One of the most time-efficient methods for monitoring independent student work is to award "workshop points" for the day's activity. For instance, if your students are beginning to write a paper, tell them that they will receive a perfect score on the day's assignments as long as they have made progress and seem to be focused and engaged. Circulate around the room with a student roster and praise students who are on task. Quietly warn students who are off-task that they will begin to lose points if they have to be reminded to focus -- and hold fast to this warning by using "tick marks" on your roster. As you circulate, ask questions to check on student understanding. Then, toward the end of the period, once again circulate throughout the room and assign students their points by marking their scores on their papers.
Create a sticker-reward system. Circulate around the room. As students are working, place a sticker on the top of their pages. Create a points system based on the stickers; for instance, students must receive 5 stickers to earn the day's full points, 4 stickers = 8 points, 3 stickers = 6 points, and so on. (While this system works well for younger grades, it can also motivate high school students.) At the end of the period, circulate around the room once more and assign the students their points based on the number of stickers they received over the course of the period. As with any of these methods, it is essential that you continue to move around the room so students are fully aware they are being monitored.
Devise a work-at-your-own-pace progress check for completion. This method works best if students are working on a simple seek-and-find assignment, such as finding answers in a textbook. Give them a specific amount of time to complete the task and then offer completion points as they finish. Because students have different abilities and all work at different paces, be sure to have a secondary assignment for those students who finish early; after all, as the saying goes, "idle hands are the devil's workshop."
Obviously, not all assignments can be completed and graded in one class period. Therefore, one of the most efficient methods for monitoring independent student homework is to create a detailed completion rubric that scores students on a scale from "well done" to "incomplete." Since the score will correspond with a detailed explanation on the rubric, you can quickly examine the assignments without having to write comments on every single page. Instead, you can circle the student's appropriate score on the rubric. A website such as Rubistar can help you design detailed -- and free -- rubrics based on your assignment's requirements (see Resource 1).