Most of Bean's small group tasks in chapter 9 could be incorporated into a composition course, and I think his book is a great resource for ideas to use in class. One of the challenges of teaching college composition is how best to use the class time for a course that is structured around three assignments-- obviously you want the class time to help prepare them for completing those assignments, but how much actually needs to be done, and what sorts of activities will actually key in on helping with the formal assignments?
In developing my lesson plans for my first essay, I'm trying to consider many things. First, what will help them to be better prepared for the formal writing. Second, what have I seen done in other college composition courses-- a day for peer review, a week for individual conferences--those sorts of things. Third, what skills that the formal writing is requiring should be given more class time-- not just for the benefit of writing the paper, but to better prepare the student for other college classes (which is, I think, one of the goals of college comp). For example, spending time on quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing not only helps with writing the formal essay, it also can help students to become better readers for other classes, so activities that help to improve their reading skills can be a great benefit.
Considering these questions is helping me to focus on what the classes should do, but also could do. After that, I think an important thing to consider is variety, and trying to engage the class in the material in some way. As Donna suggested last class, not every activity needs to be a group activity, and it certainly seems that having a variety of activities-- some full class discussions, some group activities, the rare, but focused, lecture-- is key to keeping the class from becoming stale and boring for both students and instructor alike. That's why I like Bean's suggestions, most of which could be adapted for our purposes, but each activity suggesting a slightly different approach.
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2 comments:
Darren,
I agree that the class should be a well-balanced mixture of group activities, discussions, and lectures. I remember my Freshman year as an undergrad being primarily filled with lecture and survey courses. I was lucky enough to have tested out of a lot of the lwoer-level courses in my minor, and the Honors program helped, but it really says something that my favorite course that year was Advanced Calculus.
The reason I plan to use discussions and group work to the extent of my patience and creativity is that most of these students will be in similar lecture and survey courses. If this is the smallest course they are taking, and if they are never asked to contribute to other courses, I want to give them that opportunity as something to enjoy.
This is an excellent articulation of the class-planning process. Thanks, Darren, for such an excellent synthesis of the many factors involved in the process!
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