Unfortunately, I don't give very many big projects in my math classes. When I taught Geometry, I gave one every marking period, but not so much now. We do little investigative things often, but nothing long term. The one big project that I do assign is in April/May is with my advanced math class. In the past, these students didn't need much poking on my part to finish things, so I never used anything with them.
We are defining the "suck" as the time between a student gets excited to start the project and when they finish. How do I keep my students moving along, meeting the goal at the deadline, and getting over that "suck."
Unfortunately, I am not very good at this. Personally, I work better sometimes under pressure, and have been known to wait until the last minute to finish something that is due (like a college recommendation, or a proposal of some sort) and it usually turns out to be a good product. So, teaching high school students, I tend to want to put the responsibility on them. They know their own schedule, and should work at it at their own pace to finish tasks. They have to learn sometime, right?
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately as you may see, last semester my students didn't care, and didn't want to finish things. They would rather play games on their phone, or snapchat, or instagram, or maybe even pick dirt from their finger nails than to finish anything math related. A lot of pleading on my part got things done, but certainly not without a struggle or an argument from the other end. This was my flipped mastery class, with my remediation students.
Here's the fortunate part of the students not caring. I still cared, and it really bothered me that they didn't care and didn't finish their work. This made me change! Starting the new semester, I decided to make a check list. On this checklist, there is the current weekly homework, with due dates, current weekly goals/tasks for the week, and then the upcoming homework assignment(s). The reason I did the upcoming homework on this checklist is because the checklists aren't necessarily Monday- Friday, and their weekly homework is Monday - Monday. Not sure if it is confusing or not to the students, but I have already heard students asking other students, how their checklist is coming. Maybe it will work. If not, I will look for other ideas.
I am also using the Remind.com website to remind the students to continue working. I figure they are on their phones so much, that an occasional text from me might spark their memory to finish things.
I hope it works. If not, I will have to continue to figure out a way to "unsuck" my students again.
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