Do you want your students to increase success with engaging assignments? Have you ever been excited about an engaging activity, but when you did it with your students, it went terribly? The first time I did a mystery picture puzzle with my students. I was so excited because I thought my students would enjoy the activity and would get some much-needed long-division practice. They did enjoy the coloring, but once a few students started to color the picture, I realized that some of the kids were skipping the math problems and just coloring it to look like the kids around them. The kids who needed the practice were skipping the academic work. Why are engaging assignments like mystery pictures, science experiments, projects, and escape rooms so difficult with students?
What is the Problem?
Why are engaging assignments so difficult to use in the classroom? One answer is when students see that an activity or assignment is fun, they pay more attention to the fun aspects than the academic skills that are being taught or practiced. Another reason is that the teacher has to manage assignments with more steps than they normally encounter. Let's also face the fact that student behavior is more difficult with complex assignments. However, there are definitely things we can do as teachers to improve the outcomes for students. Here are eight ways to increase success on engaging assignments.
Explain the Purpose of the Assignment
When we tell students why we want them to do this activity, it will help them focus on the academic parts of the assignment. Students who concentrate only on the fun aspects, often forget that they need to do quality work. Telling them the purpose helps them refocus on academics. When you tell students that the reading escape room will help them practice inferring information from a text it helps students focus on more than just the fun aspect of the work. They realize that both aspects are important
Communicating High Expectations Increase Success with Engaging Assignments
Sometimes when assignments are different than what we give students on most days, they forget our expectations that we have taught them all year. We remind our students that the expectations do not change when the type of assignment has changed. Having high expectations will increase your student's achievement.
Display Success Criteria
One way to communicate expectations and purpose at the same time is by using success criteria. You display what it is they are supposed to learn and what conditions need to be met to be successful. This works well written on the board, a bulletin board, or an online slide (my favorite).
You also need to think about the expectations you build into your classroom as success criteria. We teach those expectations and standards over time in the classroom. When we increase our expectations, students will rise to the occasion and meet them. I recall a colleague telling me how much better his students were meeting his expectations during virtual instruction after they had a limited number of days when they were actually in person for instruction. What happened was that he was able to better teach his success criteria for assignments when they were sitting in his classroom.
Build in Check-In Time
One strategy that can be very effective is to build in student check-in time for assignments. This helps the teacher make sure all students are on track with their learning. It also stops students from rushing through an assignment and doing it completely wrong. It also puts the responsibility on the students to check in instead of the teacher which helps the teacher get to the students who they might not get to. Do all students need this? No, but there are many who need either the reassurance or the guidance to meet expectations.
One of the teachers that I taught with a few years ago was very good at this practice. She would also utilize the chance to grade the items while the students checked in. She had less to grade when they had all completed the assignment.
Have Steps for Students to Follow
There is often an order that we want students to do the tasks we give them and our students will increase success on assignments and projects if they do the steps in order. When my students were working on the long-division mystery pictures, they would have benefited from understanding the steps I wanted them to do in order. The students would have worked the division problems before they colored. There are always students who love to shortcut a process. Giving them the steps takes away the opportunity for them to take shortcuts.
Use Cooperative Learning
Having the students work in cooperative learning groups or pairs can increase success with engaging assignments. For pairs, one way to do this is to use the group work to check-in. In this model, all the group members do the first section of problems, and then the group double-checks the answer to see if they got the same answers. For small groups, the group can divide the work so they are all doing different parts of the assignment at the same time.
Grade the Assignment
Sometimes students just need to know that fun assignments count and it will increase their hard work and attention to detail. When they ask if it going to be graded, the best answer is yes. Their effort will increase and they will pay more attention to details than if you say it will not be graded.
Use a Rubric
The best way to assess a project is a rubric. A rubric allows you to take your success criteria and use it to assign a grade. Another benefit of a rubric is that students can look at it ahead of doing the assignment and they can use it during the project to ensure that they are meeting expectations. A third way to use one is to have students self-assess. Giving students time to assess and then make improvements.
There are so many ways that teachers can increase student success on engaging assignments.