Y’all I can’t even believe that it’s MARCH. The light is at the end of so many tunnels. The school year tunnel. The Covid tunnel (hopefully). We’ve been through so much in the past year, but it’s finally starting to feel like we will make it!

As this wild and crazy year begins to wind down, I’d like to advocate for something: stop swapping out centers weekly. Use projects instead!

This time of the year is the perfect time to work in some longer-term projects, and to take some weekly prep off of your plate! But, better than simply being a time-filler, projects do a lot to benefit our students in 2nd grade and up!

Why You Should Ditch Centers for Projects

Projects cover a range of standards.

I love to work writing projects into the spring semester in my classroom, because they give students the chance to apply so many of the things that we learned earlier in the year. It’s wonderful end of year review for that reason! Mechanics, spelling, sentence types, grammar skills…all of that must be applied during the writing process.

On top of that, many of my writing projects work literacy skills into them by tasking students to work in evidence of a cause and effect relationship, problem and solution, etc. Part of the peer editing process is for peers to be able to find those literary elements, and write about them using text evidence. It’s a great way for both the author and the reader to practice reading skills!

Projects reach a variety of learners.

Because projects are often assigned for a longer window of time, it’s easier to pace them to meet a student’s needs. Projects are also often designed to be done independently, meaning that they are scaffolded and include student-friendly directions. Assigning a project is as simple as stapling all directions, graphic organizers, and drafting pages into one packet and placing the packets in the same center area you would keep other supplies. The biggest difference is that all of your students can access the material in their own way, and you don’t have to worry about changing it out next week!

Projects promote growth.

Because of the way that students are pushed to apply the standards they’ve learned throughout the year, writing (and other) projects are a great way to push students to grow in the last few weeks of the year! Often a project is going to involve a little more creativity, and a lot more critical thinking that a task that simply asks students to recall old information they learned. There’s nothing wrong with pulling out some old task cards during this time of year. But, asking students to write and notice the verbs as they are writing is so much more powerful. Your students are more likely to retain the information they are practicing through a project.

Think about your own school experiences. I highly doubt you remember the random worksheets your teachers passed out. But I bet you have more vivid memories of a cool project or two you were asked to do. And, even better, I bet you remember some of the things you learned during that time! I did a science fair project in 5th grade all about how music can affect plant growth. The plants I played music for grew more than the plants that sat in silence. I remember that, and that entire process helped me remember the steps of the scientific method, because I was doing them.

Projects require less weekly maintenance.

The obvious winner for me is the fact that projects take a WHOLE lotta time to do. My ‘Write a Movie Script’ project was out in my work on writing area for a solid 6 weeks. During this time of year, I really can’t be bothered with weekly independent work prep. Now, prepping independent work once a month? I can do that. I have an old video of my writing center set-up HERE if you want to see how I did this once upon a time. This was a video of my January set up, and I didn’t think about this center area again until February. It was glorious!

I know right now, in the midst of all things 2021, you may not have traditional centers. But, my guess is that you have some windows of time during your literacy block where you need the kids to be able to work independently. And, my guess is you want that work to be rigorous, purposeful, and encourage growth in your students. I believe that projects to all of that!

Happy teaching, friends!