20% Teacher Preparation
Questions to ask yourself...
- How long will your project last? It is recommended to do a short project first, maybe a few months or a semester. As you get more comfortable with it, you can determine a better length for you and your class.
- Will you let them work on ANYTHING? Most teachers say yes, mostly. If you don't like the topic your student chooses, use your powers of persuasion to guide him/her to something else. Or just say no. What you want to consider for them is, "Will this topic sustain my student for the length of the project?" and "Will this project be detrimental to my student's well-being?"
- What do you anticipate your students will be doing during the class time you give them?
- Will you allow your students to work in groups? The project allows for ultimate personalization and it is strongly suggested that students do it individually. However, there are those students that will do a great job as a group too. If you do allow groups, will you set group perimeters? A strong suggestion is to require the group makes a set of norms for working with each other. To make it official, make a copy of the norms for each group member and yourself, this way you can be the bad guy about getting on an apathetic group member rather than a group member having to "rat out" his/her friend.