Repeating the repeats

Tuesday again and another day of repeats.  This one was a mixed bag.  Some success some failures.

For all of my classes I am using the same worksheet for the writing assignment.  I have no idea how well they write, so it is also a way to gauge where they are as students.  I used the two examples on the paper as speaking practice as well, first in PW/GW and also for class instruction.  Most classes went wild on the paper and talked about everything.  High energy, lots of interaction, good feedback about their ability as well. 

There were only two problems with this.  The first was that it took up a lot of time.  I should have been teaching them from the book but instead I taught them how to write.  I think this is worth it, but it has put us further back, and we will have to cram book stuff later in the week.  The other problem is that today one class just shut down. They were the business majors.  The business majors exhibit a totally different attitude than the other classes.  They are quiet and completely resist almost all GW and will rarely share answers.  They are also deeply stratified and have the widest divergence of skill and sit accordingly (oddly, even the best students in this class seem worse then students in my lower level classes).  They remain hierarchical and gendered.  Those in the front try to dominate while some in the back only use non-verbal communication.  This will require some intervention.

Otherwise, things went well.  I am aware of my tendency to use IRF and have been trying to leave the F more open with follow up questions, passing it to other students, or any other strategy. I managed to resist the temptation to give direct correction to errors by using different ways to get a correct answer with varying success.  The best response seems to depend on the student.  I have also tried to model GW questions and answers better with a few students before having students do GW.  Overall, the changes seem to be working.  I noticed students have responded more to non-verbal cues (like hand raising and answering in complete sentences) and generally seem better acclimated to class and the expectations of classroom behavior.  (The major exception being the business majors).

Another point of note involves some professional feedback in the office.  Some other teachers were working out the subtle differences between "overachiever" and "workaholic" to teach as a definition.  I discussed the success I had breaking the words down, and explaining the meaning of "over~" and "~holic".  Breaking the words into pieces worked great and students were instantly able to make new words like "shopaholic" and to understand words they had never heard of before, like "chocoholic".  Knowledge spreads.