Dear [Student Name],
I'm reaching out because I noticed that you haven't turned in [Assignment Name] yet. It was due on [due date and time].
[You can turn it in for [partial credit / full credit until X date].] OR [To make up the assignment, see me during [office hours / lunch / before school]].
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Replace the bracketed placeholders with your own details before sending. Keep whichever of the two make-up options matches your late-work policy and delete the other. Save your finished version somewhere easy to find so you can reuse it next year.
How to use this email
When to send it
The day after the assignment was due, not the week after. A reminder that arrives while the student still remembers writing the thing reads as help. One that arrives after the gradebook has closed reads as paperwork, and the student knows the difference.
Send it even if your grading platform already fires an automated missing-work notice. Those notices come from a system. This one comes from a person who noticed, and for a lot of students that is the entire difference.
What to change before you send
- Pick one make-up path and delete the other. The template offers two on purpose. Sending both makes the student choose, and a student who is already avoiding an assignment will choose neither.
- Put a number on partial credit. "Partial credit" means nothing to a fourteen-year-old. "70% if it is in by Friday" means something they can decide about.
- Match the greeting to your grade band. "Dear" reads as formal trouble to a middle schooler. "Hi" is usually right below high school.
- Name the assignment the way they know it. Your gradebook title and the words you said in class are often not the same thing.
- Say where the work goes. A surprising share of missing work is work that was finished and then handed in somewhere you were not looking: the wrong folder in the LMS, a shared doc never submitted, a paper left in a backpack.
Resist adding a line about how this will affect their grade. The student already knows, the sentence reads as a threat, and it moves the email from help to pressure. If the grade consequence genuinely needs saying, it belongs in the conversation with the family, not here.
What a good reply looks like
Most of the time you get "ok," or you get nothing. Nothing is normal and it is not disrespect.
The reply worth reading closely is the one that explains: they lost the handout, they were out for a funeral, they genuinely do not understand what the assignment is asking. That reply is the win, because it moves the problem from compliance, which you cannot fix, to something you can.
If there is no reply and no work after two or three school days, the next message goes to the family rather than to the student. Send it before the grade is locked, not after.