Surviving the December Crunch

For most of us, only a few weeks remain in the marking period.  Secondary teachers probably have exams arriving in the next couple of weeks while elementary teachers may be feeling their time slipping away due to special holiday programs and end-of-unit assessments. Rather than “running out of time” during the last few days before winter break – or leaving so many things due the day before vacation that your time off is consumed by grading – take a few minutes to plot out your remaining December classes on a calendar and mark the due dates for your must-do assignments and assessments.

You might want to compare the school calendar to your personal calendar.  Guard your quality of life in this busy month by trying to schedule long stretches of grading or intensive preparation for times that you don’t have personal or family commitments.  If you’re wondering how you’ll pack everything in, consider some of the following ideas for condensing and consolidating the volume of work while still meeting your objectives for the unit.

• Review early: Who says the unit has to be over to begin reviewing for the test or exam? If you provide a review packet, consider breaking it into pieces. Go ahead and give students the review materials for the content you have already taught. This way they can begin studying early (and avoid last minute cramming) and you can get ahead of the end-of-semester crunch.

• Consolidate: Does your class usually read three separate stories to practice three distinct reading strategies? Look for a single story or article that will allow students to practice all three strategies. The time you save covering more material can be focused on working with the strategies in greater depth.

• Tier your homework: If students usually complete 20 problems for homework – and you spend your time during or after class grading them – consider creating tiered homework assignments. This strategy works best for practicing concrete skills like math or science computation, grammar assignments, foreign language verb conjugations, etc.  In the last 10 minutes of class give a very short (4-5 question) formative assessment that covers the content of tonight’s homework. For students who get everything right, give minimal practice and a challenge application or extension. These students clearly get it, so they can self-check with an answer key the next day. For students who miss a couple of problems, provide review and practice.  They can self-check homework with an answer key and help one another or identify a few problems as a group for which they would like teacher assistance. For students missing nearly all of the material, provide homework that focuses on building understanding of the concept and spend most of the time the next day you would normally spend on checking homework with the whole class providing reteaching to this group.

Have other ideas for getting the most bang for your instructional buck during the December crunch? Post them here!

–Claire Lambert