My previous post felt like an autopsy. The truth of the time that inspired that post: I had no chance to win. I was obliged to follow a common lesson plan that included a nonstop barrage of 7th-grade, Common Core materials in math classes that had an average benchmark score in mathematics at the 3rd-grade level. Bilingual and special education classes were supposed to be doing exactly what the regular classes were doing. The bilingual teacher and I were clobbering our guys daily, but no one listened when I protested. She didn’t protest. She just started teaching the test on Friday before giving the test on Monday. Her students still didn’t pass. Mine sometimes passed on Saturday morning, during tutoring make-ups that allowed time for one-on-one attention. My Saturday morning tutoring sessions at McDonalds seldom drew more than six kids. I even paid for some breakfasts, but getting up to go learn optional math at 10:00 A.M. on the week-end separated the motivated from the unmotivated quickly.

The last post refers to group work problems in our time of group group group work. I would like to add one more piece to my autopsy. I made my life harder by creating new and changing group projects. That required teaching “how-to” often  to groups, and I now believe I spent too much time on “how-to.” All instructional minutes carry an opportunity cost, the material we don’t teach while teaching something else. “How-to” minutes are teaching technique, not content. Too many new, creative activities and the how-to minutes begin to take on a life of their own.

As I try to help new teachers and others, I should share my mistakes as well as my successes. My groups suffered from my enthusiasms. I had to teach groups how to do their new group activities, time that was taken from instruction.

When a whole class learns how to make a foldable study guide together, the cost of teaching the foldable can be expected to be recouped in study benefits, and since the whole group did instructions together, time loss is minimized. When I teach my group a foldable, though, and then show the group a vocabulary exercise, and then tack on a third website activity, I will end up spending a fair amount of teaching time on “how-to.” By the time I break into groups, a quarter of my period may be gone if that foldable proves complicated. I will lose more time to questions about what to do from confused students as they shift stations and suddenly have to figure out how to access that website I showed them earlier.

Looking back, I’d say more repetition would have benefited my students. If I had that last year of crazy to do over, I would teach my students the foldable and use that template for most future foldables, give them a limited list of websites and stick to it, while doing the same vocabulary activities regularly with changing vocabulary. I would spend more time drilling transitions at first to save time later.

You have to mix it up to keep student interest, but too interesting sucks up instructional time quickly. Groups need to understand exactly what you expect. When they don’t, Marisol may start talking quietly to Shaniqua about Brad’s new haircut while you are working with another group. Instructional minutes start flying away.

That suggestion yesterday about making everyone work from the same Google Doc/PowerPoint while in different groups? If groups dynamics are flummoxing you a bit, you might try that set-up. Then stick with the format for awhile.

Too many changes are not your friend.

We creatives can forget that fact as we search out the latest fun activity to try out on our students.