I was reading through the literary analysis that I assigned the students back in October. They had to read a book (a real book! Horrors!) and provide an analysis picking out the various elements of fiction used by the author. The reports were due on November 5.

Of course, the due date came as a big shock to the kids. When I reminded them at the end of October that the report would be due the following week they were surprised. A few of them explained that they couldn't find copies of the book they wanted to do. Others complained that they hadn't had the time to work on it. I was adamant about the due date.

I finally got the papers from about half of them. Over the next few days more trickled in. There are still a substantial number of students who haven't bothered to do the work.

And what they did do was substandard at best. Many did not follow my directions. None seemed to remember we'd done this same thing on class and that they could do it on their own. I had to rethink my approach.

The first thing I did was go through all the papers and use a red pen to highlight all the spelling and grammar errors. There were a lot of them. Interestingly, a paper from one of the poorer students had no errors at all. It used language in such a way that it was obvious that he did not write it. A few minutes on a Google search turned up the exact sentences he had used. He'd bought the book report from a web site. Instant 'F'!

Now we are into the week of the progress report. I have to get all my grading up to date and get my grades into the office by Friday. In only three weeks we have our mid term exams (finals for Composition II) and then we are on vacation until January! I can't wait!