The Importance of “When Done” Tasks for Fast Finishers

Johanna Kuiper

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So for me, one of the most dreaded questions from a student is, what do I do now? Mostly because in the moment, it stresses me out. Maybe I didn’t think students would finish the activity this quickly, or I didn’t plan something else. So in today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing something that I do to prepare in advance for these scenarios without creating a whole new chore. Let’s get started.

Welcome to solving for the undefined podcast, I’m your host, Johanna, founder of Miss Kuiper’s Classroom, the place that equips teachers and creating a healthy math classroom where students can thrive no matter their academic abilities. But it’s not always about the numbers, and that’s why I’m here bringing you the formulas to solve your problems, math and otherwise, plus strategies on cultivating that necessary math mindset, and that’s what you can count on.

Hello, hello. Welcome to a brand new episode today. We are going to be talking about when done tasks, sometimes you might hear them referred to as a fast finisher task. Now these are something that students can do when they are finished with any task, whether it’s a warm up thinking task, an activity, notes, turn and talk, a test, etc. It’s important to have something prepared for students to do next ahead of time, otherwise chaos will ensue. And I know for me, a lot of the times the fast finisher task has defaulted to, “Oh, you can have free time, or you can play on your Chromebook!” But depending on the student, that can be a classroom management hazard, either they start disrupting other people, or other students get invested in what that student is doing on a Chromebook, that it just becomes something I have to manage.

Now, when thinking of preparing, when done tasks, there’s kind of a scale, and I like to scale the task to whatever we’re doing. So the shorter the task we’re doing, the shorter the fast finisher activity is. So for example, if I were to do a turn and talk, even though that’s a very short amount of time, I want to have something for students to do when they’re done talking about that question. So I might have a second question, like a fun one, not necessarily an academic one, ready to go for students to talk about. So maybe it would be like, if you had to choose between teleportation or telekinesis, which would you want? And that might even prompt them to talk about, what is teleportation and what is telekinesis? Because those aren’t words that every student may know.

And by the way, I want to mention that I kind of streamline the when done tasks by using slides in my classroom. So I use slides for pretty much every thing that we do in the classroom. So I’ll have the activity that we’re doing, and in the bottom left corner, I’ll have a box that says “When done” and it has like a green check mark next to it, and I’ll have whatever activity I want students to do next, or a list of steps for students to do. So for this one, I would have ask your team this question, and then it would be if you had to choose between teleportation, telekinesis, which would you choose? So for all of the examples that I’m going to give Next, keep in mind that I am listing this out on the screen. This is not something I’m verbally sharing with students each time they’re like, “What do I do now?” It’s something that we practice at the beginning of the year: When you are done, this is where you’re going to look for your next item.

All right, so the next thing up from a turn and talk might be a warm up. It’s a little bit longer. I usually do about four to five minutes for these and I might have a when done Task be “Explain why blank is not the answer to this question.” So if the question was a crack the code, which we talked about back in episode 77 about critical thinking warm ups, if I had a crack the code problem and I said, Why isn’t 206 the answer to this question, students would then have to backtrack and figure out, what about the clues makes 206 not the correct answer, and maybe two, depending on whatever warm up question I might put an answer there that students might have that would be wrong. So maybe it’s something about the problem that makes student things, oh yeah, 206 is the answer. But it’s not so this is also a way of students being able to self check and be like, wait what? Because now they have to go back check their work and see why isn’t 206 the answer.

And those fast finisher activities for a turn and talk or a warm up are pretty easy for me to come up with, because those are short tasks, so they only require, like a short when done activity, but like for a worksheet or a digital activity or a test, those might require a lengthier task, because it takes longer for students to work through those. So for a worksheet, or if students are doing an activity online, I usually have a couple of steps for them to do, because in the when done tasks, I have what they do with the actual activity. So if it’s a worksheet, I might say, tape it into your notebook, turn it into the teacher, put it in the turn in Tower, or submit it on canvas, if it’s a digital activity, so it’s something like what they do with the activity, and then what they do after that. Then I might have a couple of options, depending where we are in that, like lesson or unit. So I might say, “Finish the worksheet or notes that we did yesterday. Add a summary to the bottom of your notes, create a problem in your notes based on what you learned today“, something like that that still keeps it academic and keeps students thinking about the topic that we are doing. And those don’t require you to have something else available, like another paper or something for students to do. That’s just something that they can do on their own.

Another thing that I might add to the when done tasks is a newer activity, and I haven’t been doing it long, but I really, really love it, and that’s I have a bin of puzzles, like quarter sized papers with puzzles on them, like Sudoku, Ken Ken Crack the code, Mini crosswords, word searches. Those are typically my go to for those, and I just keep like a bin of them on the counter.

So the way I do it is on a Google slide. I will break it down into four corners, and I’ll put the same thing in all four papers, or all four corners. So if I have a Sudoku, the Sudoku will be the same on all the whole page. Then I’ll create another page. I’ll do a second Sudoku activity, a third page, a third Sudoku activity. That way, when I cut it, they’re not all like, the same, same, same on top of each other. But what this has done is it’s taken the prep headache away, because the prep is done ahead of time. So I do it once. Maybe I don’t know. I haven’t run out of activities yet, and it’s been a month, almost a half a month, of school. So I’m thinking about every month or so I’ll have to refill it with new activities or new word searches. But what’s great about it is they still require critical thinking skills for students, like especially the Sudoku, the ken ken, like the crack the code activities. So it’s giving something for students to do that’s kind of math adjacent. But there’s also the mini crosswords or word searches that intrigue other students as well. So it’s a great idea if that’s one other thing that you want for, like, a fast finisher activity.

And then one last thing I’ll mention about this is what’s great about having it be a quarter sized piece of paper, so after I print it out, I cut it in four, and if a student doesn’t finish it, it just goes in the recycle. And I we haven’t wasted, like, a lot of paper. So it’s just something small for students to do. They can put it in their notebook. They can tape it in the back if they want to come back to it later. So it’s really high reward for both students and me, in the sense of, like, I didn’t have to do a lot of prep. I just print and go and students can recycle it if they’re done, or they can tape it in a notebook and do it again the next day, so they’re not wasting paper. Or if they recycle it, it wasn’t a big deal because it’s a quarter sheet of paper. If that idea interests you, I will link all of the activities in the show notes on my website, some of the things I have made, but others I just like, screenshot from websites like the Sudoku and Ken. Ken. That’s not my area of expertise to make, but I will link the websites that I use and take from so that way, if you want to make them, you can easily make them from the same websites that I do.

All right, last thing we’re going to talk about is what to have students do after an assessment or a test. So one thing that I really have enjoyed doing, and I’ve probably been doing for the past two, maybe three years, is we have, first of all, we have to make our own assessments based on the standards, because we do standards based grading, and I like to do just one page of like a test, because I don’t need that many questions to See whether or not a student fully understands a standard. So on the back of the paper, I have this side up when done, and then underneath that, I will have a space for students to draw. So I’ll put after you’re done with the test, draw something in this box. And sometimes I’ll give them like an actual prompt. Or one of my favorite things to do is I’ll put a random like squiggle or shape in there and tell students to create a drawing with that squiggle. That’s something that we had to do in elementary school in my art class. And I just, I love that idea because it allows students to be creative. Or if they’re like, I can’t. Think of anything to draw. It gives them a starting point. So that’s what I like to have students do. I do not like them to get up in the middle of a test. I think it creates too much chaos. And if students are taking longer, they could feel pressured or rushed because they’re seeing so many people done. But if all they have to do is flip over their paper and they have space to do something. It kind of eliminates that pressure for other students. Plus then I can kind of glance around the room and see who is done and who’s not, by the big bold letters of this side up when done. And then I can see, oh, okay, everyone’s done. I’m going to collect papers, and now we can move on to our next thing. And that’s what I have for you about fast finisher or when done tasks.

So in summary of what we’ve talked about today, it’s important to have a when done task available, no matter the length of the activity, to give students something else to do, and so that they don’t choose what comes next. And then we talked about scaling the task to whatever activity you’re doing. So for a warm up or a turn and talk, it might be something short, whereas for a worksheet digital activity, it might be something longer. And then also making sure that we have a when done task for an assessment, so students know what to do with the test and what they are allowed to do after the test.

And as always, if you have any questions regarding fast finisher activities when done, tests or anything else you earn on the podcast, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram @misskuiper. I’m happy to answer any and all questions.

And with that, I’ll calc-u-later.

Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. To find all the links and resources to things talked about in this episode, head on over to misskuipersclassroom.com and click on podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai