I find great success with homework accountability with my students by having a separate grade book for checking homework. Just as I have separate pages for grades for each class period I teach, I also have separate pages for the homework of each class. If I intend to show to my students that homework is important, then I have to have a means whereby I check it. After a couple of trial runs with either of these methods, my students are ready for me to check their work in just a matter of a few minutes. Homework is not graded, but my students always know they will be held accountable for each assignment.
Teachers ask their students questions each day in the classroom.
It would be nice if we, as teachers, could make this a more enjoyable task instead of a boring job. I then pose review questions to my students. I may use vocabulary words for which students have to give a definition, parts of speech and an example of that part of speech, or I may use literature review questions over the short story we just studied. Before we start, I establish how many questions a student must answer correctly before he may be seated. The number varies with the activity.