Breaking Down Long-Term Projects

Often time students can be excited about large projects that include real-life implications and investigations. But their excitement often turns to anxiety and dread when they realize how big the project really is and how much work they need to do. This can paralyze an otherwise excellent student and cause their project (and their grade) to falter. The solution, it seems, is to break the project down into manageable chunks and to have a schedule that can be followed to accomplish those chunks in a reasonable amount of time.

eCYBERMISSION can help in doing this with the competition. Simply use the timeline template available in the Teacher Resources section of the website to create a schedule for your students, assigning due dates for each part of the project. Or have students create their own schedule that will be approved by you. This way the students are not only learning how science works, but organization and scheduling as well.

Another thing that will help your students is feedback about their work. When feedback is constructive and timely it can have a very positive impact on student work. Use the rubrics for each chunk of the projects to help grade and guide students to a better end product.

The use of timelines and rubrics will help you organize your classes and will help your students chances of completing an award-winning project for the eCYBERMISSION competition.