"Hanging" Projects

This was a week of Day 2’s of art projects across the grade levels. My goal was to have these projects finished this week in order to start something new next week, or at least after the holiday break. That didn’t seem to work so well. I began to think about “hanging” assignments and whether to move on when students aren’t completely finished, or to give them time to finish as a whole. When classes meet only once a week, it’s hard to just keep going on a project week after week especially if other students finish early. My CT talked to me about this and said she usually has a lot of “hanging” projects just so the students get as many projects for their trimester as possible. I just have issues with students never finishing assignments. How do you grade students on unfinished work? This is a challenge for me to think more about.

I’ve also been challenged with classroom management for projects that finish earlier than expected and finding things early finishers can work on until class ends. One thing is to give jobs to students who are done, but there are only so many jobs to give, especially when students are still using supplies at their table. I found that most students love “free draw” and giving them the option to grab paper and draw whatever their hearts desire excites them. The other is “choice time” where they can grab building toys or puzzles to work on at tables. But managing this is difficult because once students see one student who is drawing or having “choice time”, all of them start to say they are done with their project just so they can join in. I need to work on stating my expectations from the start of class and repeating those expectations more.