As the new school year begins, establishing a strong classroom culture is SO stinkin’ important. One of the most impactful ways to do this is by helping students understand what quality work looks like. Remember, students feel successful when they can meet targets.  That being said–they need to know what the targets are! Teaching elementary students to recognize and strive for quality work sets the foundation for academic success and personal growth.

Whether it’s a back-to-school project or for routine daily assignments, knowing how to produce high-quality work can boost student confidence and motivation. In this post, I’ll share practical strategies to help students appreciate the “why” and “how” to do their own personal best work!

What does “Quality Work” even mean?

Quality work is, of course, a very subjective topic, isn’t it?  That being said, I think we can probably all come up with a generalized list of what we would like to see from our students as they complete their work.  We can also probably all agree that these are skills that are not Here are just a few examples!

• Legible  handwriting
• Organized work (maybe spaces between problems, using the blue lines on notebook paper, etc)
• Neat cutting, drawing, coloring, gluing
• Following all directions
• Taking the time to do the task carefully and completely
• Accurate and precise work
• Careful spelling, capitals, and punctuation
• Using labels or other important details
• Even little things like using erasers instead of scribbling out mistakes, keeping papers from being wrinkled, and so on
• Learning to use the page fully–to not put one math problem in the middle of a page or to draw teeny little diagrams that can’t be seen or read
• I could go on and on!

4 Benefits of Learning About Quality Work

So, if we want students to do “all the things”, they have to know what “all the things” are!  We have to tell them, show them, and teach them. Most importantly, we need students to see that it is a PROCESS.  We can’t learn a new skill in a day, but every time we work on something, we can strive to be just a little bit better.  I love to use sports examples in my room because I am a huge sports fan, so I use examples like:

“Do you think ____________ (fill in your favorite athlete here) was born being able to ________ or did they work hard all the time to get better and better?”

Or use authors…or artists…or anything.  Help students see that we get better through practice and self-awareness.

Why does it even matter?

• Promotes High Expectations

When students are given the skills and strategies to do THEIR personal best, expectations increase. I like to talk to my students about change.  If we are doing the same type of work and the same quality we did two years ago, then we aren’t growing.  This is true with spelling and playing the piano and football and friendships!  We should always be striving for growth.

• Enhances Self-Assessment Skills

When students “see” what quality work is, they can better self-assess and check against the standard.  I do this so many ways during the year–from doing samples of what quality cutting looks like (and how to do it) to what a fourth grade level essay looks like.  When students see a standard or an exemplar, they can better judge how they are doing in comparison.

• Builds Confidence

I particularly love that this type of reflection work allows students to see GROWTH.  They don’t need to be perfect or fully at a standard.  When they see that they work they are doing is better than the work they did before (the power of keeping work throughout the year to look at!), this builds confidence AND motivation.

• Encourages Growth Mindset

I think it’s pretty clear that a focus on quality work can help students work toward improvement which, in turn, can encourage a growth mindset.  It’s easy to want to quit or not even try when you don’t know what to do or what expectations are.  When the expectations are clear–and progress is praised, we begin to see students who are more engaged and are more willing to try challenging things.

Strategies for Teaching Quality Work

• Providing Exemplars and Work Samples

As stated above, we need to show what want.  I love using document cameras to show student work (or my work if the task is better shown this way), gallery walks, partner sharing, and more.  Having students “notice” things is a great way to help them tune in.

“What did you notice about Becca’s graph?”

“When I read Mateo’s sentence, what did you hear?”

“What did you see when you looked at the different posters that you could try next time?”

• Explicit Instruction

Sometimes “noticing” isn’t enough and we need to explicitly teach what we want.  If you want students to circle their answers in math class, show them what it looks like.  If you want them to use transition words in their essays, show them.  Hang a list of words up to help them!  If you want them to color in the lines, teach the strategies to help them do just that.

I start this process the first week of school with my pennant glyph project.  I model exactly what I expect. The students help each other.  We celebrate the beautiful results!

• Constructive Feedback

As students are working toward improvement on a skills, giving them encouraging, productive feedback is so important.  Research is clear–timely feedback is a HUGE part of the learning process.  This means that as students are working, we are circulating and coaching and modeling.  The “formative” feedback is so much more powerful than assigning a grade at the end of a task.

• Student Reflection

This is one of my favorite part.  When students are asked to reflect on their own work and to say what they did well (and maybe what they would do differently next time), it is SO powerful!  Not only that, but it’s a GREAT time to build relationships, give compliments, and encourage.

“I’m so proud of how hard you worked!”

“I agree–your introduction was so much better than the last one you wrote!”

“I love how you helped Kiara with the problem by showing her how you got started!”

Classroom Activities to Reinforce This Process

• Rubrics and Checklists: Rubrics, checklists, anchor charts, and samples can really help students know what to do and what the expectations are.
• Peer Reviews: Working in partnerships and small groups can help students tweak and refine their work.  Doing gallery walks and sharing sessions lets students “see” different ways to approach tasks and different strategies to improve their own work.
• Project-Based Learning: When students are “doing” work, it is a far better place for them to practice new skills, especially as they apply them to new situations.  We get better at writing when we write.  We get better at solving problems when we solve problems.
• Find Engaging Tasks for Practice: When students are engaged, they are FAR more willing to do their best work.  The pictures above are a perfect example of something I use in the first week of school to establish some of these. (although it could be done at any point in the year!) I also work to find math tasks that invite create solutions and organization rather than “fill in the blanks” so we can talk about how to do that type of work.

I hope this post gives you a little food for thought and some practical strategies to get your students more focused on their work quality–and for you to be able to help coach them to get there!

Here’s a link to that pennant project if you are interested!

Want to read a little more about growth mindset?  Check out THIS POST!

How about a great math freebie to help you practice quality work in math?

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