My assignments in my classes are reverse from everyone else.
I have a ton of small workshop and practice grades (5 -10) points that lead into the bigger assignments. Everything is front and middle loaded, i.e. you can build up enough points by week 10 of the semester that you have a real safety net for the end. Ideally, students hit the last two weeks of the semester and have enough total points to not stress out about the last paper. My goal is to get them to see that treating assignments as a process, setting out small steps, doing it as we go along, makes better papers and easier to do (not seemingly insurmountable).
It's super frustrating to me to hear them talk about other profs who are just now in week 13 assignment major projects worth 200 points and giving them only Thanksgiving and the last week to finish them. That is a recipe for disaster and, honestly, what the hell do they learn from that other than they have to produce something in a fit of crisis, stress, and anxiety. They hate it and the profs just set impossible hoops to jump through.
Basically, it's a crappy way to organize a semester (and the point being most profs DON'T organize which is why they're tossing in assignments at the end of the semester) and they don't learn anything from them.
Not that my way is perfect; I have seven (7!) in one section of comp this semester who missed so many classes and assignments at the beginning and middle that they're now realizing they are screwed. There's no way to go back and redo the steps of paper #1 if it's already in and graded. They're emailing me asking for extra credit and I'm like 'folks, I gave you extended deadlines, reminded you, wrote you messages, and you didn't acknowledge or reply.' They're so used to not doing any work during the semester that they are shocked to realize I was serious about the steps of the process.
