Overview
Focus on: the teaching of recitations that accompany large lectures
- A recitation is a small, instructor- or TA-led class that accompanies a large lecture and focuses on reviewing, practicing, and discussing the lecture material.
Important things before the main course:
- Don’t follow advice that makes you really uncomfortable—you need to be relaxed to be effective. But shy teachers sometimes have to push themselves a little.
- If things are sometimes diffcult. Remember that you are not solely and personally responsible for the success or failure of your students.
- You have resources to help you improve as a teacher and the most important are your colleagues.
1. The Glass Wall: Encouraging Interaction
Glass wall: an invisible barrier where the instructor is actively explaining, but students remain passive and unengaged, with little real interaction happening between them.
How to break the glass wall:
- Get them thinking:
- Get their mental sap flowing, starting with easy questions.
- Give them a typical mistake and ask what the error is.
- Give them a few minutes to work in a small group, while you can walk around and giving individual help.
KEY IDEA:
- Prepare Questions
- Communication 101: look, listen, say, write
- Ask them to write down their thoughts about recitation anonymously
Problems you may face during interaction:
Peer-group pressure: Students may be afraid of saying something that will make them look foolish in front of the others
- you can help a lot by being supportive of wrong answers and non-responses:
- That’s not exactly correct, Jennifer, but you’re on the right track.
- That’s a mistake everyone makes. I’m actually glad you made it because it gives me a chance to clear up a common confusion.
- Don’t worry, Bill, I know it’s hard to get in gear.
Student time-delay: Students may won’t get them prepare for the recitation
- give a very simple short weekly quiz that anyone can do after having looked at the week’s readings.
- Students can grade each other’s papers and gain additional insight that way, since you will be discussing common mistakes.
The Steamroller: a teaching style where the instructor rushes through too much prepared material as a fast lecture, overwhelming students instead of engaging them.
- It’s better to have a less tense atmosphere. To decide on your priorities—what you want to be sure to do, and what you can let go if there isn’t time.
Something amiss in your basic communication skills.
- Problems:
- never looking at the students
- don’t listen to students’ questions
- a teacher whose voice makes concentration diffcult
- a teacher who never writes anything down
- Communication 101: look, listen, say, write
2. Questions: Theirs and Yours
Provide the platform for private questions: students may be afraid to ask questions in front of the whole class, in case it turns out to be a “dumb” question.
Make the question publich, to guarantee everyone’ve understood it, (and give yourself sometime to think about how to answer it):
- Did everybody hear that? Would you repeat it, Susan?
- That’s a good question, Joe. Do you mind if I repeat it for the beneft of the back row?
- Let me see if I understand what you’re asking.You want to know (blah, blah)…Have I got that right?
- Does everyone understand the question now?
- I’ll bet others of you were wondering about that point,
The art of Bluff: in case you can’t answer the question:
- I’m not going to answer this question directly, since I think it would be a good exercise for you to fgure it out yourselves after I talk about something closely related.
- We’ll be coming to that later in the course; we’ll talk about it then.
- That sort of thing won’t be on your next exam, so I’m not sure it would be proftable to spend time in class on it.
- That’s a good question; can anybody help Susan with it?
- Hmm…I don’t see how to answer that right now. Does anyone have a suggestion? (long, long pause) Well, it looks like we’re stuck. Let me think about it and I’ll talk about it next period (or I can see you in my offce, Tom, before then if you’d like).
To inspire more questions
- “are-you-with-me” Questions:
- Now we need the expression for XXX; what is it?”
- more serious questions:
- What would be the next step?
- What would happen if xxx?
- If we increased this value, how would that affect the answer?
- Prepare-ahead questions
Then maybe hit intot a discussion:
- What do you all think of that last comment?
- Summarizing what was said so far…
- We seem to agree at least on this
- Does someone have a point that hasn’t been covered so far?
4. A Word About Pedagogy
To present an abstract idea—a general formula, a general law, a theorem—a good way is to present in order (The sandwich method for general principles):
- An easy example illustrating the principle
- The general statement and explanation of the principle
- A harder example using the principle
6. Off to a Good Start
Learning names:
- There’s magic in a name. Knowing your students’ names will tell them you are interested in them as individuals and will help interaction.
- Use the names in class: You can ask the students to give their frst names (that’s all they ever give) whenever they speak for the frst week or two.
7. Basic Communication Skills
Communication in your class will be by ears and eyestalking and listening, writing and looking.
- Eye Contact: Look at the students while doing this!” Look over students’ shoulders as they work at their seats
- Listening: try responding to a question with a question
- Q1: I couldn’t get problem 22 on page 263, could you work it?
- A1: Did you have trouble getting started, or did you get stuck somewhere in the middle? Or was it that you didn’t get the answer in the back of the book?
- Q2: Is the gyroscope important?
- A2: Important in physics, or the real world, or for the exam next Wednesday?