Contracts can be adapted to almost any discipline, student body, or activity.  Here are a series of contracts written to serve a variety of purposes.

Algebra Quiz Remediation Contract

(Thanks to Esther Song of Niles North High School)

Here is a minicontract that followed an algebra quiz.  The teacher had some students who already knew this concept, and others who, even after an introduction, were unable to work with the necessary equations.  Let’s look at how she tackled this problem.

In the left-hand column, she listed the work that everyone is required to do.  This includes taking the quiz itself and doing several metacognitive exercises.  For each problem they got wrong, there is an item for them to work on in the Practice column.  If a student did well, they were encouraged to do Above and Beyond items. Notice that there are learning opportunities in a variety of modes, including completing problem sets, working in a help session with the teacher, watching a video, reading in the textbook and/or tutoring another student.  Every student was required to do a minimum of four items from the two right-hand columns.

AP Psychology - Differentiation by Learning Style

(Thanks to David Allen of Evanston Township High School.)

This contract gives students a wide array of choices, from hands-on experiments to videos to iPad apps.  Students were given one class period plus whatever time they chose to spend at home to do a minimum of three items from the list.  Notice that there is a column for students to evaluate the process of doing the work and another to evaluate how well they mastered the material in each activity.

Geometry Contract - Organized by Learning Goal and by Schedule

(Thanks to Vanessa Brechtling of Niles West High School)

Here is a one-week minicontract that focuses on the skill of measuring areas inside a circle.

The first thing on the contract is a list of learning targets.  (I’ll call them “learning goals” from now on.) Students can clearly see what they should know and be able to do when they are done with the contract.  For contracts of any length, this is useful information for students.

Next, the work is broken into three categories:  Whole Class items, which are done together and are required of every student, Needs Practice, which offers remediation, and Above and Beyond, which is enrichment work.  Every student is expected to do choose between the Needs Practice and Above and Beyond for each learning goal, depending on how successful they are on a check-up that has tested for their understanding of each learning goal.

At the bottom of this sheet is a calendar that shows when there will be open work time (she calls it an Independent Work Day) and when specific homework is due.

History Contract - Encouraging Independent Work

(Thanks to Rick Cardis of Evanston Township High School)

In this contract, only five items are required, including two optional items.  Notice that in the Above and Beyond section there are options for students to “be creative” and come up with their own contract items.  This encourages each student to pursue a topic she is interested in. This also gives the teacher a chance to hear the student’s idea and help shape and improve the activity.

English Contract - Organizing by Open Work Time Sessions

(Thanks to Jen Krause of Niles West High School)

In this contract, the activities are broken into work to be chosen on any given open work time (OWT day).  Each day has a particular skill or essential question to master, and each gives the student a choice between continuing to practice or to move on to an enrichment activity (“challenge”).  In addition, for each activity, a student is asked to self-evaluate her effort, her understanding of the activity, and how well she collaborated with other students.

Organizing a contract in this way gives a teacher more flexibility in planning the calendar, since an OWT day can be scheduled at any time on an as-ready basis.

Geometry Contract - Test Remediation

(Thanks to Vanessa Brechtling of Niles West High School)

This contract was handed back to students with their graded tests.  Since they are given the answers, they can see what they should have done and can take steps to learn from their mistakes.  Each question they got wrong has a specific set of activities to do as remediation. If they got all the questions correct, they can move on to steps two and three—enrichment problems.  Students who only had a few answers wrong can do the required work and then move on to steps two and three.

Writing Contract - Scaffolding for a Process

(Thanks to Amanda Lipinski and Patrick Noote of Palatine High School)

All of the above contracts are focused on student mastery of specific concepts and/or skills.  There are, however, situations where the learning goals don’t fall into either of those categories.  For instance, when a student is working on a long-term project or a creative effort, such as painting or writing, what is needed instead is a structure to guide students through the process.

This contract creates the scaffolding for a long-term writing assignment.  Students begin by writing exploratory essays around one of three initial prompts or topics.  For the first journal entry, students are asked to assess how comfortable they are with the topic.  This helps guide them in deciding whether to continue revising that essay or to pursue a different topic.  Before a first revision draft of that essay is due, they are allowed to move on to any one of six other prompts.  After that stage, they are asked again how comfortable they are with the prompt and are allowed to shift to another one.  By the due date of the second draft, it is assumed that they have landed on the topic they wish to pursue for the rest of the project, and from this point on, they are required to self-evaluate how well they are completing the process of revising their work.  In this way, guidance is given both in choosing and in editing the essay. Finally, their work is peer edited and turned in to be evaluated.

Rolling Contracts - Fluid Differentiation

(Thanks to Sarah Dyson and Liz Sheehan of Palatine High School)

The contract below is simple but effective.  The teachers in a reading and writing class came up with a way to provide guidance for their students during “extra time”—that is, time in which students have completed the assigned classwork for that day and are looking for something to do.  The contract in this case is pasted to the wall and consists of two parts. The first, “Always an option”, is a list of activities the students can pursue no matter what the current topic is. The second, which is pasted onto the poster, describes those activities that are specific to the current unit of study that are available when a student finds the time to work on them.