DS has never been graded specifically on effort, but I do know his teachers would always comment that he was the least organized person in class--the last one to get his stuff ready to go out the door and then he usually had to go back in one or two times to get something he had forgotten.
Now he is in middle school and taking 8th grade "advanced" math (he's getting HS credit). The logistics are *more* complicated, but he is doing *better.* He has to manage the stuff in his locker, get from his hallway to the eighth grade hallway, and all kinds of other logisitics. He still forgets things like his jacket, his lunch box, and various papers, but he never has any trouble getting to math and he never forgets his math homework. It's amazing how they can rise to the occasion if they need to.
We did manage in elementary school by making sure that there was one area of extra challeng: the HS spelling list, or self-paced math for example. So he always had one area to work hard, and that was almost always the area where he was also most organized.
