, you must seize it.

3. Praise the work, not the student.

Instead of rushing over with a huge smile and telling the student how wonderful they are because they completed a few sentences—which very effectively lowers the bar of expectation—point out their good work.

Focus on the content of their production, wherein lies the key to an untapped yet very powerful sense of pride. Just be sure that it’s true, quick, and subtle .

Avoid making a big deal. It’s embarrassing for the student—and not a little condescending—and just tells them they’re less capable than their classmates. Instead, point to something in particular in their work and tell them the truth.

“That’s a good sentence.”

“Smart word choice.”

“I like the direction you’re going.”

Tell them like it is, the straight dope, and then be on your way. Don’t wait for them to respond. Don’t stand there and enjoy their reaction or make them feel obligated to show their appreciation.

Let them enjoy the feeling of receiving pure acknowledgement of their authentic work, untainted by you and unconnected from who they are or were, what they’ve done in the past, or how much or little confidence they may or may not have.

Simply acknowledge their good work and allow the natural pride in a job well done, which they’ve rarely had a chance to experience, propel them to greater accomplishments.

The three steps above add up to the expectation that as a class they will succeed. They will improve. They will achieve and become better students than they ever thought possible.

And that’s just the way it’s gonna be.

But what if one or more continue to sit and do nothing? Then let them be. Let the pressure to want to work and try continue to build.

In the meantime, they’re a living and breathing reminder for you to be better. To learn the skills available right here at SCM to be an expert in classroom management and present better, stronger lessons.

Make success through your high-level instruction a foregone conclusion. Then dare your students to try. Challenge them. Believe in them.

And they will succeed, and be forever changed.

If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

What to read next:

• How To Handle A Student Who Does Zero Work
• Why Allowing Students To Turn In Work Anytime Is A Bad Idea
• Should You Allow Your Students To Talk During…
• 5 Reasons Why Your Students Don't Like You
• How To Connect With Students Who Don't Want To Connect

56 thoughts on “How To Handle Students Who Don’t Do Any Work”

Great ideas! But I have done ALL of the good and the bad you talk about. I had 2-3 students last year who fit this to a Tee. The only way they would work and participate is on computer games. I did create Nearpods and assign computer work, they would play the ‘games’ but that was all. It was also very time consuming and not something I could make and do every night for every assignment. I did just let them sit and earn their F’s on their report cards, conferenced with parents. Nothing worked. Then they passed the state assessment with flying colors, I dont get it 🤷🏻‍♀️

It means they were learning, or already knew the material, but refused to give you the satisfaction of them obeying you. They were proving that you were not their boss and laughing at your futile attempts. They were being mean to you, resisting your authority, and the school’s and the world’s authority. Passing the state assessment perhaps as a twist ending to show they were playing you the whole time. We need smart people who do not obey authority but do the right thing anyway, but they can be little jerks while growing up.

Thank you for this article. This is a big area for me to improve on and as always you explain the way in a clear and practical manner.

You frequently mention checking for understanding as an important tool. Sometimes it’s easy to do this. For example if you are teaching how to add fractions, have the students do practice problems on whiteboards. How would you quickly check for understanding in a lesson on writing a strong conclusion to an essay or a lesson on understanding the theme of a short story, when it’s not as straightforward? Thank you for any advice!

Good question. I wish I had the time to answer it now, but I’ll be sure to cover it in a future article.

It is a big question, so I appreciate it being added to the list. Keep up the great work!

Excellent advise! I feel so guilty when I let them be and then I feel guilty for threatening and bribing. Thank you for sharing this. I am going to stick to this method for my scholars’ sake.

You’re welcome, Janine.

I do love your approach overall but was appalled to read ‘except in the rare circumstance of total misplacement, should be every student in your class’ because the majority of my classes every year in California at several different grade levels are always unable to do the work due to lack or basic skills. For the first time you seem very out of touch!

Hi Jennifer,

The article is about not doing any work (i.e., because of low motivation, confidence, apathy, poor listening, etc.). Being at grade level isn’t a prerequisite, but does point to the critical need for improved teaching. When you get a chance, please read the article again. The idea and common acceptance that more than the rarest, misplaced student can’t do any work on their own, or even quality work, is a major reason why schools are failing and so many students fall through the cracks.

Hi Michael,

Can I safely assume then that you aren’t referring to students with special needs in this article?

I couldn’t agree more with what you say with regards to regular students, and even, commensurate with their ability, with regards to certain students with special needs.

This is covered in the article.

In a future article, can you give an example of a really great lesson great?

Our middle school places students who had failed 7th grade math into 8th grade math along with students who did pass. Suggestions? Do most districts do this?

in my experience, yes. Social Promotion…..

I need this reminder! I overdo the help to find some success, but it is always up to them.

Thank you, this is very timely for me. I am curious though, does this mean to leave the student when assessment is being completed as well? I have one student who did this perfectly and will not complete assessment. My other question is due to an expectation in my school that consequences are issued for not working (usually detention to get the work done). What is your opinion on this? I seem to have a big pile of work that still isn’t being done and losing lunch breaks.

Do you grade the work that they don’t do? Are parents told about it?

I am responsible for students’ scores ultimately. It all gets printed out on a spreadsheet and I am evaluated on it

If scores are low, what then? Administrators don’t care to know about student responsibility; the idea is if if grades are poor, it is the teacher’s fault.

Also, if students do no work, do I assign study hall as a consequence- or just let them have full privileges no matter what?

Remember that different level students need scaffolding (such as ESL students) If your lesson includes scaffolding to support them (starting at whatever level is needed to reach the student(s), then your scaffolding can be removed bit by bit in subsequent lessons until they are able to accomplish the task on their own, without support. (ergo, the word “scaffolding”) There are so many things we teachers are expected to do well. It is overwhelming. It is a long process to become skilled in every single thing we are expected to do perfectly. Don’t give up. If you’re teaching because you LOVE students and are willing to do whatever it takes to reach all students, then you are in the right profession!

I’ve been following this plan for two years now and have seen tremendous improvement in behavior in my class. This year I have very young K students who have just turned 5 and so are basically acting like 4 year olds who have never apparently experienced school or consequences. Any additional suggestions for K kids who don’t listen? I’ve been giving the one warning then the timeout, and the letter home but after two weeks they are still not following our simple class plan.

The most difficult aspect to master of Michael’s classroom-management plan is the leverage he talks about as being key to an effective plan, i.e, creating a classroom that students want to be a part of (through good rapport and engaging lessons) and that they therefore care about not participating in. Is there something there you might tweak?

For timeouts, is there a fun game or activity that you could promise to do with students who remain out of timeout after a lesson segment or period so that, as Michael says, those in timeout will feel the weight of missing out?

But you say you’ve been implementing Michael’s plan for two years, so perhaps you’re well aware of these points. In that case, could your students benefit from stories about how a school and classroom work and what the expectations are for students, what teachers are and how to interact with them, etc.? Short videos can be effective as illustrations of these social skills (YouTube, etc.). You might also have fun with this by having your students help a puppet learn how to behave in school.

I would love to hear your response to some of the other posts, not just the one that was critical. There are some excellent questions there. I’m especially interested in your response to Nic’s question about checking for understanding. I completely agree with you that we need to build the lesson so the students can be successful when they work independently.

I noticed you are highly skilled at pointing out several common classroom management issues teachers struggle with. In fact, it’s scary how dead-on accurate you are. But I must ask if you currently struggle with these issues, or are they issues you observe in other teachers’ classes? Is it really possible to make it through an entire year with zero classroom management issues if a teacher follows all of your advice? I notice a lot of teachers posting that they do follow your advice, but are still struggling. Can you shed some light on this situation when you get a moment? I ask that you please do not omit this comment, because I am asking for a lot of teachers out there who are probably wondering the same thing and want answers. Thanks!!

I wonder this as well Pete. I have come to the conclusion (in my 3rd year of 5th grade/and of being a classroom teacher) 1. These are different times for a lot of kids. Regardless of demographic. Social media/fortnite/little parental support are key factors for a lot of the issues. 2. If a school is not consistent across the board (k-5 etc) with teachers and classroom management I could see that being a factor in our success. 3. Growing class sizes contribute a lot to the issues of student success as well as behaviors.

Though it is doable I haven’t cracked the code yet either. I am also still learning how to be an effective educator while keeping kids on track and not having chaos in the classroom. I just take all of the advice and input I have received and try my best each day. See what works and don’t give up. It’s never going to be ideal 100% of the time. Kids are humans and we have to accept that.

I am also wondering if consequences fit into a student not completing work.

I work with exceptional education students who have learning disabilities, severe ADHD, Autism, Language Impaired, or Developmentally Delayed. They are in the regular education classroom in an inclusion setting for the majority of the day. Many of the kids are hard workers, but a few get very frustrated by not being able to keep up. What are some suggestions of strategies that have worked for you? I work with students K – 3rd. Thank you!

Would you also give consequences for students who don’t produce any work?

Hi Sam and Tim,

As mentioned in the article, not in a traditional sense. But there are certainly consequences that I’ll point out more specifically in a future article.

I think this is your best article. I’m a special education teacher for students with emotional and behavioral disorders and I see this almost daily. It resonates when you mention how they can play a video game for three straight hours but not be attentive to a lesson for 3 minutes. I always let a child sit and do nothing and use my “point system” as a natural consequence. It is when they become disruptive by talking to others while also not doing any work when it gets frustrating. I remove the student in these cases. To play devils advocate on one of your points, though: not every lesson will be amazing nor needs to be. Isn’t that also a fact of life? Isn’t work ethic expected when the work itself isn’t always pleasant? Your relationship with the student should be compelling, but honestly not all my lessons will be, and I’m still extremely confident in my teaching practice.

You’re right, in that the lessons themselves don’t have to be amazing. This isn’t the same, however, as the act of teaching and preparing students for independent work, which does need to be top notch.

Philosophically, I agree with you – except that when I’ve done this, often other kids stop participating as well. They see that kids sit there with no consequence – natural or otherwise – and wonder why they have to work so hard.

This article made me remember last year when I received an email asking me to sign my child up for a “Mood App,” where ultimately it let the educators know when students were in mood/mind set to engage in learning. They would use this app in the morning and afternoon (time is precious, a lesson could have been taught during this time frame.)

It saddened me, as like you stated, it is setting students up for failure by giving them this choice. In the work place ( or life in general), we are not greeted with a mood app, nor given the opportunity to dwell on our emotional state. It is expected that we do our best and work hard, no matter the situation or what the day has brought. I did not feel that this was a beneficial approach.

I asked that my daughter did not participate and that she read a book instead.

Michael, I love your work and have purchased several of your books. Please do respond to the many good questions that have been brought up. I am willing to let the child “fail” if she/he absolutely refuses to produce any work or show any effort, but problems arise with parents and admin who want to see teachers exhaust themselves trying to get these few students to do work, otherwise they say you’re not a good teacher. Please comment. Juliet

A mood app? What school system is using this? I hope we never get this.

Following. Great questions asked, and I want to see the answers.

This is an excellent article with even broader applications (i.e. parenting lol). I also appreciate that you letting us all “sit” in the tension it has created. Y’all, we’ve got this! Just like the kids. To those of you asking questions, listen to yourselves and re-read the article.

I too would like to hear whether consequences for not working are appropriate. Bottom line is the work needs to be done!

Some children who are very capable need to be told firmly to get busy. Reasonable consequences work well, too.

A retired teacher.

In my sixth grade self-contained class, like many other teacher’s classes, I have 32+ students whose reading and math levels range from 2nd to twelfth grade. I appreciated this article very much, because it reinforces what I have been aiming to do for several years with great success. It has worked so well that my principal and some parents of low-performing students have been astounded that work is suddenly being completed. I have not had to defend myself for letting kids sit with this responsibility. I teach the lesson, provide intervention in small groups if skills are truly missing, and I allow some tools to be used regularly as perv504 Plans and IEPs: homemade dictionaries, word banks, multiplication charts, and copies of notes/PowerPoints. Clear directions, grading checklists and rubrics help so that kids know what they neeed to do. While circulating around the room I do not linger at any one kid for long. If they ask for help or they are just sitting doing nothing. I praise the work they’ve done so far, I prompt them to tell me what they need to do next, and then I leave. If they don’t know what comes next I direct them where to look on a hand-out or chart and ask them to read it or tell it to me. Then I give a thumbs up and walk away. (If they have not started I say something like, “I see you’ve got your book open to page ——. That’s a good place to start.” And I leave. Last year I had 19 special education students. No, they were not all at grade level by the end of the year, but most had shown at least 2 years of growth.

Impressive. Sounds like you’re doing an amazing job!

I teach at a charter school. My classroom has three grade levels, K, 1, & 2. It is also full inclusion where we provide services mostly within the classroom. This means accommodations must be provided within the classroom as well as some students receiving that one on one assistance. I have a particular student re-doing kindergarten with an IEP who is very immature. He frequently refuses to participate even when lessons are going very well and all the other kids are enjoying their learning time. He just doesn’t buy in. I’ve been doing the time outs and sent a couple letters. Parents seem to want to help from home but I am at a loss. I did have a breakthrough using this method with another student who really struggled last year to even start to work on their own. I often keep my students for the whole 3 years. Any advice on my immature little one? He crawls under tables, throws tantrums, etc. HELP! Thanks!

What about when they have a 504 that says shortened assignments but they do nothing? Recommendations?

Hi Michael, On point as always! As your regular reader of your blog and a purchaser of all of your books, I I have a great deal of respect for SCM am hoping to get your opinion; It seems that restorative justice is gaining momentum in education. I was going to look at learning more about restorative justice but I thought I’d ask your thoughts on the topic ? (It’ll probably be something you’ll write about later).

Thanks Greg! Good to hear from you. Yes, it is something I’ll have to cover in the future. In the meantime, there are some things I like about it while others are incompatible with SCM.

“Praise the work, not the student”. IMHO the secret to great teaching in a nutshell.

Hi Michael, Thank you again for this article! I read it a few times and feel that I understand your points, however, isn’t there a conflict between leaving the student alone for an indeterminate amount of time (however long they don’t complete the work) and upholding my promise to follow my CMP to a tee? I think that if a student is not doing their work, then they’re clearly breaking rule #1: Listen and Follow Directions. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this and of course Michael’s too. Thanks again!

Your classroom management plan is for misbehavior/disruption only. I’ll cover this topic again in the future.

Thank you, Michael!

What would one do with a student that I feel might have a disability, but has not been tested for one. I have a student that will just sit for the whole class and doesn’t do anything. He’s not a distraction and I am genuinely concerned. I also can’t get a bold of the parents.

Great article again! I always try to remember when I’m teaching to try to teach great lessons, like it says in this article and and in “Happy Teacher Habits” and “Dream Class.” A lot of times the boredom in my class is simply because MY lesson is not that great on that day. It puts the power back on me to teach great lessons.

The way it works in my classroom (3rd and 4th grade) is: whatever independent work they don’t finish in school goes home for homework. My question is, does this eliminate the “pressure to want to work and try” since they know they will be taking it home, and there they can possibly get Mom to help them do the assignment? Would it be better to take it away at the end of the period and give the grade for what was actually done? The difficulty with that method is that sometimes the child is working diligently but just needs a little more time than the amount allotted in class. Then again, I definitely have seen, and have this year, students who sit and do nothing. I don’t want to treat them differently than the rest of the class, but I also don’t want to be giving them a loophole to get out of that pressure which would lead them to improve and succeed. What is the best solution? Thank you for all your help and excellent articles. They really make a difference!

Hi Sister Mary,

This is a topic I hope to cover soon. However, the key is exactly what you said. If the child is working diligently, then it’s perfectly okay to let them finish at home.

As a 3rd grade teacher I inherited a student who in 2nd grade had been allowed to remain unengaged without working and then have an aide assist them with ALL of their work every afternoon!!! That came to an abrupt halt when she arrived in my classroom. She was a very capable A-B student who just wanted to lounge at her desk and play with her pencil and daydream once left to herself. She would participate in the lessons and even at the board, but chose not to work independently. Would you believe this girl chose to do this even throughtout the course of the year after she missed much of her recess, had notes home and took work home at times, had discussions with the principal, and had consequences at home? I kept trying to figure out the “positive reinforcement” she must somehow be receiving from it. Finally I tried after-school detention and that’s when she would work so she could go home. She was made to complete ALL work but the struggle was real.

What if 80% of your class does not do any work?

As usual, these articles seem like they are reading my mind and are tailored directly to me – thank you!

My biggest uncertainty is how to teach compelling maths lessons, given that there is such a wide spread of levels among the class. Maths is just so interconnected that I find it frivolous to try and teach a higher level of the curriculum if a basic concept isn’t yet mastered. This makes it hard to teach a lesson that is compelling for all students. For instance, I might be needing to teach my students how to factorise algebraic equations, but some can’t even work with times table facts, let alone understand algebraic terms. Others might listen politely to such a lesson but really need to be challenged more. This is all possible with differentiating of course, but it’s hard to actually teach in a compelling way in these circumstances.

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Solving Procrastination

Student Syndrome: Why People Delay Until Right Before Deadlines

The student syndrome is a phenomenon where people delay doing things until right before the deadline. For example, a student who postpones working on an assignment until the night before it’s due is displaying the student syndrome.

This behavior is called the “student syndrome” because of how common it is among  students . However, people other than students often also display it, for example when it comes to workplace projects .

Because the student syndrome is common, and because it can lead to various issues, such as worse performance and increased stress, it’s important to understand it. As such, in the following article you will learn more about this phenomenon and its causes, and see what you can do to deal with it in practice.

Procrastination and the student syndrome

The student syndrome is a form of procrastination , because it involves unnecessary delay, which is often unintentional, and which can be expected to cause negative outcomes for those who display it.

Accordingly, and because this behavior is highly characteristic of procrastinators, questionnaires that are used to diagnose procrastination often contain statements that reflect the student syndrome. This includes, for example, “When I have a deadline, I wait till the last minute ” and “I do not do assignments until just before they are to be handed in ”.

Examples of the student syndrome

A classic example of the student syndrome is a student who has a week to do a homework assignment, but delays getting started until hours before they have to hand it in.

Similarly, another example of the student syndrome is a student who postpones getting started on an important class project for an entire semester, and then rushes to complete it all the day before it’s due.

In addition, people other than students can also display the student syndrome. For example, a college professor might postpone grading papers until a few hours before the grades are due. Similarly, a manager who has to write an important workplace report might postpone working on it until right before the deadline for completing it.

Note : The student syndrome is often discussed in the context of project management, and the name for this phenomenon was coined in a 1997 book on the topic (“Critical Chain”, by Eliyahu Goldratt).

Dangers of the student syndrome

The student syndrome can lead to various issues, such as:

• Missed deadlines and opportunities. Waiting until right before the deadline to get started can cause people to miss the deadline, especially if the work takes longer to complete than they expected. This is because people who display the student syndrome often wait until they have the minimum amount of time left to complete tasks, which means that they have no safety margin if they misjudge how long it will take to complete the task, or if they experience any unexpected delays occur.
• Worse performance. Even in cases when people manage to complete their work on time despite the student syndrome, they often produce lower-quality work than they would otherwise, due to their rush to get things done under time pressure, or due to issues such as not having enough time to ask clarifying questions.
• Increased emotional, mental, and physical issues. For example, delaying until right before the deadline despite intending to get started earlier can cause people to feel frustrated and stressed. Similarly, staying up late in order to finish tasks the night before they’re due can lead to issues such as lack of sleep and exhaustion.
• Increased interpersonal issues. For example, if someone waits until right before the deadline to complete their part of a group project, their team members might get angry at them. Similarly, if someone always delays until the last possible moment before taking care of household chores, their partner might be frustrated with them.

In addition, note that procrastination is, in general, associated with various related issues , such as worse academic outcomes , worse employment and financial status , worse emotional wellbeing, worse mental and physical health, and a delay in getting treatment for one’s problems.

Prevalence of the student syndrome

There are no statistics regarding the prevalence of the student syndrome in particular. However, given that the student syndrome represents a common form of procrastination (involving an unnecessary delay in getting started on tasks), its prevalence can be estimated based on that of procrastination.

Studies show that procrastination is a very common phenomenon among students, as approximately 80%–95% of college students engage in procrastination to some degree, approximately 75% consider themselves to be procrastinators, and approximately 50% say that they procrastinate in a consistent and problematic manner. Furthermore, additional studies have found procrastination in various other student populations , including those in  elementary school ,  middle school , and  graduate school .

In addition, procrastination is also common in other populations, and it  chronically affects around 20% of adults.

Psychology and causes of the student syndrome

The student syndrome has many potential causes, which have to do with why people procrastinate in general. Most of these involve the following:

• Motivational problems. These can include issues such as abstract goals, discounting of future outcomes , difficulty in associating tasks with outcomes, and prioritization of enjoyable activities.
• Psychological obstacles. These can include issues such as anxiety , fear of failure , fear of negative feedback, uncertainty, and task aversion, as well as associated issues such as self-handicapping and resentment.

These issues can lead people to delay unnecessarily, even in cases where they intend and want to get started on their work. However, in the case of the student syndrome, as the deadline for a task approaches, people’s mental state changes in a way that prompts them to finally get to work.

For example, as the deadline for a school project approaches, the value of the future outcomes that are associated with it becomes clearer, whether it’s the reward of getting a good grade or the punishment of getting a bad one, which can push students to get started. Similarly, while a person’s aversiveness toward a task may cause them to procrastinate on it initially, the increased time pressure that they experience as the deadline approaches (e.g., due to the increased valuation of the associated outcomes) can become substantial enough that it pushes them to start working on the task, even if their aversion to it hasn’t changed.

Note that a person can display the student syndrome due to a combination of these causes. For example, this can happen if someone suffers both from task aversion and abstract goals.

Furthermore, some of these issues may be caused or exacerbated by other underlying issues. For example, a person’s anxiety may be exacerbated by sleep deprivation. Similarly, a person’s depression may lead them to discount future outcomes and consequently to feel entirely unmotivated.

Finally, some people display the student syndrome, at least in part, due to a preference for working under pressure. For example, this can involve someone deliberately putting off a task until right before the deadline because they feel that they concentrate better when they work under intense time pressure. This type of behavior has been conceptualized in various ways , some of which are controversial, including sensation seeking , arousal procrastination , arousal delay , and active procrastination .

Related concepts

A key phenomenon that underlies the student syndrome is temporal discounting , whereby people tend to discount outcomes that involve a delay. For example, people generally care less about rewards they’ll get in a week, than about rewards they’ll get in a day.

Since, as the deadline for a task approaches, generally so do outcomes that are associated with it (i.e., related rewards and punishments), people generally value task outcomes more strongly closer to the deadline, and consequently become more motivated. This can lead , at least partially, to preference reversal , and consequently to transition from procrastination to action.

Furthermore, people generally display hyperbolic discounting  in particular , which means that the further into the future an outcome is, the less the additional increase in time matters (e.g., the difference between an immediate outcome and one with a day’s delay is greater than between an outcome with a year’s delay and an outcome with a delay of a year and a day). Accordingly, the effects of discounting are more pronounced the shorter the remaining delay is, and this is most important when an outcome is expected to be achieved close to the deadline.

In addition, another related concept is purposeful delay , which in this context involves deliberately delaying until a deadline because doing so is expected to be more beneficial than not. This can happen, for example, when someone knows that a task might be canceled, so they believe it’s more efficient to wait until the deadline before committing resources to it. However, this type of behavior is not generally considered to be a form of procrastination, and would generally also not be considered a cause of the student syndrome.

Finally, the student syndrome and procrastination are also strongly related to the concept of a deadline action pacing style. This style involves completing most or all of the work in a short period of time just before deadlines, as opposed, for example, to completing them early or in a steady manner.

How to avoid the student syndrome

To avoid the student syndrome (i.e., to stop postponing things until right before the deadline), you should figure out what’s causing you  to delay in the first place, and then use relevant anti-procrastination techniques , which will help you address the issue and take action in a timely manner.

The following are some of the anti-procrastination techniques that you can use.

Improve your planning:

• Set concrete goals for yourself. For example, instead of a vague goal, such as “study for my upcoming exam”, set a concrete goal, such as “on the week of my upcoming exam, go to the library every day after I finish my last class for the day, and spend at least 2 hours studying”.
• Break your tasks into small and manageable steps. For example, if you need to write an essay, you can start with steps such as figuring out the title, creating a rough outline, and finding five appropriate academic sources. Note that if the project in question is large, then you generally shouldn’t worry about figuring out all the steps to it from the start. Instead, start by identifying only the first few steps that you need to take, and then identify new steps as you make progress, to avoid feeling overwhelmed and getting stuck.
• Set intermediate milestones and deadlines for yourself. For example, if you have a single deadline for completing a large research paper, assign yourself additional deadlines along the way for completing specific parts of it.
• Identify your productivity cycles. People’s ability to handle certain tasks varies based on factors such as the time of day. For example, it may be the case that you’re best able to concentrate on difficult tasks early in the morning, before you’ve started dealing with emails or minor administrative aspects of your job. You should take this into account as much as possible when planning and scheduling your work.

Improve your environment:

• Change your environment to make it harder for yourself to procrastinate. For example, if you tend to procrastinate on writing essays because you keep browsing social media , turn off the internet connection on your computer before you get to work.
• Change your environment to make it easier for yourself to get started. For example, if you know that you’ll need to study for an exam tomorrow morning, organize all the relevant study material on your desk or in your bag before you go to bed.
• Change your environment to make it easier for you to keep going. For example, if you know that you’re likely to lose concentration if you get distracted while studying, go study in a quiet room and leave your phone outside.

Change your approach:

• Start with a tiny step. For example, if you need to write a paper, help yourself get started by committing to only write a single sentence at first. This can help you push yourself to get started on tasks, and often, once you do so, you’ll find it easy to keep going.
• Start with the best or worst part first. Some people find that starting with the most enjoyable or easiest task of the day helps them get going, while others find that getting the worst task out of the way first helps them avoid procrastinating over time. You can use either approach if you find that it works for you.
• Add a time delay before you procrastinate. If you can’t avoid procrastinating entirely, try committing to having a time delay before you indulge your impulse to do so. For example, this can involve counting to 10 before you’re allowed to open a new tab on the social media website that you usually use to procrastinate.
• Use the Pomodoro technique. This involves alternating between scheduled periods of study and rest. For example, you can study for 25-minute long stretches, with 5-minute breaks in between, and a longer 30-minute break after every 4 study sets that you complete.

Increase your motivation:

• Make your progress feel more rewarding. For example, you can gamify your work and try to achieve a streak of days on which you successfully manage to clear your to-do list, and potentially also give yourself some reward once you reach a sufficiently long streak.
• Make your work feel more enjoyable. For example, you can listen to music that you like while you work.
• Visualize your future self. For example, imagine yourself being rewarded with a good grade on a project that you completed on time, or conversely, imagine yourself having to handle the issues associated with missing the project’s deadline.
• Focus on your goals instead of on your tasks. For example, if you need to work on a task that you find boring, then instead of focusing on the task, try thinking about your goals for completing it, such as that you want to get a good grade.

Change your mindset:

• Give yourself permission to make mistakes. For example, if you’re working on an essay, accept the fact that your work likely won’t be perfect , especially at first. Furthermore, you can start by just writing a rough initial draft, and then go over it later to make improvements.
• Address your fears. If you’re procrastinating because you’re afraid of something, try to identify your fears and resolve them. For example, if you’re afraid that your writing won’t be good enough, you can say to yourself that your goal is to just start by getting something written down, and that you can always improve it later.
• Develop self-compassion.   Self-compassion can help reduce your procrastination, as well as various issues that are associated with it, such as stress. It consists of three components that you should promote: self-kindness , which involves being nice to yourself, common humanity , which involves recognizing that everyone experiences challenges, and mindfulness , which involves accepting your emotions in a non-judgmental manner.
• Develop self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief in your ability to perform the actions needed to achieve your goals. It can help you reduce your procrastination, as well as associated issues, such as anxiety. To develop self-efficacy, try to identify the various strategies that you can use to successfully complete your tasks on time, and think about your ability to execute those strategies successfully.

In addition, keep the following in mind:

• If you experience the student syndrome due to underlying issues such as ADHD , depression , or lack of sleep , you will likely need to resolve these issues first, using professional help if necessary, in order to avoid the student syndrome.
• You will likely need to use more than one anti-procrastination technique to completely avoid the student syndrome, but even just a few of them could make a huge difference when it comes to your ability to get things done on time.
• Different techniques work better for different people in different circumstances, so just because a certain technique works well for others, that doesn’t also mean that it will work well for you (and vice versa).

Overall, to avoid the student syndrome, you should figure out what’s causing you to delay in the first place, and then use relevant anti-procrastination techniques to address these causes. Such techniques include, for example, breaking large tasks into manageable steps, setting intermediate deadlines for yourself, visualizing your future self, and addressing your fears.

How to reduce the student syndrome in others

When it comes to helping other people avoid the student syndrome, for example if you’re a project manager, a teacher, or a parent, there are three main approaches you can use:

• An externally guided approach. This involves implementing relevant anti-procrastination techniques to reduce people’s student syndrome, without actively involving them in the process. For example, this can involve setting a series of intermediate project deadlines for all students in a course.
• An internally guided approach. This involves helping people avoid the student syndrome by themselves, with little to no external guidance. External guidance in this case might include something as minimal as mentioning the problem of student syndrome and telling people about a relevant resource such as this article.
• A joint approach. This involves giving people external guidance while also encouraging them to play an active role in reducing their student syndrome. For example, this can involve going over relevant anti-procrastination techniques with people, and helping them choose and implement their preferred ones.

None of these approaches is inherently superior to the others. Accordingly, you should decide which one to use based on factors such as the number of people that you’re trying to help and the type of relationship that you have with them. For example, if you’re a teacher trying to help 200 students in a college course, then you will likely need to use a different approach than if you’re a parent trying to help just your kid.

In this regard, an important factor to keep in mind is how independent the people in question are. In general, the more independent they are, the more involved they should be in the process of avoiding the student syndrome, since this can increase their motivation and make the process more effective, while potentially also leading to more self-development and growth over time. Furthermore, giving people a sense of control can also help reduce other issues that may lead to the student syndrome, such as resentment and rebellion.

Note that almost any type of relationship can be beneficial when it comes to helping people avoid the student syndrome. For example, a teacher will likely be in a good situation to influence a student’s academic situation, while a parent will likely be in a good situation to influence the student’s home life.

Furthermore, it can sometimes be beneficial to reach out to other stakeholders who can help. For example, if you’re a teacher, and you think that a student’s parents might be able to help them stop procrastinating, you might be able to reach out to them and explain the situation.

Finally, the following is a list of specific things that you can do to help people avoid the student syndrome:

• Explain what the student syndrome is.
• Help them understand that they display the student syndrome, for example by asking them guiding questions about their past behavior.
• Show them that this pattern of behavior can cause issues for them, for example when it comes to their academic performance, their career prospects, and their mental health.
• Explain what causes the student syndrome, and help them identify the specific causes of this behavior in their case.
• Point them in the direction of resources that can help them deal with the student syndrome, such as this article, or the guide to avoiding procrastination .
• Implement anti-procrastination techniques on their behalf, for example by breaking apart large tasks into manageable steps and setting intermediate deadlines.
• When setting general deadlines for people, understand that giving people more time to complete a task will not necessarily make it more likely that they will complete it in a timely manner, and it may even be counterproductive in some cases. This is associated with the concept of Parkinson’s law , which is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time which is available for its completion”, and which signifies that the more time people dedicate in advance to a certain task, the longer it will take to complete it, even if it could have been completed in less time.

Overall, you can reduce people’s student syndrome in various ways, such as by helping them understand the causes of their behavior and helping them implement relevant anti-procrastination techniques. The specific approach that you should use depends on factors such as how autonomous the people in question are, how many people you’re trying to help, and what kind of relationship you have with them.

Summary and conclusions

• The student syndrome is a phenomenon where people delay doing things until right before the deadline.
• The student syndrome can lead to various issues, such as missed deadlines, low-quality work, interpersonal conflicts, and worse emotional wellbeing.
• People can display this type of behavior due to various causes, including a preference for working under pressure, motivational problems (e.g., discounting future outcomes), and psychological obstacles (e.g., anxiety), and some of these, in turn, may be caused or exacerbated by underlying issues, such as depression and lack of sleep.
• To avoid the student syndrome, you should figure out what’s causing you to delay in the first place, and then use relevant anti-procrastination techniques to address these causes, for example by breaking large tasks into manageable steps, setting intermediate deadlines for yourself, visualizing your future self, and addressing your fears.
• You can use a similar approach to reduce other people’s student syndrome, for example by helping them understand the causes of their behavior and helping them implement relevant anti-procrastination techniques.

10 Tips to Help Students do Their Assignments Perfectly

Are you depressed due to your grades in school? Are your assignments not good enough to make your teacher impressed? Mostly college and high school students lose their interest and enthusiasm while they are scolded for their assignments. That is why students hate doing homework and then this hatred causes a problem for them in their school. Another reason behind their hatred comes from not being appreciated by their parents and teachers. Bloggers always give tips for doing everything perfectly or solving people’s problem but they should also co-operate with themselves. Besides the tips, parents have also a role in solving this issue by supporting the students to do their assignments perfectly every time they write.

Similarly, teachers have to be supportive too otherwise, the students will not be able to do their assignments perfectly ever. Therefore, students, this article is written for you. Come on check out what I have recommended for you to do in order to do your assignments perfectly the next time you submit it. Did you struggle to submit a perfect assignment to your teacher? But no more because I have brought you some very helpful tips and tricks to help you do your assignments perfectly after reading this. Have a glance at them and then start writing your assignments. Here you should do to write a perfect assignment as follow.

Also Read:   How to Get Online Help For Doing Assignments And Homework

1. Make a daily timetable for your assignments

Did you know that the success behind the successful assignment is having a timetable for each and everything you do? Writing a perfect assignment is very easy just by giving yourself time. You must know when to write and why to write something. A successful student always finds a perfect time for writing their homework. For instance, Doing homework in the evening after a nap is a very good time and idea because your mind is fresh, active, and relaxed. Indeed, everything which has a timetable for it can be proved effective. So, students what are you waiting for, take a pen, and make your schedule for your next assignment.

2. Eliminate disturbance from your study schedule

Have you ever noticed when you are depressed or overwhelmed then you can’t write a single word? Do you know the reason behind it? One of the reasons is that students mostly use a mobile phone while doing their homework that’s why they can’t concentrate on their work better and then their assignments are done in a hurry. Therefore, put your devices aside while you are doing your assignments. On the other hand, students do their assignments in a dark and noisy place that’s the real matter, which is called disturbance, due to which students can’t submit a better assignment. Choose a bright and peaceful place where no one enters then you can write a perfect assignment. Try to eliminate these sorts of distractions from your study life.

3. Read books to improve

Writing without reading is incomplete therefore, try to read the books or articles in which you can find out some better ways of doing your assignments. Reading never wastes your time in fact, it helps you learn some basics to try while writing and mostly they are effective. Most students can’t submit a good assignment because of their less knowledge that they have about the title. Successful students always read different books and articles for adding their knowledge and information. Therefore, they are doing a great job while doing their assignments. Try this tip believe me it will really help you find what you are missing in your writing.

4. Research before writing

After you read something about which you find interesting for using it in your assignment then firstly go and search about it. The very first thing you have to do is to make sure whether you should include that in your assignment or not. A perfect homework needs research because you may find something better to add in it. Actually, the purpose of researching is not copying the exact information and adding it to your assignment but trying to extend your opinions. Before writing anything even if it is your school homework, you need to research once about that topic.

5. Make a plan and an outline for your assignment

Every time you want to do your homework, try to make an outline for it because it will help you make sure that your assignment is free from errors and you can notice them in the form of a draft easily. Never write your assignment directly without planning and making a list of the information you need to add in the form of an outline. Successful students always make a plan before writing their assignments because they know the tips and tricks of doing a perfect assignment. Going With the flow of the plan leads to a good remark for the homework. Students, who do their assignments in a hurry without making a plan and an outline, always get scolded because of their homework. Making a plan and outline helps you prevent from committing errors in your homework and that’s the trick you can do your assignments perfectly. That’s how easily you can do your homework in a better way without any stress.

6. Write neatly and don’t hesitate

Do you know that the way you write really affects the one who receives it? Your teacher may have told you several times to write neatly but you can’t because you want to finish it as quickly as you can. One of the harmful things that affect your assignments the most is writing carelessly in a hurry. If you want your teacher to be impressed by your homework then try this technique. If you yourself want to find an interest in doing your assignment perfectly then try to write neatly and be relaxed. Because in doing good homework your effort and passion are must. Therefore, be passionate and writing neatly.

7. Take a break:

We know that writing for a long period of time is very tiring. Generally, students can’t write a good assignment because they are given a lot of homework that’s why they don’t find any time to rest. Therefore, they can’t find interest in doing their homework. In school, they do a lot of stuff then while they come home again they have to do a lot of homework therefore, they get tired of doing it and can’t write a perfect assignment. That’s why I recommend you to take a break when you come from school. Don’t start writing directly just take a nap for a while and then prepare yourself for doing homework step by step by following the tips I mentioned in this article. Taking a break doesn’t mean that you should put it for your next day, in fact, to make your mind refreshing and ready for doing your assignment perfectly.

8. Follow what your teacher says

Successful students always follow what their teacher recommends them to do. If you can’t understand the title just get help from your teacher or friend in order to do your assignments better. If you have a problem writing your assignments perfectly then follow what so ever your teacher recommends you to do. Before giving any assignment teachers always give instructions for doing it so do follow them. Some lazy students don’t even listen to the teacher then later they get stuck while doing their homework. The problem is that they don’t listen to how to do their assignments. Mostly what the teacher recommends for doing good homework really helps but it depends on the student too.

9. Rewrite the outline

We know that before writing anything we have to make an outline for it. After that, we have to rewrite the homework back in a neat paper so that we can get a good remark from the teacher. While you are rewriting your homework then you can feel secure about your assignment because at that point your homework is free from the errors. And there you can find your homework perfectly written. The benefit of making plans and outlines before rewriting is that you will not be bothered anymore to write again and again wasting your time. Therefore, try to make a plan and draft form for your homework before writing it down on the neat paper.

10. Re-check your assignment

After we are done with all the instructions step by step then now it is the turn of re-reading the assignment. Re-checking is the process of going through all the assignment thoroughly once more. By Re-checking the students can correct their errors which were not noticed by them at first therefore, in the same way, you have to move on. Rechecking is the last step of doing your homework therefore, try to do it in a better way. Don’t skip this step because by skipping this step you will miss making the arrangement of your assignment very well.

Useful:   5 Tips to Help You Proofread Your Writing Like a Pro

Try to follow these instructions step-by-step believe me you will be successful in writing a perfect assignment. Every student wants to perform well in their school or college but those are known as successful students, who can do their assignment perfectly. Therefore, in today’s era grades and degrees mean the most, not the talent. So kindly follow some guidelines which are recommended by the professionals.

What do you think about this article? What else do you recommend for being successful in writing a perfect assignment and what else have I missed to mention in this article? Please feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the comment section below.

Related Articles:

• How to Get Online Help For Doing Assignments And Homework
• 10 Best Online Homework Help Websites for Students in 2020
• Homework Tips for Students to Improve Your Academic Score
• 10+ Common Mistakes Students Commit While Writing

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How to Write a Perfect Assignment: Step-By-Step Guide

Table of contents

• 1 How to Structure an Assignment?
• 2.1 The research part
• 2.2 Planning your text
• 2.3 Writing major parts
• 3 Expert Tips for your Writing Assignment
• 4 Will I succeed with my assignments?
• 5 Conclusion

How to Structure an Assignment?

To cope with assignments, you should familiarize yourself with the tips on formatting and presenting assignments or any written paper, which are given below. It is worth paying attention to the content of the paper, making it structured and understandable so that ideas are not lost and thoughts do not refute each other.

If the topic is free or you can choose from the given list — be sure to choose the one you understand best. Especially if that could affect your semester score or scholarship. It is important to select an  engaging title that is contextualized within your topic. A topic that should captivate you or at least give you a general sense of what is needed there. It’s easier to dwell upon what interests you, so the process goes faster.

To construct an assignment structure, use outlines. These are pieces of text that relate to your topic. It can be ideas, quotes, all your thoughts, or disparate arguments. Type in everything that you think about. Separate thoughts scattered across the sheets of Word will help in the next step.

Then it is time to form the text. At this stage, you have to form a coherent story from separate pieces, where each new thought reinforces the previous one, and one idea smoothly flows into another.

Main Steps of Assignment Writing

These are steps to take to get a worthy paper. If you complete these step-by-step, your text will be among the most exemplary ones.

The research part

If the topic is unique and no one has written about it yet, look at materials close to this topic to gain thoughts about it. You should feel that you are ready to express your thoughts. Also, while reading, get acquainted with the format of the articles, study the details, collect material for your thoughts, and accumulate different points of view for your article. Be careful at this stage, as the process can help you develop your ideas. If you are already struggling here, pay for assignment to be done , and it will be processed in a split second via special services. These services are especially helpful when the deadline is near as they guarantee fast delivery of high-quality papers on any subject.

If you use Google to search for material for your assignment, you will, of course, find a lot of information very quickly. Still, the databases available on your library’s website will give you the clearest and most reliable facts that satisfy your teacher or professor. Be sure you copy the addresses of all the web pages you will use when composing your paper, so you don’t lose them. You can use them later in your bibliography if you add a bit of description! Select resources and extract quotes from them that you can use while working. At this stage, you may also create a  request for late assignment if you realize the paper requires a lot of effort and is time-consuming. This way, you’ll have a backup plan if something goes wrong.

Planning your text

Assemble a layout. It may be appropriate to use the structure of the paper of some outstanding scientists in your field and argue it in one of the parts. As the planning progresses, you can add suggestions that come to mind. If you use citations that require footnotes, and if you use single spacing throughout the paper and double spacing at the end, it will take you a very long time to make sure that all the citations are on the exact pages you specified! Add a reference list or bibliography. If you haven’t already done so, don’t put off writing an essay until the last day. It will be more difficult to do later as you will be stressed out because of time pressure.

Writing major parts

It happens that there is simply no mood or strength to get started and zero thoughts. In that case, postpone this process for 2-3 hours, and, perhaps, soon, you will be able to start with renewed vigor. Writing essays is a great (albeit controversial) way to improve your skills. This experience will not be forgotten. It will certainly come in handy and bring many benefits in the future. Do your best here because asking for an extension is not always possible, so you probably won’t have time to redo it later. And the quality of this part defines the success of the whole paper.

Writing the major part does not mean the matter is finished. To review the text, make sure that the ideas of the introduction and conclusion coincide because such a discrepancy is the first thing that will catch the reader’s eye and can spoil the impression. Add or remove anything from your intro to edit it to fit the entire paper. Also, check your spelling and grammar to ensure there are no typos or draft comments. Check the sources of your quotes so that your it is honest and does not violate any rules. And do not forget the formatting rules.

with the right tips and guidance, it can be easier than it looks. To make the process even more straightforward, students can also use an assignment service to get the job done. This way they can get professional assistance and make sure that their assignments are up to the mark. At PapersOwl, we provide a professional writing service where students can order custom-made assignments that meet their exact requirements.

Expert Tips for your Writing Assignment

Want to write like a pro? Here’s what you should consider:

• Save the document! Send the finished document by email to yourself so you have a backup copy in case your computer crashes.
• Don’t wait until the last minute to complete a list of citations or a bibliography after the paper is finished. It will be much longer and more difficult, so add to them as you go.
• If you find a lot of information on the topic of your search, then arrange it in a separate paragraph.
• If possible, choose a topic that you know and are interested in.
• Believe in yourself! If you set yourself up well and use your limited time wisely, you will be able to deliver the paper on time.
• Do not copy information directly from the Internet without citing them.

Writing assignments is a tedious and time-consuming process. It requires a lot of research and hard work to produce a quality paper. However, if you are feeling overwhelmed or having difficulty understanding the concept, you may want to consider getting accounting homework help online . Professional experts can assist you in understanding how to complete your assignment effectively. PapersOwl.com offers expert help from highly qualified and experienced writers who can provide you with the homework help you need.

Will I succeed with my assignments?

Anyone can learn how to be good at writing: follow simple rules of creating the structure and be creative where it is appropriate. At one moment, you will need some additional study tools, study support, or solid study tips. And you can easily get help in writing assignments or any other work. This is especially useful since the strategy of learning how to write an assignment can take more time than a student has.

Therefore all students are happy that there is an option to  order your paper at a professional service to pass all the courses perfectly and sleep still at night. You can also find the sample of the assignment there to check if you are on the same page and if not — focus on your papers more diligently.

So, in the times of studies online, the desire and skill to research and write may be lost. Planning your assignment carefully and presenting arguments step-by-step is necessary to succeed with your homework. When going through your references, note the questions that appear and answer them, building your text. Create a cover page, proofread the whole text, and take care of formatting. Feel free to use these rules for passing your next assignments.

When it comes to writing an assignment, it can be overwhelming and stressful, but Papersowl is here to make it easier for you. With a range of helpful resources available, Papersowl can assist you in creating high-quality written work, regardless of whether you’re starting from scratch or refining an existing draft. From conducting research to creating an outline, and from proofreading to formatting, the team at Papersowl has the expertise to guide you through the entire writing process and ensure that your assignment meets all the necessary requirements.

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Anchor your writing instruction in big ideas students can remember

Years later, when one of my journalism students won a Los Angeles Times award for news writing, I thought more deeply about the instructional changes I had made. I also thought about the social and emotional factors that likely enabled this once-timid reporter to tackle tough issues and blossom into an adept writer. What I realized from this exercise is that many of my instructional shifts had more to do with “leaning in” and getting to know my student as a writer, along with “letting go” of some outdated notions about what good writing is.

These are the three most important lessons I learned that I’d like to pass along.

Lesson #1: Writing instruction begins with a shared language for talking about writing and a shared understanding of the purposes for writing

Anchoring your instruction in a few big ideas that students can remember helps simplify the experience for everyone—and writing is always an experience.

As a new English language arts teacher, I often made writing more complicated than it needed to be. In my journalism classes, things were simple: we focused on the 5Ws and H (who? What? When? Where? Why? How?). It was easy for every student to remember and internalize these guiding questions.

If only there were a similar list of questions I could apply to other writing tasks! Over time, I found that there was. And at NWEA, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with current and former teachers to hone that list of essential questions down to the following five.

If anchoring your instruction in big ideas students can remember resonates with you, like it did for me, I encourage you to try incorporating these five essential questions into your writing curriculum.

We’ve even compiled these big ideas for growing writers into a free resource aimed at building a shared language for talking about writing with students. To that end, we’ve created a student version , too.

1. Why am I writing?

This question encourages students to ponder their purpose for writing. Often, their immediate response to this question is, “I’m writing because my teacher assigned me this essay/report/research paper.”

If we can get students to push past the idea of writing as an assignment and toward writing as a form of communication, we may see a dramatic increase in their motivation and writing quality. “What do you want to accomplish with this piece of writing?” becomes the question, not “What kind of writing does your teacher want from you?”

Writing is always the intellectual product of the writer, and the more we can encourage students to see themselves as writers and to take ownership of their writing, the better the results. Before students write, it’s critical they know and understand their purpose for writing, as this purpose informs so many other choices they will make.

2. Who are my readers?

This question forces students to consider their audience . When writers can anticipate the needs of their audience, they increase the effectiveness of their communication.

If the only audience a student ever has for their writing is a teacher, they lose the opportunity to make writerly decisions based on different audiences, such as considering their unique feelings and opinions about a topic, their different vocabularies (e.g., familiarity with code switching, idioms, or jargon), and their varying degrees of background knowledge. This is why giving students authentic writing tasks is so important . Authentic writing engages students in the same cognitive processes they use to write for real-world situations, such as applying for a job, taking civic action, or even communicating with family and friends.

3. What am I writing?

This question gets students to think more deeply about the task , genre , and form for their writing. While some of this information is likely included in the writing assignment, it’s still important for students to work through the task details on their own.

Students will make more informed writing decisions when they are able to clearly articulate the expectations and success criteria for a writing task . The writing genre provides another framework for students to think about their purpose for writing. Each genre’s unique features have developed over time through socially agreed-upon conventions, and experienced writers understand how to use these features to communicate more clearly with their audiences. Finally, form —or format—describes the type of text to be produced, and today’s writers have more forms to choose from—both analog and digital—than ever before.

When students put time and thought into their purpose, audience, and task, they have a greater command over their writing and what they want it to accomplish. And that’s when we get to see students’ communication skills and creativity truly shine through.

4. How am I presenting ideas in my writing?

This question addresses the myriad of choices a writer must make when they embark on a task, including decisions about writing development , organization , style , and conventions . Too often, this is where we ask students to start, and it can be overwhelming to make all these decisions before a student has wrapped their head around what they plan to write and why. In addition, while these writerly decisions are important, we may place too great an emphasis on a student’s final written product when a focus on their writing process may have more instructional utility.

My advice to students is, “Don’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to presenting ideas in your writing.” The ideas themselves are what’s most important. They’ll have numerous opportunities to practice and hone their writing development, organization, style, and conventions with every piece they write and over an entire lifetime.

5. How am I using the writing process?

This question reminds students that writing is both a product and a process . And the writing process is where much of the learning and critical thinking takes place.

Though writing is often taught as a sequence of forward-moving steps, the writing process is recursive and iterative, not linear . For example, writers go back and forth between planning, drafting, translating, reviewing, and revising to meet their writing goals, and writing goals can be self-generated or revised at any time during the writing process.

Writing itself is a work in progress that includes collaboration, self-regulation, and self-evaluation in addition to the other steps students typically learn. The more frequently students engage in and reflect on their own writing process, the more likely they are to develop productive and efficient writing habits, as well as growth mindsets that can help them overcome writing challenges in their school, career, and personal lives.

Lesson #2: Writing instruction is most impactful when it extends through professional learning communities (PLC) that offer students school-wide support for writing

As students move from grade to grade, a strong and coordinated PLC can help them build on what they already know about writing and focus on becoming even more expressive and effective writers.

In my first year of teaching, a colleague and I had an opportunity to attend a professional learning summit on writing. One session led by Harry Noden taught us how his Image Grammar could help students expand, vary, and improve their sentence structures. The majority of our student population was multilingual learners, and we rightly suspected that focused practice on writing, even at the sentence level, could increase language development in English . In part, this is because writing has a slower pace, provides a permanent record, and calls for greater precision in word choice.

We accurately assumed that sentence writing would benefit all our students , too. And once we were satisfied with the results, we leveraged our PLC to encourage a school-wide adoption of teaching grammar with Noden’s “brushstrokes.” We saw students quickly embrace the concept of “brushstrokes” because it positioned them as “artists” painting with words. This artistry was reinforced by the quality of their sentence writing. Often shared aloud, these sentences could be chill inducing they were so beautiful. For many students, this was their first proof they could be excellent writers, once they learned how.

Lesson #3: Writing outcomes can be improved through the use of common assessments and common rubrics at the school, district, or even state level

Common assessments and common rubrics help educators develop a shared understanding of how to evaluate writing. This includes providing students with meaningful feedback and grading writing more consistently across a school, district, or even state.

Coordination among teachers can help establish a school-wide writing community that all students can tap into for peer review. It can also lead to greater consistency in writing instruction and evaluation. Such consistency builds trust between students and teachers, which in turn can strengthen students’ view of themselves as learners and increase their motivation to learn .

When students don’t have to figure out individual teacher preferences for writing—and they feel confident every teacher will grade their writing for substance not style—they can focus their mental energy on becoming better writers. This includes developing their own sense of how to use language(s) effectively for personal, academic, and civic purposes.

One way to foster student-teacher collaboration is to encourage students to enter writing contests . Student writing contests can range from local to national, and it’s worth some extra effort to find ones that are a good fit for your students. Once my journalism students began entering (and winning!) writing contests, these events became an annual tradition. My students also became more willing to work on their digital portfolios throughout the year.

At the district level, common assessments and common rubrics can help leaders identify schools that need more support, such as more professional learning for educators or more high-dosage tutoring for students . They can also identify schools that have model instruction and can serve as resources for others. If you’re looking for a place to start in your district, the Literacy Design Collaborative offers common analytic rubrics for several writing genres , and the New York Performance Standards Consortium provides a robust set of performance-based assessments and rubrics .

Districts that use state rubrics in their common writing assessments help ensure all educators have similar expectations of student writing. If your state assesses writing, check the state department of education website for newly released writing assessments and their accompanying rubrics. And if your state doesn’t assess writing, they may still offer writing materials for teachers to use.

Finally, NWEA is often asked about the connection between MAP® Growth™ and writing. MAP Growth does not include writing prompts, so it can’t take the place of high-quality formative assessment in the classroom ; it simply wasn’t designed to assess students’ writing. But MAP Growth can provide insights into students’ strengths and opportunities for growth, and these insights are especially helpful when educators use an integrated approach to reading and writing instruction.

The MAP Growth instructional areas for reading, for example, offer some information about how well students understand literary text, informational text, and vocabulary. Students who are performing below grade-level for vocabulary would likely benefit from more explicit vocabulary instruction, including more strategic exposure to roots and affixes. This expanded vocabulary knowledge can later be applied to students’ writing. One approach is to have students “speak in synonyms,” a kind of oral rehearsal that can be done with peers or small groups and then integrated into a piece of student writing. Meanwhile, students who struggle to comprehend informational text might benefit from a self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach to writing . This method teaches students to recognize, internalize, and utilize important genre features in writing. And since reading and writing are related, SRSD can help improve students’ comprehension of informational texts, too.

A recap of lessons learned

Writing is hard, and teaching writing may be harder still. As educators, we continually learn new lessons about how to help our students (and ourselves) become better writers. I hope the three lessons I’ve shared here are helpful to you and bring you closer to having every student see themselves as a capable writer or, better yet, an artist painting with words.

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The 5 Best Assignment Help Websites for College Students

The popularity of professional assignment help websites has grown significantly during the pandemic times when most students had to make a complex shift and start with their online studies.

There were numerous challenges that had to be faced, including heavy workload issues, misunderstanding of the grading rubric, and academic pressure.

The majority of students approach online help as a way to avoid plagiarism and receive better grades as they share their concerns with trained experts.

Still, finding the best assignment help services can be quite challenging!

Check out a list of reliable assignment help offerings online aimed at college students!

The Best Assignment Help Websites for College Students

1. assignmentbro.

Company’s History. This friendly company belongs to relatively new offerings, yet they have already earned the hearts and minds of school and college students worldwide. They are reputable and always place the client’s needs first, as they are managed by a great team of university graduates who know what students are going through.

Reliability. A plethora of online reviews and the presence of direct contact with a writer makes them reliable. There are free revisions and refunds available as well. Moreover, there are excellent citation tools and writing tools for paraphrasing, a words-to-minutes converter, and a conclusion generator.

Quality of Assignments. Our Law assignment has been delivered on time, and the paper has been free of grammar or style mistakes. The formatting has been done properly, and the content itself has been done professionally with all citations in place.

Prices. As we looked for the best assignment services, we wanted to approach only the most affordable services where the quality still remains high. At AssignmentBro, they do not have a fixed price, which is a good thing because you can negotiate the final price. Our price depended on our subject, the qualification of the writer, and the deadline. It was affordable!

Reviews. Their Sitejabber page shows that they have 4.7 stars based on 53 reviews. People praise them for their affordability and their friendly attitude. The Trustpilot page has 4.4 stars based on 29 reviews. Their writers are always praised as well as their support team.

Customer Support. It deserves six stars out of five because they are the most caring and friendliest when it comes to getting your challenges fixed.

Why Choose It? A young company that is aimed at getting you understood as you ask for academic writing help. Affordable and high-quality writing with a plethora of helpful free tools.

2. A Research Guide

Company’s History. This great service has been around for more than 10 years now, yet they are rarely mentioned when the best assignment writing services are mentioned. The reason for that is that they are not your typical company because it is a great hub for all things research writing. They offer free materials, tutorials, and templates even before you place an order.

Reliability. They cooperate with numerous institutions and businesses as they offer innovative research paper writing assistance and explore all the latest and most efficient ways to deliver excellent research. They have won several awards in the field and represent a fully legit service.

Quality of Assignments. This is where they truly stand out, as their specialists will ask you all the possible questions before they match you with a specialist in their field. We have approached them for a Political Sciences research paper, and they have delivered an excellent paper with credible sources, formatting, and high-quality research.

Prices. The prices start at $14.99 per page and belong to more expensive writing solutions. Still, when you think about the direct communication and assistance that you receive, it’s totally worth it.

Online Reviews. This is where things get rather rough, as the number of reviews is extremely limited. Still, we could find out feedback from professional educators, online course creators, and dissertation-writing students who needed complex research. Their testimonials speak in favor of the company’s reputation.

Customer Support. The support agents represent experienced researchers who will happily guide you through the website and help you with anything. They are available 24/7.

Why Choose It? Look no further if you need serious research paper writing help and want to enjoy freebies that will help you to deliver a perfect assignment.

3. EduBirdie

Company’s History. The company is one of the most famous names in the industry. Their website states that they have been offering legit academic help since 2014. The company runs a blog and stands at the top of technical and academic innovations.

Reliability. They let you talk to your writer directly and provide free paper revisions. If you are not happy with the paper, they offer full refunds. The reviews online show that they are safe to use and follow their promises.

Quality of Assignments. Speaking of online assignment help websites, they offer timely delivery and focus on anything from essay writing and dissertations to personal statement writing and online exams. Placing an order with them, our experts received expert assistance, and the paper contained no grammar, style, or plagiarism issues.

Prices. The prices here start at $13.99 per page and remain affordable if we compare these services to similar offerings online. They implement a bidding system so your final price will depend on the writing quality chosen, the subject, the deadline, and the popularity of your subject.

Online Reviews. This company is constantly mentioned on Sitejabber, Trustpilot, and YouTube (they have their channel), and they are popular among social media users. They are rated at 4.7 out of 5 total points, which is a sign of reliability. Most of their clients are happy with the results.

Customer Support. They are trained well and respond immediately. We had a nice experience talking to the support agents. They are available 24/7 and offer human help with no bots.

Why Choose It? The positive reputation of the company and the chance to talk to your writer directly place them at the top of the most popular assignment help websites you can find these days. They are plagiarism-free and offer reliable quality at an affordable price.

4. SameDayPapers

Company’s History. The company has been around since 2017 and started out in Great Britain and Australia. Later on, they added affordable writing help services in the United States as well. They are the best choice if you are an ESL student or a learner looking for complex custom assignments that focus on Sociology, Psychology, History, or Engineering.

Reliability. They offer free paper revisions and also provide you with a free tool to check your grammar. Regarding the plagiarism, they also let you check things free of charge. Employing native English speakers, they are very strict about their writers and let you cooperate with verified specialists.

Quality of Assignments. Placing an order is easy and logical here, which clearly shows that we are dealing with the best website for assignment help. Checking the paper on Psychology, we can state that it has been delivered even earlier than our deadline. The paper was original, had excellent formatting, and the content has been up to the highest standards.

Prices. They represent an affordable and the best website to do assignments, with their prices starting at $12.99. If you are looking for reliable editing services, the prices will start at $5.5 per page.

Online Reviews. Researching this company’s background, we could locate over two hundred reviews. Most of them are positive and come from the United States, the UK, and Australian users. The total rating is 4.38/5 points.

Customer Support. It’s available for American users, and they respond right away by assisting you with anything from placing an order to finding a specialist that matches your needs.

Why Choose It? It’s one of the global companies that implement verified writers and can offer professional assistance. There are also UK and Australian branches, should you need specific help or sources.

5. EduZaurus

Company’s History. The story of this amazing sample essay database and academic writing company dates back to June 2015. Since then, they have collected a great resource for students coming from all disciplines. The company’s website claims that they have completed over 100,000 assignments as 2021 has started. They provide hundreds of skilled writers, yet what makes them unique is a great collection of free essay samples. It makes them one of the best choices when you need inspiration.

Reliability. Offering legit academic assistance, they can be safely marked as the best assignment writing help service for their collection of samples alone that showcases their work and provides a general idea of what can be expected. There are free revisions and refunds.

Quality of Assignments. Placing an order for the coursework paper in Journalism, we received an excellent document that has been formatted correctly and contained high originality. The grammar and style have been done well. The delivery has been set to only eight hours, yet the paper has been delivered on time.

Prices. Since there are many factors that affect the price per page (writer’s level, your deadline, task specifics), our price has started at $25 per page, yet the general pricing can vary between $20 and $50 if your order is urgent. The prices with a longer deadline start at $12.99 per page. Remember that you should always wait for the best bids to appear.

Online Reviews. Sitejabber users gave them 4.52 stars out of 5 based on 29 reviews. As for TrustPilot, they’ve earned 4.3 out of 5 stars based on 15 testimonials. Most people praise them for being legit and trustworthy.

Customer Support. They have an online chat feature, which is available 24/7. The support remains friendly even if you run into problems.

Why Choose It? This service is the best choice when it comes to finding free samples for inspiration, yet their writing assistance is also up to the highest standards. They cover a wide range of subjects and have a minimum deadline of 3 hours that actually works.

Where Can I Find Trustworthy Assignment Help?

You can find it online, as there are numerous offerings.

As a way to save time, we have tested and evaluated five of the best homework help websites that can be trusted.

Take your time to explore them and see which of them fits your academic needs first.

What is The Best Assignment Help Website You Can Recommend?

While the “best” is always subjective, you may safely check these five entries explored above.

Each of them is different and provides specific benefits in each case

A Research Guide service is the best choice for research paper writing, while EduZaurus will provide you with a great selection of free samples!

Is Assignment Help Described Legit?

Absolutely! Every assignment help website on our list has been tested in terms of being legit .

These services are acknowledged providers of academic help online and are absolutely safe to use, as many online reviews can confirm.

Sharing Your Instructions Well is Essential!

As you are looking through websites that do your homework online, remember that you should always start with careful preparation and sorting of your instructions.

These must be shared with a chosen specialist and have a clear description because it is the only way to achieve success and the necessary degree of clarity.

Although many services like EduBirdie or AssignmentBro let you talk to your writer directly, you must be precise with your instructions and share anything from the assignment grading rubric to the comments and recommendations from your college professor.

It will help you to get the best quality and save time as you avoid mistakes and explain what you expect to see as you place your assignment request.

Regardless if you require research paper writing services or seek an expert who can proofread your work and fix grammar mistakes, sharing your instructions should always come first!

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Spotlight: Peter the Anteater’s Communication Assignment

The Communication Spotlight features innovative instructors who teach written, oral, digital/technological, kinetic, and visual communication modes.

Peter the Anteater is an instructor in the Department of Anthill Analysis and has been known to eat upwards of 100 termites a minute with his candle.  

What is the assignment?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

How does it work?

What do students say, student artifact: .

Why does this work?

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• Create an email message
• Suggested recipients
• Use @mentions
• Create a signature
• Add attachments
• Check spelling
• Add a reaction
• Out of office replies
• Delay or schedule
• Recall a message
• Automatic forwarding
• Read receipt
• Save a file or draft
• Change display name
• Create a folder
• Use inbox rules
• Use Favorites
• Custom views
• Message font size
• Message list view
• Focused Inbox
• View as conversations
• Filter and sort messages
• Number of messages
• Phishing and suspicious behavior
• Protected messages
• Open a protected message
• More to explore

Turn on automatic forwarding in New and Classic Outlook for Windows ( also Outlook on the web )

Important:  Steps may be different between  new  and classic Outlook for Windows. To determine which version of Outlook you're using, look for  File  on the ribbon. If there's no  File  option, follow the steps under the New Outlook tab. If the  File  option appears, select the tab for Classic Outlook .

At the top of the page, select Settings   .

Select Mail > Forwarding . 

Toggle the  Enable forwarding  switch, enter the forwarding email address, and click  Save .

Note:  If you want a copy of the original message to remain in your mailbox, select Keep a copy of forwarded messages .

You can automatically forward or redirect your email messages by setting up an Inbox rule. This is useful if you want to read and respond to messages from another email account or when you want someone else to receive and respond to your email in your absence.

On the ribbon, select the Home tab, then in the Move section, select Rules > Manage Rules & Alerts . 

On the Email Rules tab, ensure that Apply changes to this folder is set to the email address you want to start from.

Select New Rule .

Under Start from a blank rule , select Apply rule on messages I receive . Select Next . 

Select Next —without selecting any conditions or editing the rule description. Then confirm that this new rule should be applied to every message you receive.

Under Step 1: Select action(s) , select redirect it to people or public group and stop processing more rules . 

Under Step 2: Edit the rule description , select the people or public group link. 

In the Rule Address dialog, under Address Book , select the contact list that contains the address you want to forward to, then enter and confirm the email address that you want to forward all your mail to so that the address is in the To box at the bottom. Select OK . 

Select Finish , then select Apply , then select OK .

When you first check that messages are being forwarded successfully, look in the Junk or Spam folder to see if the forwarded messages have been put there. 

Reply to or forward an email message

Manage email messages by using rules

Select Enable forwarding , enter the forwarding email address, and select Save .

Create, reply to, or forward email messages in Outlook on the web

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