The ultimate goal of skills-based work is for students to be able to independently execute a skill correctly and completely. This gives every student a concrete, attainable goal, and a means of knowing when she is successful. Knowing that she has to become independent gives her a legitimate purpose for choosing to practice the skill as much as she needs.
Complex skills are best built in a sequence of learnable parts. Breaking a complex skill into a set of increasingly difficult sub-skills allows students to master all the parts before attacking the whole. Success in one area at a time boosts self-confidence. This technique also allows the student to see specifically which part(s) of the skill are most challenging for her and which she still needs to practice. She will know whether she is ready to move on, and if she is not, how much and what kind of practice she needs.
This technique also counters the common belief by some students that they “just don’t get it”, which leads them to give up prematurely. Separating the work into distinct building blocks can show a student that she has already mastered parts of the skill and reinforces the technique of isolating the difficulty and practicing it. This, in turn, enhances the student’s sense of tenacity, which is a useful attribute in attacking any problem.
The number of building blocks needed to approach a complex skill can vary dramatically. Factors that will determine the design include the experience, the readiness, and the motivation of your students. Too many sub-skill assignments lead to busywork. Too few, on the other hand, leave some students lost and struggling with the size of the intellectual jumps. This is discussed in full in the chapter “Unit Contracts”.
Introductions to new skills begin with examples and opportunities for students to practice, preferably with support. Teaching a new problem-solving technique often begins by first demonstrating one or two sample problems completely, showing the details of the process and explaining any relevant strategies. If there are multiple variations on a new type of problem or skill, avoid the temptation of explaining them all yourself. It is exactly in working on such variations that students can often discover the bigger picture for themselves.
Following a teacher-led introduction, typically every student does a few problems on her own. This is an opportunity for her to recognize how well she understands the new material. Students can do this alone, with the teacher moving around the room, offering assistance as needed, or by having students working in small groups, solving the problems alone, but sharing techniques and asking each other questions as they occur.
Helpful Hints and Answer Keys
Providing “helpful hints” with the work can be useful in assisting a student who is stumped. Helpful hints will typically guide her from the beginning through the middle of a problem, but not give her the path all the way to the conclusion. Hints can be on a separate sheet, in the textbook, or on the back of a worksheet.
It is important to make the hints something that the student has to actively decide to use. If she takes the step of intentionally using the hints to help get started on a problem or get past an impasse, she will be much more likely to work through to the end of the problem. Success in completing the work is important for building confidence.
This technique also offers training in metacognition. A student who makes use of the helpful hints now knows that she needs more practice to master the material independently. With experience, she will pay attention to which specific part of the skill she still needs to practice by noticing where helpful hints were needed.
You may be concerned that a giving a student “helpful hints” is simply a shortcut she can use to avoid doing the work on her own. Since the student will soon be assessed on whether she can do this specific skill independently, however, using helpful hints inappropriately simply means she is wasting the opportunity to practice the skill. She is, as the saying goes, “only cheating herself”, and the next check-up, quiz or test will give her immediate feedback about what a bad choice that was. When she sees this clearly, her motivation to do the work independently and use the hints appropriately becomes increasingly internalized.
Another technique for enhancing metacognition is to provide answer keys for study groups to use when going over their work together. (This means, of course, that you have to do the work too.) By modeling the appropriate techniques, you are showing students what excellent work looks like. This has the side benefit of informing you whether the amount of work is appropriate. If it is too time-consuming or repetitious for you, it will be even more so for them.
Here is an example of a physics problem set, helpful hints (which were printed on the back of the problem set), and an answer key that was used by study groups reviewing the homework.
The Life Cycle of a Skills-based Homework Assignment
Here is how the process might unfold using the strategies described above:
In class, before the assignment:
The teacher introduces a new skill or subset of a skill.
Students practice individually or in groups.
At home:
Individual students do homework, using helpful hints if necessary.
In class, after the assignment:
Students get into study groups and review the homework, using an answer key to verify correctness. Corrections are made as needed.
Every student does a check-up.
Further work:
Remediation/further practice is available, as is enrichment. The decision about what to do next is based on whether each student needed to use the helpful hints or answer keys, or whether, after the whole process, she was still unable to do the check-up correctly.
