During the 2018-19 fall semester, TMP worked with a teacher at AISD on a course to help her students plan a large project she needed them to do for her master’s degree. She had us come in and show them how to break down this project into smaller pieces so that each piece was more manageable (among other things). The real challenge was that this course was being taught to 5th graders, not high school students as one might expect. As the class progressed we asked the students questions to see how they were comprehending the information and the results were exciting. We were getting through to them and by the time we finished, the students were noticeably more relaxed and confident about successfully completing their project.
The refined course is now called Breaking Down Large Projects and is offered this spring semester as a free course in our Thinking Out of the Box series. Teachers have enough to do with planning these projects and making sure the students are progressing. No need to reinvent the wheel and come up with a course to teach their students how to break down these projects when TMP can come in and do it for free. The added benefit of having TMP come in to teach the course is that now teachers have extra class time to prepare their other lessons.