5 Strategies for Making Project Work Time More
Productive
I always find it difficult when timing out my PBL’s, for
my students work time. The span of time
allotted usually depends on the student engagement and interest in the
project. Often times I dread workdays on
their projects. Students already have a
difficult time with their time management skills, and expecting them to use
their time efficiently and effectively when completing a project, can become
stressful. Therefore, I found this article
to be useful in trying these five strategies below to adjust the time
management for my students.
Strategy 1: Prepare students for working in teams
Teach students how to communicate and collaborate with
one another. Conduct lessons on peer
mediation and conflict resolution to improve their problem solving skills.
Strategy 2: Use team leaders as liaisons
Team leaders are responsible for guiding team meetings
and facilitating group discussions. They
report to the teacher on group members, good or bad.
Strategy 3: Train team leaders
Strategy 4: Structure team meetings with agendas
This will give students structure within their groups. “Why is the group coming together, what needs
to be accomplished during the meeting, and how the meeting will be structured?”
Strategy 5: Plan for frequent opportunities for
feedback
Feedback that is gathered only at the end of a project
tends to be invaluable and gives little chance for revision and improvement. Weekly check-ins should be experienced
throughout the project to provide support and feedback to each group and
student.
Hi Kristi,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you found the article I shared with you helpful on helping enhance the productivity of your project work time. The five strategies you discussed were ones I believe will not only help manage student work time, but will also help support students' growth as leaders. Which of these strategies do you feel that you will try out with your next pbl.
Sincerely,
Dawn
I love this because it is exactly how it works in real life!
ReplyDeleteThis topic is probably the biggest challenge in a PBL. Some student group are super fast, some are super detailed, some barely stay focused...So there always seems like this underlying uneasiness I feel to either make a group do more, judge everyone else's progress based on the best group, or just load then down with more task to make sure everyone continues to work and then that leads to no one getting everything done. Reflective is still I believe the hardest thing for a student to do. That is self reflection. If given enough time they reflect pretty well on other students work but seem to not want to take the reflections they receive and improve their work. I found the best reflective tool last time was when one of my top students presented. She had her entire portion of the presentation memorized and the quality of her written material shocked the rest of the class. I heard students make the comment that, 'now I'm really going to have a bad grade compared to hers." Maybe this is what students need to see, an example of a quality finished product.
ReplyDelete