Building Student-Independence with Resource Walls

Problem

During the 1st Unit, some students struggled with the work and were unable to get the support they needed so they disengaged with the work. They were not able to get the support because I when a student asked for help, it was generally a problem that took a few minutes to take care of. So I had to run around the room, debugging students’ codes which left some people waiting too long for help. This caused the completion rate to drop to a lower rate than what I wanted.

Hypothesis

If students are given a project wall with all the resources they need , then will be able to move forward without my explicit help and finish the assignment , as measured by the turn in rate of the unit projects.

Target group

My target group was the group of kids who were failing after the first marking period.

Planning & resources

Resources

Teacher Made Materials

PT Prezi - Digital resource wall

Video Game Programming Semester ProjectVideo Game Programming Semester Project The purpose of this section is to do research into what kind of game you would like to develop. You have 3 options of games: - Top Down - Side View - Third Person Use the resources on the right to discover the different types of games 1 ?

Data collection

Baseline data

I looked at the turn in rate of the unit 1 project.

Measuring success

If they fully completed the project (not just turned it in).

Overall findings & impact

Results

Unit 2 Turn in Rate: Semester Project Turn in Rate:

43/61 = 70% 46/61 = 75%

Out of students who didn’t turn in Unit 2 project,

9/18 turned in the Semester Project

Conclusion

There was a section of my students (especially the more quiet students) that this helped them the most. They were able to go to the project wall for help without having to call me over or ask for help from another student.

Actionable steps

If you want to use this strategy in your classroom, I recommend …

You can do this digitally or physically in the room. I chose to do it digitally and used the following steps:

Determine the goal for your Unit Performance Task
Break down the performance task into manageable steps
Create a slide on prezi for each step
Within each step:
1. State the deliverable
2. Show the rubric
3. Create a list of resources they can reference if they get stuck
Create an FAQ slide that has helpful resources and answers to common questions
Create an example deliverable of the performance task and put that in a slide.

Matt Oxman | matt.oxman@uamaker.nyc

Page updated

Report abuse