Projects or Long Assignment

Last Tuesday I visited a math class. As I observed the teacher, I noticed an assignment written on the board that the students were to solve approximately 75 math problems by Friday. That breaks down to 25 problems each night. I shared with the teacher that the assignment might be counterproductive for two reasons.

First, as Harry Wong said, “The longer the assignment, the more students will fail to do it.” The second is that, in a math class in particular, it’s not the number of problems you practice that is important, it’s the number you practice correctly. A good measure for homework is to give 3 to 4 problems for each objective covered that day and 2 to 4 review problems to maintain skills learned earlier in the year.

The point is regardless of the subject area it is important to divide long assignments into several steps based on the learning objectives and not just giving the students work from the textbook because it’s there.

One way to divide long assignments is give each student a copy of the assignment timeline or better yet let the students help develop the timeline. Keep the students informed of due dates for each step. After the dates are determined tell the students how many daily points each step is worth and add that to the timeline. For this part of the grading, the students either receive all of the points or none of the points.

When a step is due, go from student to student during class, check their work, and record the points in your gradebook. If a step is not finished, the student receives a zero and then you conference with him/her about it. This system helps students plan and keep track of their own progress.

The final product usually cannot be graded in class, because time is needed to carefully read the assignment and give it a score.