Hi ladies. Hope everyone had a great week!
I. Open floor
II. Next week (September 26-30)
i. Monday: Intros, conclusions, arranging/integrating points; Outlines
ii. Wednesday: Interviewing
iii. Readings
iv. Friday: Guest Speaker
III. Lecture time/Lecture material check-in
I. Any thoughts, questions and/or concerns relevant to last week’s material? How did the library session go for everyone? My students actually LIKED it. They walked away saying that they weren’t as knowledgable about the library system as they thought and that they learned a lot from the library aides.
II. i. This is an important lecture. If the students grasp the major concepts in the material, they will craft polished outlines, which (usually) lead to polished rough drafts and polished final drafts. While this is no “right” way to do any outline (since people organize their thoughts in a variety of ways), the example provided in the lecture slides is a great one for the students to follow. Please emphasize to your students that no matter what the style of their outlines, they should: (1) be at least one page in length (3) have a clear and consistent organizational structure (4) demonstrate that they have put some thought into their chosen topic and relevant subtopics (5) be turned in with a APA style bibliography sheet w/5 (potential) sources. These outlines are due a week from Monday (Oct 3) and are worth 25 points. Last semester we students’ outlines using the following criteria: thesis statement (5 pts), organization (5 pts), spelling/grammar (5pts), five sources in APA format, overall style and development (5 pts).
ii. There is a lot of “common sense” advice in this lecture (ex. dress nice, show up on time) but it’s all worth repeating. It’s worth emphasizing the importance of the query email that students’ will send out to potential interviewees. Remind them that this is a formal email to an academic/professional, so proper style and grammar is necessary.
iii. As always, I won’t tell you how to incorporate Monday and Wednesday’s readings into the lectures, but please try to do so. I had a lot of success last week breaking the students into small groups and giving each group a question relevant to the readings to answer to the entire class.
iv. Vidal Quvedo will be our guest speaker. For the past three years, he has served as Manager of Online Communications for CALS. He has recently been promoted to serve in the same position for the entire university. Vidal was a guest speaker last semester, and he spoke about his time in LSC and some of his current work responsibilities and projects. He’s going to give a similar talk this semester.
III. Just a check in: How is each of you doing with time? Are you (generally) finishing class early, on time, or not having enough time to finish the material?
Enjoy your evening!
Camille
The students appeared to get some useful material out of the library session, which several even lingering after class to finish grabbing info.
ReplyDeleteI have been getting through the lectures but some days I feel a little more rushed than others. Something to consider for future: ! like that grammar started first as a mechanics baseline, but I'd also like just a little more time in this session to do some group work on basic writing mechanics. We talk about beginnings, endings, etc. It would be nice to have the time for them to practice a little without feeling like I'm skipping too much of the slides. I kind of want to give them an exercise that will really explore collecting information from three sources, (provided) pulling it together into an opening paragraph and giving them the opportunity to use different styles to launch into it (chronology, anecdote, etc.) That's the kind of project that really takes half a period and then they would miss something else important. Just something to consider for the next go-round :-)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9863667?fb=native
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering, too, whether something like this article and the one I posted below about "electricity" might not be instructive in the early part of discussing the science in science writing.
The library session went well - I have a pretty big class and it seemed like the librarian was rushed for time, so I didn't get a chance to talk to the whole class afterwards. I'll be able to check in with them today.
ReplyDeleteI have some of the same concerns as Meg. On some of the powerpoints, there is a lot of information, which is naturally the information the students should grasp at the end of lecture. However, because some of the powerpoints are so information-dense, if I stick to the information on the slides, I find there is limited time to do any learning exercises/activities or hold discussions. Can I be more flexible with the powerpoints? I feel like it’s difficult for the students to listen to a long lecture, especially with lots of technical information, but if I have to get through all the powerpoint information to the letter, with some lectures that seems like an inevitable outcome.
Like Meg, I think some more hands-on activities would be really useful. I'd be interested in hearing feedback about that!
I agree with comments above--it's good to hear others' experiences! I am definitely feeling like I'm rushing through the Powerpoints, and not leaving any time for discussion or activities during class. I've heard other TAs express this about 50 minute classes, so I'm sure it's normal, but any way that we can mix the lectures up with interactive activities REALLY helps.
ReplyDeleteRe: last week's material, I thought some of the content about selecting and integrating credible sources gets a little redundant, and I feel like I would kind of skip over it if we'd gone into enough detail. But I'm afraid makes the students feel like the slides aren't worthwhile... Maybe we could condense those a bit? Let me know if you want me to take a stab at that.
My library session was good--I think those are so helpful and I always emphasize to the students they should really take advantage of the information they get. Hopefully they do!
So... when I was going over the topic approval forms, I found that a lot of my students don't really get that their paper should be informative, and not persuasive. Or, they don't really grasp the difference. Did anyone else find this was the case? I might just go over it with them in class, but it might be helpful to have a more concrete discussion/lecture about it? Does anyone else experience this?
Hope everyone had a nice weekend!
I agree with the comments above, too!
ReplyDeleteI had the same experience, Heather, with topic approval forms. I've emphasized a few times that this is informative, and not persuasive, but I'm concerned that they still might not make the distinction in their writing. I agree that a more concrete discussion/lecture would be helpful--and much more effective if done now.