u/ADHTeacher

I just rewrote my syllabi for next year (I should be grading, but I can barely stand to look at my current stack, for reasons explained below), and I finally decided to get rid of test/quiz corrections and not accept late classwork at all. Major essays and projects okay, but it's a 10% deduction per day with no maximum deduction, making it pointless to submit anything more than 9 days late.

I just cannot deal with the nonstop flood of late submissions and corrections I have to grade. I'm over the nagging about when I'll get in all their missing assignments and sloppily-corrected tests. And I'm so sick of the rude emails from parents nagging me to accept late work weeks after the extremely generous late submission deadline has passed.

Last semester I had a student try to submit a mountain of late work after the semester had ended and harass me for weeks after I refused to grade it because, according to her, I hadn't been clear that months-old classwork couldn't be submitted after finals had concluded. She tried to take it all the way to the superintendent, which absolutely did not work, but did add a wholly unnecessary layer of stress to my life.

I also just got a long email from a parent that initially sounded fine and then transitioned to a rant about how I'm uncaring and unsupportive. This person's child has missed 14 weeks of class this year, and I have repeatedly accepted beyond-late work and devoted numerous lunches to helping the kid make up weeks-old tests, but sure. I'm uncaring and unsupportive.

I'm just over it. I'll follow the district policy for work missed while absent and provide IEP/504 accommodations, but that's it. Allowing kids to avoid developing discipline and executive functioning skills isn't "grace" anyway, it's just irresponsible.

So I’ve decided to knock out And Then There Were None with my Juniors in the last couple weeks of the year. Although I know the premise, I haven’t read it myself, so I’ve decided to read it along with my classes. My students like coming up with word/logic puzzles for me to solve, and I thought it would be fun to have us all compete with each other to see who can predict the deaths and figure out the killer first.

Here’s my problem: Obviously I don’t want to know who dies in what order, but I do want to know when those deaths happen so I can lesson plan around each reveal. So—does anyone happen to know the chapters where characters die? Or could anyone direct me to a source that gives the death chapters without revealing the characters?

This is a weird ask, I know, but I really want to enjoy the reveals while also planning for each day. Thank you in advance!

EtA: I'm still teaching them about the genre, Agatha Christie as an author, the golden age of detective fiction, and deductive/inductive reasoning. I also have supplementary materials to help students keep track of the characters and plot. So no, I'm not going into the unit with no goals or sense of direction. Literally the only part I don't want to know is who dies when.