Creating Projects for your students at different levels.

Whether you are a school teacher or homeschooling parent, you’ve encountered this challenge: Learners at different levels. 

This can make it very difficult to keep students engaged in a project which shifts your focus to behavior management instead of teaching. 

In this blog I want to share a few ideas that I have found make projects more successful.

1. Get students to help with planning
2. Division of Labor- 
3. Consider individual, small group, or full class projects

First, getting students to help with the planning. I like to use this as a critical thinking exercise much like a story problem is in math lessons. We want to share a problem that will be addressed or studied in our project. You can allow students to independently try to solve a problem, or you create a suggested project and allow the students to modify. I find this draws on 2 different skill sets. Some people are creators, others are editors, and still others are doers. By finding out what part of the project each student wants to work on most, you can support an environment where each student gets to use their skills and feels their skills are valued.

That leads to number 2, a division of labor. Once the project is brainstormed, then let students divide up what will be done. Whether there are teams each addressing their own problem or teams each doing a different part of the project, allowing students to do the part they find the most interesting will provide the greatest amount of engagement. In fact, I think this can even extend as far as allowing some students to make part of their contribution working with the teacher to create the rubric for grading the project. 

Number 3, deciding if you want this to be individual, small group, or a full class project. For homeschoolers, students at different grades can work on different parts according to their age, understanding and skill. The key is not to put the bulk of the work on the oldest child. Each child should feel equally challenged but also should feel they are doing what they feel most engaged in.

For classrooms, the size of your class may dictate the structure of your groups, but not entirely. Remain open to the idea of teams each doing a portion of the project and a team assembling the pieces from all of the projects. You could even have a team in charge of grading projects from other classes using the rubrics designed in the other classes. While the team assigned grade may not be the same as the teacher assigned grade, it does help develop skills like evaluation and assessment. It also can require the students to explain/justify the grade they assigned which can force them to think through evaluation criteria and whether it is clear.

While I didn’t love project based assignments in school, because I worried my classmates wouldn’t do their part, the truth is there are many places for collaboration in work and life after school, and thus, it is a very useful skill for students to develop. The way to get the most buy-in is to do it in a way that students are working on developing their individual skills and interests, so they feel they are truly getting something from the experience and not simply killing time. 

Soon I will release more on specific projects, so make sure you’re signed up for our free newsletter.  The link is here.