Teaching Reflection: Spring 2017

Teaching Level: 1
Experience: 0 Semesters
Spells: 0
Charisma: 16
Wisdom: 8
Intelligence: 12

Things could have been a good deal worse than they were this year. I had a very understanding, mature class who took my ineptitudes in stride. They were 18-25 (rather than the 18-20 I expected in a freshman comp class), with a few older outliers. I had four advanced ESL students – Korean, Spanish, French, and Russian – who were more than kind when it came to figuring out disconnects in language and usage. I had a few late adds who worked out, and one who didn’t, and I do not need to punish myself for my inability to save his grade. [[He chose not to show up to class and learn how to write better, and he waited until the last three weeks of class to ask for a rewrite on the Literacy Narrative, and waited a week to turn in the Micro-Ethnography knowing full well it would impact his grade. I will not blame myself. I saved three other students. I cannot save them all, and should not bend over backwards for those who don’t care enough to be saved. I will not blame myself.]] Since the class was so late in the evening, attendance wasn’t the greatest, and more than once the class asked to leave early (and a few who left early anyway when I said no).

Things that went well:

• The Grammar Presentations
  • The kids seemed to learn a lot – research, teaching, and listening to peers made a huge difference in the grammar errors in their writing.
  •  I think I’ll do groups of 3 next time around.
    • Nearly every class had a grammar lesson (consistency is good), but it took up too much class time we needed later on in the semester.
    • Not every partner put in the work necessary to get the grade
  • To that end, I’ll have each group member fill out a “How hard did your partners work” survey that will contribute to their grades. I’ll also grade individually, rather than on group performance.
  • I will most definitely organize the selection process the same way
    • Give the class a few minutes to find their groups
    • Those groups then decide which topic they want
    • I’ll call out the name of the project and assign each group a date
      • If there’s more than one group per topic, we will draw lots
  • I’ll do better about assigning the projects on days we won’t be covering as much material now that I know about how much time each topic will take.
  • Fewer groups means fewer days spent without those 15 minute blocks.
  • I’ll keep the “game” aspect, too
    • It keeps the class engaged
• Daily Writing
  • Grading the kids on daily writing projects made a difference in their grades, and it gives me hardcopy proof they were/not in class (not that I’ve yet run into that sort of issue, but it’s nice to be prepared).
  • Coming up with topics more suited to the day’s lesson is important
    • Once I figure out my new syllabus, I’ll figure those up
  • Giving feedback is the hard part (since I had three classes this year).
    • I only have 1.5 coming up, so this shouldn’t be as much of an issue
  • Grading: Still keeping the pass/fail.
  • I used the DW grades as attendance
    • Made an Excel sheet with names and dates organized for 1pp printouts
    • I’ll cut out the letter system since that was an extra step. I’ll do check marks for attendance, and keep the L (half credit) for my own records, but I’ll enter 100/50/0 in the computer.
    • I’ve got to figure out if it’s easier to input grades weekly into iCollege, or if my midterm and final average system is more efficient.
• Scripting
  • I actually only lectured for about 10 minutes a day on average, and mostly it was guiding discussion in readings and tying them into writing projects.
  • I’d like to continue keeping lecturing to a minimum. My voice gets tired, and clearly my class was more engaged once we moved into group discussions.
  • Now that, again, I know what I’m getting into, I can better script my classes.
  • I’m going to keep making up talking points for classes, and adjusting them based on previous classes, since it gives me a place to touch base and make sure we cover everything for the day.
• Library Scavenger hunt
  • While there were a LOT of problems with this project (since I borrowed it straight from Bradley), I want to keep the concept itself.
    • We had a very hands-on learning process in the library, and the best way to really learn a thing is to dive right in.
    • We’ll need a few minutes crash course in using the website, since 95% of my students hadn’t used it yet.
    • I’m still not sure whether to do that crash course in the class previously. I think I might, to give them a chance to play around with it the night before.
    • We’ll meet directly in the library at a prearranged spot so we don’t lose time travelling. They need every bit of class time to find all the parts.
    • I’ll need to decide whether to keep the “visual” aspect of the project – that will come with deciding on a research theme and scaffolding around it.

Things I will improve on

• Scaffolding
  • Now that I actually have some idea of what it is and how useful it is, I’m going to spend time working out how best to structure my course to take advantage of it.
  • I’m going to spend some time this summer doing research as if I were an undergrad, and decide the best topic – be it visual or otherwise.
  • Once that topic is centered, I’ll see how well it fits into the other projects we have to do for 1101, and see if we can incorporate the theme into those papers, which means less work for them come research time.
  • Too, I need to figure out a way to help them understand how Lit Narr’s and Micro-Ethnographies fit into the Research process, so they don’t feel like they’re wasting their time and put more effort into those papers.
• Grading
  • I have got to get better at grading, using rubrics, and getting grades back in a timely manner.
  • I LOVE the rubric maker in Turnitin. I’ve downloaded my current rubrics, and I’m going to edit them for next year.
• Sample vs Example Essays
  • I am not using “Three wheeled fruit vendor” for a sample essay. The students who used the article as an example did not analyze nearly as well as I knew they could.
    • I’m also going to rework my handout for ME. I need to cut it way down.
  • I need example essays to use for workshops in grammar and style. Giving the kids examples made a huge difference, but it was too little too late.
  • I need to emphasize whether the essay I present them is a sample/model that they can cannibalize for structure, or an example that they should take content/style from, but not cannibalize.
• Argument Essay
  • We needed much, much more time to go over argumentation and research.
  • Because we lost so much time with my floundering (and grammar projects), we didn’t have time to work on how to better an argument, the varying types of arguments, and how to find insights within your arguments.
  • I also accidentally taught MLA 7^th edition first, and had to re-teach 8^th, which confused them. Now that I know 8^th is a thing, I’m teaching that first off.
  • I need to work out a better argument structure – as much as “movie reviews” was popular, only a few of them got beyond “I like this” into “This is good because”.
  • I need to spend an entire day working on good thesis construction, and discuss how reworking a thesis throughout the writing process is a good thing.
• We may need to cover that sooner than argumentation, especially if I want the other essays to be more objective.
• I also need to work on a better Peer Review worksheet, since they’re still not editing for content well. Maybe have a day of “here’s how to better peer-review” workshop.
• TIME MANAGEMENT needs to be a thing.