I'm currently a long-term English sub. The real teacher asked me to collect study guide she gave them at the beginning of the Macbeth unit. I don't think she looked over it before she assigned it, though--some questions referred to a different edition of the text than the ones the kids had, as well as to philosophies they knew nothing about, etc. It was dense, too. Just one piece of paper, front and back, but it was numbered from 1-25, and each number had several related questions. So: a lot more work than I think she meant to assign, and a lot more work than they expected.
Some kids came in having obviously spent a lot of time on it. They had at least a paragraph for each number/set of questions. They had a couple pages typed, or 3 or 4 handwritten, with some very thoughtful answers. Some even looked up the information they hadn't ever heard of, so they could do a good job answering the questions. I wanted to make this really difficult assignment worth their while, so I made it 50 points--only two per question, but as a whole, worth about the same as a test.
About a third of the kids came in with the study guide still blank, and filled it out by listening to the in-class discussion. In most cases, they wrote directly on the study guide (which clearly was not meant to be written on--there's no space for answers, so they were filling in the margins. Every student that wrote directly on the study guide really skimped. To save space, or maybe just out of laziness, they answered with one-word answers instead of complete sentences. Even more damningly, they didn't answer every question. They had something written down for every NUMBER, but each number had multiple questions, and they ignored all but the first, usually. Most questions asked students to explain or discuss their answers, and again, those kids didn't do that.
So: the kids who took it home and did it all, I gave 50/50. The kids who wrote on the study guide and didn't do everything, I gave a 30/50. But just an hour after I put it in the gradebook, I had a kid come demanding answers. Although he eventually admitted that he hadn't done everything it asked (at first he was saying he only skipped one or two, but I pointed the others out to him), he still seemed to think that 40% off was way too harsh. I'm planning on letting them redo it for at least 10 more points, maybe even the full 20. But now I feel a little guilty. Is that too harsh, do you think? They're juniors and honors students, and though it didn't say "don't skip answers" or "answer these on a separate sheet of paper so you have space", I really thought they would infer that. But I don't want to be unfair or cruel. Thoughts?
