Action: Common issues that may arise during classroom discussions and suggestions for how to deal with them No one is talking or it is hard to get people talking. Craft your discussion prompt carefully (see related tips). Put your discussion prompt on the screen or write it on the board. Give students some private think […]
Action: Before giving students an assignment or as a first day exercise, ask students to write about what they value or what is meaningful to them in their life as a whole (e.g. spending time with their family and friends). Reason: David Kirp summarized in a New York Times article that after doing this exercise, […]
Action: When providing critiques orally or in writing, tell students that you have high expectations and believe that they can meet them. Reason: David Kirp in a New York Times article summarized an article by Cohen, Steele, & Ross (1999) “when an English teacher critiqued black male adolescents’ papers, she added a sentence stating that […]
Action: Ask students to make a list of all the ways an upcoming task could go well and how it might benefit them. Inform them that recent research suggests that arousal doesn’t hurt performance and can even help performance. Suggest that they say the phrase “I am excited” out loud to themselves three times. Reason: […]
Action: Common problems that arise in group work and relevant strategies: One person in the group suggests ideas for how to tackle a problem, but others keep ignoring that person’s ideas. Remind students that arriving at well-grounded idea requires that they take everyone’s proposal seriously by incorporating or offering critiques of the proposal. Time spent […]
Action: Ask students to create an annotated bibliography of 5-8 articles on a particular topic in which Each annotation is no more than 100-250 words Explains the authors’ views Explains how the authors’ views relate to one another Explains how the authors’ views relate to the student’s own views Reason: This work can help students […]
Action: Pick a sufficiently narrow topic or term and ask students to: identify 3 articles that are likely to be relevant to that topic list which database(s) they used and why they found those databases appropriate list their search terms provide the bibliographic information, properly formatted, for all 3 articles Build on the former activity […]
Action: Assign students to lead class discussions to provide leadership opportunity for students and to more fully engage all students in the discussion. Ask students to share their plan for the discussion either in-person or in writing. Provide resources to students for leading effective discussions. Pomona faculty member Jon Moore has shared syllabus excerpts describing […]
Action: Ask presentation attendees to summarize the key points of the presentation. Use this as feedback and/or evaluation of the presentation. Or have attendees fill out a rubric. You can create a rubric for attendees to complete based upon the example rubrics provided in a related tip. Reason: Discovering whether or not attendees understood the […]
Action: Complete a rubric while listening to students’ oral presentations. Examples: Environmental Analysis – Oral Presentation Rubric shared by Char Miller. Oral Objections Reply Rubric shared by Julie Tannenbaum. Senior Experimental Thesis Presentation Rubric shared by the Molecular Biology Department at Pomona. Reason: Rubrics can help you increase consistency when evaluating many presentations. […]