Teaching Strategies

From UCSB English Department Knowledge Base

Welcome to the English Department Knowledge Base at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The EDKB Wiki is a database that makes available the various interests, talents, and resources of the English Department community. See the Main Page to learn more about the EDKB. The wiki does not offer information on current course offerings, nor is it a comprehensive archive of materials related to all past courses. Visit the English Department home page for this type of information.

This compilation of teaching strategies was adapted from existing department materials by Zia Isola in Summer 2003.

See also TAs as Teachers: A Handbook for Teaching Assistants at UCSB, TA Teaching Tips, and TA-ing for a Large Class at the Office of Instructional Consultation's website.

Contents 1 Leading a Good Discussion: An Overview 2 Tips on Developing Your Teaching Style 3 Teaching Strategies to Adapt and Vary 3.1 Discussion 3.2 Group Work 3.3 Using Documents 3.4 Focusing on the Text 3.5 Brainstorming 3.6 In-Class Writing 3.7 Using Gimmicks 3.8 Short Assignments 3.9 Emphasizing Student Perspectives

[edit] Leading a Good Discussion: An Overview

It is hard to generalize about what makes a discussion section good. Certainly, neither one person nor one point of view should dominate the classroom. The TA should allow the class to develop a range of interpretive positions, which maintain their relevance to specific intellectual goals. To achieve this the TA needs to envision the conceptual and organizational structures that will best work to foster the delicate balance between freedom and a sense of direction. Your prefatory remarks and the way you ask questions define a conceptual framework that can either enable or inhibit students' thinking. In addition, the organizational structures or procedures you choose will significantly determine how successfully the discussion explores the issues.

[edit] Tips on Developing Your Teaching Style

• Define your objectives at the beginning of section.
• Make eye contact with your students.
• Don't hide behind a desk, podium, or briefcase.
• Use the classroom space in a variety of ways.
• Move around and use gestures to stimulate interest.
• Use visual aids or other tools to maintain student interest.
• Learn the students' names as soon as possible.
• Do not be afraid to admit that you do not know an answer.
• Do not hesitate to repeat difficult material.
• Do not label students bright, slow, disinterested, etc.
• Praise students (either individually or as a group) when they do good work.
• Vary your lesson plans throughout the quarter. See what works best for you.

After years of training, students have become masters at detecting their instructors' attitudes and opinions, and they are constantly on the lookout for what their TA really wants. As much as possible, try to make your students feel that you appreciate their ideas as well as their participation.

[edit] Teaching Strategies to Adapt and Vary

The following list combines general guidelines for using particular classroom activities with examples of ways you can incorporate these activities into your classroom. These strategies are intended to help TA's develop lesson plans over the course of the quarter. When designing your lesson plans, be sure to prepare more than enough material to fill a 50-minute discussion section. Also, remember that using any one strategy every time you teach--or even repeating the same exercise or discussion pattern more than two or three times over a ten-week period--is a recipe for disaster, because it can cause your students to lose interest. Taking into account the kinds of exercises you find most helpful and are most comfortable doing (as well as the kinds of things that seem to work best, which may vary tremendously from one group of students to the next), try to maintain variety in your lesson plans and be as creative as you can. What works for one TA or group of students may not work so well with another, so try to stay as flexible as possible. Finally, remember that a successful lesson plan will combine several strategies mentioned below.

[edit] Discussion

• Provide students with a catalyst that will then necessitate discussion. For example, give a controversial reading of a passage in the text at hand or play devil's advocate on a given issue.
• Ask students open-ended questions that do not have simple or univocal answers. Giving the students enough time to think or even to write notes on the question may help create a richer discussion environment.
• Ask students to analyze a particularly rich passage on the overhead projector.
• Bring in as many of the students as possible. If absolutely necessary, ask students questions point blank or go around the room and ask everyone to address a short question.
• Arrange the class so as to facilitate discussion. Putting desks in a circle or asking students to divide the class in two halves facing each other may help.
• Move around during discussion to keep students on their toes. Use all of the classroom space. Write on more than one chalkboard. Use multimedia equipment. Any change that will create a dynamic environment will help to create an interactive, vocal student discussion.
• Prepare weekly study questions that can also serve as a basis for discussion, exam preparation, and ideas for paper topics. Distribute the questions in lecture before the section meets or at the beginning of section as a lesson outline the students can follow.
• Require students to submit questions a day or two before section meetings so that you can compile an agenda for sections that will address their main concerns.
• Begin discussion by asking students what their questions are and writing them on the board. Let the students try to answer the questions themselves, and try to address all the solicited questions.

[edit] Group Work

• Use group work as a complement to discussion because it allows students to interact in smaller, less intimidating groups before trying out an idea on the whole class.
• Make sure that the students have a clear idea of the tasks they are to accomplish before they divide into groups. Let them know what the purpose of the activity is.
• Make sure that the groups are small enough to allow all students to participate.
• Turn group work into a form of subtle competition, such as preparation for a debate.
• Give students an opportunity to perform characters in the text or opposing sides of an issue.
• Brainstorm five possible arguments that might be made about a text and write them on the board. Break the class into five groups and ask them each to find textual support and elaboration for one argument. Have each group report on their findings and find possible relationships between the arguments.
• Require teams of students to meet with you and help lead one section meeting or do an oral report during the quarter. Use small teams so that all members will have to participate.
• Give students an exercise that involves making a list, a chart, or another kind of visual representation. Assign each group to one area of the board to write on or give them an overhead sheet and pen. Have them present their visual image to the rest of the class.
• Rather than allowing students to choose their own groups, try different ways of breaking them up, e.g., different colored handouts, numbering off, etc. Students often feel compelled to return to the same groups, and this will give them the opportunity to meet and talk with new people.

[edit] Using Documents

• Use historical material such as timelines, biographical sketches, and historical context.
• Give out question sheets at the end of the previous section or lecture. Students are then able to come to section with prepared answers or thoughts on the subject.
• Distribute definition sheets if the students are having trouble defining concepts or theoretical terms.
• Use relevant contemporary criticism or theory. For example, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy might help illuminate Hamlet's behavior and Denmark's response to Hamlet in a Shakespeare class.
• Use relevant related materials. For example, passages from the Bible may be helpful in a Milton class.
• Illustrating to students the wide variety of ways to read a text by introducing interesting secondary criticism about the text in question. For example, Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s work on Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God might help students become more sophisticated readers.
• Incorporate theoretical material to help students learn to read literary criticism and relate it to primary texts. A few pages of Foucault's Discipline and Punish may illuminate Kafka's "The Penal Colony."

[edit] Focusing on the Text

• Select excerpts from the text that have not been previously addressed and ask students to relate them to issues presented by the professor in lecture.
• Ask students to focus on interpreting controversial or ambiguous passages with role playing. Have students "perform" a poem, put a character on trial, put a couple in divorce court, or organize a debate of crucial issues, etc.
• Ask students to direct a close reading and interpretation of a passage on the overhead projector.

[edit] Brainstorming

• Let students make associations and record them on the board. For example, begin a class on Shakespeare by having students brainstorm contemporary situations that are like those presented in the text. Do not limit them to literature.
• Begin section by asking students to cast contemporary actors for the movie production of a text. Make sure you have them explain the rationale behind their choices.
• Ask student to brainstorm on possible topics in preparation for paper assignments. Have the students address the topics with possible thesis statements and textual support for their arguments.
• Put an excerpt of a volunteer's paper or exam on the overhead projector and brainstorm about its strengths and weaknesses and different approaches to the same question. Be sure you have the student's permission or use her or his work anonymously.

[edit] In-Class Writing

• Ask students to draft a potential thesis for a paper on the given text, individually or in groups, for the first ten minutes. As a class, discuss them and their possible combinations or pitfalls. This forces students to think about what is really important in a text and it gives them practice in formulating thesis statements.
• Prepare a handout that juxtaposes some crucial passages in interesting ways. Have students read and mark key spots in the text and then freewrite about them before discussion. This allows quieter students to format responses before discussions begin and it permits for more complex connections.
• Write a question or perhaps an outrageous critical claim about the text on the board, and have students freewrite about it before beginning discussion.
• Try starting the section by asking students to write for five minutes on a passage or on the text as a whole. Then ask students to read each other's responses aloud, instead of their own (anonymity seems to help).
• Stop and ask students to write about the topic at hand if discussion is lagging. Writing may give them time to make breakthroughs or come up with a more productive direction to follow.

[edit] Using Gimmicks

• Be sure to use "gimmicks" that are directly relevant to the material at hand. Gimmicks are useful ways to begin a discussion or jump-start a lagging section.
• Bring in examples from pop culture (e.g., magazine ads, television programs, recent movies, examples from entertainment news) to exemplify your points.
• Bring in newspaper articles that relate to the course.
• Bring in videos.
• Have the class videotaped (compliments of Instructional Development's TA Development Program), if not to review your teaching style than to integrate the taping into some class format. For example, if the class is studying Macbeth, suggest that the discussion for that day is a televised trial of Macbeth for murder.
• Ask a silly question of the class, such as "Which actor would you ask to play Adam in the movie version of Paradise Lost?"
• Incorporate relevant personal experiences and contemporary examples into the discussion. This can be helpful to students, particularly if they need help remembering a concept or if they are feeling frustrated with an assignment or a text.
• Use humor in the classroom--but never at a student's expense.

[edit] Short Assignments

• Have students keep journals in which they respond to their reading assignments. To avoid the time-consuming task of reading them all, announce that you will randomly call on students to share their journal ideas and questions with the class.
• Use short quizzes as an effective way to determine how well the students understand the material and to focus their attention. To secure more involvement, some TA's get the students to provide the bulk of the quiz questions (you have to be quick at sorting and tailoring questions to do this).

[edit] Emphasizing Student Perspectives

• Start section by asking students how they feel about the text. (Even negative responses can be provocative starting points for a discussion of a text.)
• Refer students to each other. Questions such as "Do you agree with what X said?" and "X, how would you defend your statement in light of Y's counter-argument?" help students to talk to each other, rather than filtering their remarks through you. Your job here can be to point out how one student's remark relates to another.
• Bring in a short critical article, poem, video clip, etc., which students can process quickly and which expands on lecture, complicates lecture, or illustrates an alternative interpretation. Then ask students to develop their own perspective in light of the variety of interpretations being addressed.