Group items tagged

"Rechtschaffen (2014) notes that "Students are told to pay attention a thousand times in school, but rarely are they taught how" (p.10), and we have observed that before our focusing activities students generally seemed distracted, stressed, and irritated. After the focusing activity, their posture became more relaxed and they seemed more receptive to learning."

If you start your classes with a review of the previous class, remember that "the person who does the work does the learning." Maybe that's an opportunity for a low-stakes oral presentation!

Different disciplinary pedagogies are fascinating; they always make me imagine how they might apply to other classrooms. The individual steps in the OMP process will look familiar to most teachers - but have you ever thought of them as a sequence to accomplish in one minute?

We complain about students' distractability, but what can we do in the classroom to practice holding focus?

In a hyperactive age and an academic culture which tends to reward quick thinking, how can we model the process of slowing down to notice details and let ideas form? Most faculty are aware of the importance of not always calling on the most eager students; this article suggests 7 other kinds of pauses which you could introduce in your classes to give students room to mull over the topic.

This 2008 blog post from a mathematician at Dickinson College is the best summary of my thoughts on curving grades that I have ever come across. Other than the fact that there is more math in here, this is what I think of whenever my students ask me "Do you curve your exams?" Moreover, his discussion on assigning grades includes formulas that can be pasted into either Google Docs or Excel that will generate letter grades based on splits that you can set to your liking. (Note: I have my own blog post about this where I explain these formulas in a bit more detail. Just copy and paste the following link into your browser: https://cip.kenyon.edu/hells-bells-not-question-again-and-formulas-assigning-grades.)

What do you do to mark the beginnings and endings of classes? I took a class in grad school which started with 5 minutes of reviewing the news relevant to libraries, books, or reading... or Elvis, because the prof was a big Elvis fan and wanted to lighten the tone a bit. It worked as an engaging ritual, marking the transition into the class.

This "stoplight" method for end of class assessment is an interesting take on the "minute paper" or having students identify the "muddiest point".

Three interesting, and very different, tips for ways to use the moments before class. Which resonates most with you - building relationships, displaying context, or "creating a sense of wonder"?

"In writing, as in learning, openings matter. Don't fritter them away." 4 ways you can use the opening of class to help students transition their attention into your course, from James Lang.

I like James Lang's movie example here - how can you keep students "on the edge of their seat" to find out what happens in the final minutes of a class period?

I've noticed this as a weak spot in my own workshops. Small assessment exercises can give a lot more clarity than a roomful of blank stares (or worse, one right answer).

I was particularly interested by the finding that mind wandering which is related to the subject may actually be good for learning - if you ask the questions which encourage the students to wander that way.

What if you asked students to answer an open-ended question as a way of taking attendance? "When we trace back the meaning of attend through Old French (atendre) to its Latin root (attendere), we can see that when we attend, we are "stretching our mind toward" something. The attendance question gets students to pay attention through inviting them to stretch their minds toward a question which has no right answer."

Terrific ideas about using music and writing as an opening section of every class. This weaves a lot of threads together, from writing and class preparation to the role of rituals in attention.