One Simple Strategy for Increasing Work Completion

Hi friends and welcome to this episode of the teaching behavior together podcast. Last episode we talked about increasing engagement in your classroom. Today we are going to be talking about increasing work completion. I have one simple strategy for you to try in your classroom that we will chat about in today’s episode. Before I do that, if you have not already downloaded my free behavior intervention guide with 20 pages of strategies and examples of how to use those strategies in your classroom (across grade levels) use the link in the description of this podcast to do that right now! 

 Ok, friends, onto the strategy: often times when students are working independently or in groups on a task they can get a little off task. This is pretty normal, and we want to support our students in developing skills to maintain engagement and get back on task if they need that support. 

Have you ever heard of a pomodoro technique? Maybe you have used this when writing lesson plans or IEPs. If you haven’t here is a basic explanation. You set a timer for 25 minutes, turn off all distractions and work for that entire period. You identify a goal for the tasks you want to get done, say for example, write the profile section for an IEP, or get your math lesson planned for next week. You only do the tasks you designated for those 25 minutes, no checking emails, or running to grab a snack. When the timer goes off you get a five minute break and repeat. If you haven’t tried it, I highly suggest it, the strategy has been shown to increase work production immensely. 

You can use this same type of strategy for your students. You can do this is a couple of different ways. If you are working with younger students you might set some predetermined goals for a work period. Let’s say you are giving your class 30 minutes to create a story strip in a group. Maybe the story strip has 5 parts. You might set a timer for 8 minutes and let them know they should be done with the first two parts in that 8 minutes, let them have a short break, and repeat. This helps students remain on task and prevents some off task behavior like side conversations from occurring. Additionally, it demonstrates goal setting and working to meet a goal. 

If you are working with older students you might give them the overall time period, say 60 minutes to work on a science lab. You can let them know every 15 minutes a timer will go and they will get a short break. Have them identify where they want to be as a group at every 15 minute time marker so they can develop those time management skills. 

This strategy also works great for independent work. Basically you are asking students to set mini goals and providing structures and supports via a timer and short breaks to foster work completion. We are hitting on a lot of social emotional learning targets with this strategy such as self-management, goal setting, time management, accountability, and if you have your students working in groups, collaboration skills! 

Resources Discussed in this Episode
Free Behavior Intervention Guide
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