Goal:
- Students use their time in class to do the bulk of their work and collaborate.
- In a low-income school, access to technology at home is not a guarantee.
- There often is no time and space to do the work at home, even if there is technology.
- Students need to learn time management while at school.
- In a job, the expectation is to complete work on-site unless other arrangements are made, like paid overtime.
- Students are not paid for overtime, so they should be able and expected to complete work at school.
- Keep lecturing to a minimum so students have time to do the bulk of the work in class.
- Pause at regular intervals to have students discuss and compare their work with each other. This provides scaffolding and structure rather than unstructured, open-ended work time, to help make certain work gets done.
- Track classroom progress consistently to ensure students are completing their work and are on-track with learning objectives. Students who are not engaged or are struggling to understand an assignment often shut down. They might say they’ll work on the assignment later at home, but they may not follow through. This cycle puts these students at an unfair disadvantage, and can be avoided by providing time in class for work as well as tracking classroom progress. Use an online grading tool to have students turn in progress at the end of each class.
- Options include Edmodo.com(free), JupiterEd.com (paid), shared folders in Google Drive (free), or just plain old email (free).
- This makes tracking classroom progress easier and more automatic.