Blog Prompt

Dr. Cadle's blog prompt definitely sets up quite an interesting situation for any teacher to have to deal with. How does one respond to having practically the 'whole' class screw up at least one part of a major assignment? I think if this exact situation described in the prompt happen to fall into my lap, I believe that I would immediately return the papers that did not meet the full criteria for the assignment and only grade the ones that did. I would like to think that by returning the papers ungraded to a student each time they didn't do a certain part of the assignment would let them know that I would do the exact same thing if they failed to fufill all requirements on the next paper as well. I guess my way of dealing with the situation would be to not deal with it. At least not directly. Just give their papers back to them, explain that, as of right now, their papers do not warrant a grade of any kind. A little passive-aggressive, but that's okay.
But in my real-life classroom, I try to keep this type of thing from happening by constantly having conferences with students and workshopping each paper at least once, if not twice, in class before the final due date. Perhaps I spend too much time trying to get them to revise rather than doing random assigmnments during the semester, but I feel it's worth it. I think meeting with each student one-on-one during the writing of each paper and actually have them tell me exactly where they are, show me exactly where they are on their paper, keeps them somewhat honest with me. And I feel like I'm a little bit informed on their writing processes as well.