Eradicating Busy Work

Last month some col­leagues and I ran a work­shop for teach­ers at my school on dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. In prepar­ing for it, I came across the idea of anchor activ­i­ties. Unfor­tu­nately, many of the resources I found giv­ing exam­ples actu­ally list a lot of the tra­di­tional time-​​filler busy work (extra work­sheets, copy and define words from the dic­tio­nary, col­or­ing pages, etc.) and slap the “anchor activ­ity” label on them. In her book The Dif­fer­en­ti­ated Class­room, Carol Tom­lin­son defines anchor activ­i­ties as

The key words I see here are mean­ing­ful, use­ful, and impor­tant. We have to put as much thought into select­ing what we ask stu­dents to do in their unstruc­tured time so that it never actu­ally becomes down time.

At the same time, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that stu­dents’ brains can­not stay in high aca­d­e­mic gear all day long. They need fre­quent short “brain breaks” (as Eric Jensen calls them) to be able to stay alert and focused through­out the school day. The real trick is find­ing the bal­ance and mak­ing sure that the breaks are built into our instruc­tion so that stu­dents are more able to con­tinue aca­d­e­mic work dur­ing their unstruc­tured time.

As with many dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion tech­niques, though, anchor activ­i­ties should be just a start­ing point. Tom­lin­son her­self explains that set­ting up anchor activ­i­ties as a rou­tine in your class­room should be a way to train stu­dents to expect that there will be times when dif­fer­ent peo­ple are doing dif­fer­ent things so that some stu­dents can break off from the group.

What do you do, then, when you have stu­dents who are ready to break off? Per­haps you have a few gifted stu­dents who have com­pacted out of part of a math unit. Or you have sev­eral stu­dents who rou­tinely fin­ish their work quickly and accu­rately. Here are a few ideas for ongo­ing, long-​​term activ­i­ties they can do that are mean­ing­ful, use­ful, and important:

• Inde­pen­dent Study. This is of course the tried and true tra­di­tional approach, and much has been writ­ten about it. What I rec­om­mend is that you always give stu­dents a way to share their results or inte­grate it back into the class­room com­mu­nity. I had a stu­dent once who was fas­ci­nated with folk tales and fairy tales. Her fourth grade class was learn­ing about Africa that year, so her inde­pen­dent study project was to find and study some African folk tales and adapt one into a play (another inter­est of hers). She then selected stu­dent vol­un­teers and put on a very sim­ple (just a few masks and props) pro­duc­tion in the classroom.
• Class­room year­book. Have your reg­u­lar early fin­ish­ers form a “year­book com­mit­tee.” Their job is to plan, design, and pre­pare a class­room year­book to go home with your stu­dents at the end of the year. They would need to inter­view each mem­ber of the class, pre­pare a page about each, take pho­tos, record impor­tant class­room events, and so on.
• About Our School video. Have your kids take snap­shots of activ­i­ties around the class­room (and around the school if your sit­u­a­tion per­mits and your stu­dents are trust­wor­thy). Use Ani­moto to put together an intro­duc­tory music video that the prin­ci­pal could use dur­ing Back to School night pre­sen­ta­tions or post on the school website.
• Unit recon­nais­sance. Enlist the aid of your bet­ter researchers to help you find good mate­ri­als for upcom­ing units. Tell the stu­dents what the next unit will be in one sub­ject area. Give them some guide­lines and some topic sug­ges­tions, then give them time to explore the library and the Inter­net for mate­ri­als that will sup­port what you will be doing. Use online tools like Diigo or a class­room wiki to gather the infor­ma­tion in one spot.

What are your ideas for keep­ing anchor activ­i­ties and big­ger projects con­nected and mean­ing­ful? How will you work to elim­i­nate busy work from your class­room and school this year?

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Ref­er­ences:

Tom­lin­son, C. A. (1999). The dif­fer­en­ti­ated class­room: Respond­ing to the needs of all learn­ers. Alexan­dria, VA: ASCD.