Benchmarks and projects.

Today, my supervisor from UCSD come to pay me a surprise visit. I really was a little surprised. Today, in Algebra, the students were working on the Small Business Project. I decided to give them the entire period to work on their own; half in the classroom and half in the computer lab. My goal was to have most of my students finish their project.

After talking to my supervisor, he made me realize that I need to have more benchmarks or checkpoints when I let my students loose and work on their own. In other words, do not just let them loose. He told me that I should create checkpoints so that students know where they should be at certain times. For example, "you should have questions 1-4 answered by the end of 10 minutes". This is in addition to the expectations I gave them for the end of the period.

The reasons for creating benchmarks is to make sure the students stay on track, they know what they are doing, they do not get lost and they get more work done.

Another thing I realized is that I did not spend enough time in class working on this project with my students. I also let the duration of the project drag on too long.

My goal is to have 2 more projects by the end of the year. I want to create my own or adapt an already existing project over the winter break. I also want to finish up the school year with another project.