Keeping up!

My hats go off to all of you in bloggie land that keep up with everything and have time to blog!   I have neglected my poor little baby blog, but I am trying! :)  I have a great group of students this year.  It was crazy to think we were issuing our mid grading period progress reports when most of you all were just starting school.  I do have some exciting things that I have done and/or planned.  I also love some of the exciting activities that I've found!  (Gotta love Pinterest!)  More to come soon!

Homework...

Homework has long been an issue I've struggled with in my room.  If the concept is new, I never graded the homework for accuracy.  What began to happen is some students started slacking off and not doing or completing it.  Though I have used discipline to handle this, I kept thinking there has to be a better way.  I'm not sure that I've found it or not, but this is what I'm doing:

When the assignment is not being graded, each student will be awarded up to 10 completion points.  After 10 "non-graded" assignments, a participation grade based on those points will be awarded.  I've never given participation grades before.  My logic here is that homework is only 10% of the overall grade.  If I award up to 4 participation grades out of 10 total homework grades then only up to 4 points of the overall grade came from these.  These grades will also show a pattern with work ethic, and those that always try and work hard will be rewarded, if even only slightly.  

I keep 4 clipboards hanging behind my desk in my room.  Each period has one for homework and homework only.  I love this, but really want to make those ugly clipboards a bit more pleasing to the eye! I use stamps (love me some Vistaprint!)for this:  a blue "homework complete" and a red "Incomplete ___/10" 

How do you all deal with homework that was meant for practice?