Great post, Zen! Thinking along the same lines, another tip may be: Don't require students to create a list of new vocabulary words from an assigned book, if in fact none of the words were new or unfamiliar to that student. Requiring falsification of a list in order to gain the points awarded for turning in the assignment teaches, rewards, and pressures our students to be dishonest and to disavow their accumulated knowledge and expertise. This process role models manipulation and is not what we'd like our children to learn in school.