AY 300 - Fall 2011: Second Day Lesson Plan

Today's class will continue to discuss the previous boot camp's discussion and talk more about first-day sections.

If group organization is possible: To continue to break the ice, sit with new group members for every activity/discussion. Start with some people you didn't meet yesterday.

Since we are in B-1, just sit next to someone who was not in your group yesterday.

• (5 min) Remind ourselves of the main points from yesterday.
  1. Paper airplane activity: keep in mind students' previous knowledge, your and their vocabulary, the clarity of your instructions
  2. Syllabus: concise, contain contact info, purpose of section, relevant policies (homework etc.)
  3. Basic outline for 1st day
• Introduce role of second day bootcamp.
  1. Discuss together the syllabi and lesson plans
  2. Start talking about effective group work
• Typically we will start with some sort of section recap, where one of you will be assigned to initiate the discussion. But for now, we can open the floor for general questions regrading the course, general fears, etc.

• Our first activity will be to discuss your syllabi with each other.
• Small Groups :
• (6 min.) Compare syllabi
  • Get feedback from at least one other person on your syllabus.
  • Find at least one thing you want to add to your syllabus or one thing you'll consider removing.
• (9 min.) Share your lesson plans with your group or team member.
  • What icebreakers did people use?
  • What introductory material?
  • What kinds of activities can we do?
  • Don't only share activities, but explain why you chose that particular one.
  • Instructors: Wander around and offer comments and suggestions.

• (5 min.) Full class discussion on syllabi and lesson plans
  • Points to hit home:
  • Syllabus: To the point. Does not offer extraneous or superfluous information.
  • Information is relevant for your section.
  • Reinforces the precedents you wish to set.
• Hand in the syllabi, the instructors will make written comments and put them in your astro mailboxes over the next day or so. (Depending on when the second bootcamp day takes place, people might be teaching very soon after the bootcamp).

• Brief class discussion: What are the goods and bads of board work?
• Introduce the activity: You will each go to the board and answer the particular question we give to you. Everyone is allowed to take notes on what they see, goods and/or bads. These notes are for personal use only; they will not be shared with each other. In order to make this less intimidating, only Francesca and Aaron are going to provide feedback, but that will be done offline.
• Please try to complete your explanation in 2-3 minutes.
• Instructors: Take a photograph of the student next to their board work before they sit down. Comment on the board and offer feedback offline.
• Remind and Emphasize:
  • Don't talk to the board too much.
  • Remember to label variables and axes.
  • Write clearly and big.
  • Don't erase too soon.
  • Write from left to right on the board.
  • You might not do a ton of board work in section. But that also means that anything you DO write on the board gets highlighted, starred, and copied verbatim in your students' notes.

• Now we are going to focus on first days.
• Introduce Karto if we have not already.
• Karto is going to run through an example activity you might do on your first day.
• (15 min) “What's in the box” Demo.
• (15 min) Class discussion on what they saw and experienced. What did you get out of the experience? What did you learn? Were there any misconceptions introduced?
• How was group work implemented? We will come back to group work many times in this class. What Karto did is only one way.
• Particular takeaways:
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• Comment on how we expect Ay375 to run from week to week.
• Comment on the assignments in a little more detail.
• Major assignments? What did we say in day 1?

• Remind them they can find additional info on the lesson plan link for each day and use the EBRB for ideas.

• Enroll and complete the GSI Resource Center's Online Ethics Course.
• Deal with computer accounts, if necessary.
• Remind everyone to see Nina Ruymaker (ninanina@berkeley) so that she can see your student ID and get it coded for entry into Evans after hours.
• Have a great first section!

• We will either point you to or make available online lectures given by professors both here at UC Berkeley and elsewhere. Your assignment is to watch two of these lectures and make some notes on the following questions:
  • Was the presentation conducive to learning for you (i.e., were you engaged, did you understand what was being said, were you bored, did you want to keep listening)?
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of each instructor?
  • Of these strengths and weaknesses, which are style and technique?
• Bring these short responses to the next class for discussion.

• You may choose to structure your section a certain way every time, or to do a certain activity every time. For instance:
  • Onsi Fakhouri passes out blank notecards at the beginning of every section and collects them at the end, with students writing comments of any kind on them if they want. (We haven't tried this ourselves but Onsi recommends it highly.)
  • GSIs last year tried doing a quick (1-2 minute) math problem about astronomy or briefly (again 1-2 minutes) discussed a recent astro-related news item.
  • I (Aaron) started each section with an order-of-magnitude type question that tied in concepts from last week's lectures. See my TEA Essay. I have not put these questions on the EBRB yet, but please ask me if you would like copies. Francesca's award winning essay is also on the GSI resource center page.
• If you decide to do something along these lines, do it in the first section and explain to your students what you're doing.
  • Make sure you address this activity explicitly the first few times. “There's a recent news article on your tables which I would like you to read over the next two minutes or so, and then we will discuss.” After a couple sessions, the students will expect this activity and know what to do. (Also, section attendance fluctuates during the first couple weeks. You'll see new faces every week.)
  • Make sure you come prepared with discussion ideas, especially for news items, as they can sometimes fail to evoke the reaction you may have been looking for/expecting.
• Try to treat it as matter-of-factly as possible, even if you just made up some crazy scheme that you've never seen tried before.
  • Whatever you do or try in section, if you're confident about it, then your students will tend to take it seriously and participate (no matter how goofy or out-there it might be).

Here is some more information on peer learning and board work we recommend you read.

Discuss as a class how we incorporated group/peer learning into the discussion section. How would have the section run differently if we did not emphasize group work and instead just lectured? What benefits do you see to group and peer learning? What are the possible pitfalls (and how could you avoid them)?

Here is a lot of great information Josh prepared: There are three basic techniques typically used in section:

Lecture-style review (GSI → student)

• We'll discuss this in detail later today.

Question and answer (GSI ↔ student)

• “Discussion” section means you should be doing at least some of this technique.
• Requires questions.
  • Sometimes there simply are none other than logistics or specific/irrelevant questions.
• Minimal effort involved in preparation, although you can come to section prepared with a few questions to ask your students and turn their answers into a section-wide discussion.

• No control over order or level of questions.
• Review sessions are great if run this way but section rarely seems to work like this.

Group activities (student ↔ student)

• Consists of numerous independent groups working on the same (or similar) tasks.
• Typically guided by a worksheet or handout.
• The GSI is there to make sure that the groups stay on task and keep moving forward without giving away all the answers and without spending all of their time with one or two groups.

• This pushes students to engage in the material and requires them to think and discuss.
• Students will learn from each other and explain concepts to each other.
• Generally works great but does have flaws:
  • Individuals can elect to not participate, endangering the whole idea.
  • Groups can get sidetracked or taken over by someone(s) that are doing everything or nothing and leaving out other group members.
  • Often these flaws can be corrected or at least improved by the GSI walking around and closely monitoring the progress of all groups.

Each of them has their own advantages and disadvantages.

In general, section can and should involve all three elements.

Typically, you will deal with each in order: e.g., deliver a quick recap of lecture and highlight some confusing points. Then, open the floor to any student questions (about the key points, about other topics from lecture, or about general course questions). Finally, when the questions run dry or when you deem that it's time to move on, pass out the worksheet or handout and use the rest of the time in section for an activity.

We will refer to these three basic techniques individually and repeatedly throughout the course and we will both practice and discuss all of them during the semester. However, always keep in mind that the divisions between them are not real and that creativity can reap great rewards.

Combining the Basic Techniques

With that said, of course it is possible to mix and match styles! Examples:

• The Interactive Lecture
  • Like group work but the whole class is one big group you're a group member!
  • Can be used with worksheets and/or demos (often with well-defined fill-in-the-blank questions).
  • Continuously call on a variety of students to explain answers.
  • This style tends to keep all students engaged and on task.

• The Choreographed Group Task
  • e.g., Start off doing problems 1 and 2 at the board (with varying amounts of help/feedback from students). Then have students do 3 and 4 in groups. Do 5 at the board by Q and A, taking responses from the class for each step. Then call on a volunteer to explain 6. Students learn in different ways, and variety is always a good thing.

• A “Q&A” part of section can involve a lot of peer learning, if you get good at enabling the students to answer each other's questions. This requires more sophistication than just asking the smartest student to say the right answer; you have to ask the question in a way such that all of the students have a chance to grapple with the question initially posed. We'll discuss more on how to actually accomplish this in later classes.

Also note that section size and objectives influence the best choice of strategy:

• Large sections – More students to ask more and diverse questions, can have different groups do different tasks (or slightly different versions of the same basic worksheet – to build up an H-R Diagram for example).
• Small sections – easier to connect with the class as a whole, can have the whole class act as one medium-sized group (like the Interactive Lecture).

Discuss how our boardwork ameliorated or hindered learning in the classroom. Why is it important to pay attention to boardwork. Students will copy your boardwork into their notes. Bad boardwork translates into bad notes, confusion, and misunderstanding.

* Break into groups again and come up with answers to the following questions: “What makes for good boardwork? We just discussed the benefits of peer learning over lecturing. Under what circumstances could lecturing be more important than peer learning?”

The following lists good pointers on lecturing and boardwork: * Lecturing is the old-fashioned style of teaching and has been shown to be relatively ineffective at conveying information that students will retain after the course is over (especially in college science courses for non-scientists), but sometimes you have to do it.

• Students usually demand more of this in section on evals! It's usually because they're always scanning for exam hints…
• Unless you genuinely think you're a better lecturer than the professor, go easy on lecturing.
• Lecturing can be useful, but only if done well (which is tough to do).
• When is a good time to lecture? Sometimes it is useful to quickly recap lecture ideas in a weekly recap at the beginning of your discussion section. Here, lecturing can be appropriate. What does this recap entail?
  • Recap key points from the last lecture (almost always a good idea to do this for a few minutes in each section).
  • Hit the key points only. The ratio of course Lecture/Section time is typically 3:1, so it is hopeless to try to be thorough.
  • Address common points of confusion. Anything mathematical often falls in this category - a weekly 'equation review' can be a good idea.
  • If the professor botched explaining something, you can do damage control. (But don't undercut him/her.)
  • Highlight the fun stuff to try to keep them interested. If you find a particular thing cool from the previous lecture, point that out to them. Genuine enthusiasm is infectious. (But don't drone on beyond the scope of the class.)
• Another sometimes helpful use of lecturing is to demonstrate problem solving:
  • Work a problem yourself at the board (usually mathematical).
  • Do either an example problem or a previous homework problem.
  • This is much more common in non-Ay 10 classes. We recommend against extensive use of it in Ay 10.
• Other uses of lecturing are highly limited and quite discouraged. This is discussion section, not an extra lecture.

Never spend more than half an Ay 10 section on this, and only very rarely more than one-quarter. 5-10 minutes (out of 50) is a good goal.

• Get some from the class and write them on the board while demonstrating the mistake.
  • Talking to the board.
  • Not explaining/labeling your symbols or drawings.
  • Writing too small, or too light.
  • Writing too much or too little.
  • Erasing too soon.
  • Anything else?
• Informal assignment: observe your professors (and Ay 300 instructors) and make note of their faults (and strengths!).

• In intro-level classes the GSI typically does not write much on the board. This means that anything you do write is automatically bolded, highlighted, and surrounded by stars in students' minds.
• If you're going to be spending any significant amount of time writing on the board, think before section starts about what you're going to actually put on the board.
• Write at the top of the board what it is that you're talking about (i.e. a title for that chunk of material).
• Start left of center to give yourself room and proceed to write/draw in an orderly fashion.
• A picture is worth a thousand words, but a bad picture can make things oh-so-much worse. Take time to set up your drawings and clearly label anything that should be labeled.
• When using equations, label the terms. Non-science students may still be uncomfortable with symbolic math and are certainly very unlikely to be familiar with our symbol conventions (λ = wavelength, etc.).
• Use multiple colors. (Sensibly though.)
• Bring your own markers or at least check the markers before section starts.
  • Pass out markers now, 2 to each GSI.
• Try to track down a (relatively) clean eraser before section starts.
  • There should be a couple erasers in 264 Evans, but they might not be there or they might be disgustingly dirty. If either of these things are true, let your Head GSI know immediately and they should get new ones (probably from Dexter).
• Take time to check the class' understanding before blazing onward, but do it meaningfully (much more on this later).
• When a topic is complete, draw a big line beneath the last line of material or erase the board to signify that you're moving on to something else.
• Don't feel obligated to use the board if you don't need to.

• Speak relatively slowly and carefully.
• When speaking to the entire class or a large group, speak loudly and clearly so that everyone in the room can easily hear you.
• Enunciate important words and phrases (especially astro jargon – of which there's a lot!).
• Always try to be interactive. Stop and check for understanding. (“If I increase this factor, what happens to this other one?”)
  • Again, more on this later.
• Make eye-contact, with a number of different students, as you speak.
• Use the whole room when talking to the whole class. You can start on one board and move to the other one. (264 Evans has boards on two walls.)
• Always be yourself!!

• This is almost certainly overkill for section.
• However, laptops can be useful for some demos and activities.
• Unfortunately, there is no screen or projector in 264 Evans.
  • The white walls or a whiteboard make an OK screen.
  • There is a portable video projector you can rent from the department. Make a reservation well in advance by going to http://astro.berkeley.edu/resources/campbell/reservations/video.html and contact central@astro if you run into reservation problems.

* Your sections will probably follow a template such as:

• Deal with any administrative details (e.g., HW is due Friday, etc…)
• Very quick recap of lecture: what was important?
• If there are any questions right off the bat, answer them
• The bulk of your section: a peer-learning activity exploring the week's topic
• Show an activity from the Slater worksheet book as an example of a good worksheet, maybe print one off the EBRB..?
• Any end-of-section announcements
• When you attend course lecture, note down what you'd call the major points; then a quick lecture recap becomes pretty straightforward
• Then the only hard part is planning a peer-learning activity. General tips:
• consult the EBRB for worksheet ideas
• Students generally love demos. check resources and EBRB demos page for relevant ones. or cook up your own!
• plan how you're going to go over the worksheet; if you don't go over them every time you hand one out, students will stop actually filling them out
• As discussed below, your first section is going to be a bit unusual, but the precedents you set are important, so keep these general instructions in mind nonetheless.

You must get some sort of feedback from either reflection personally on how your section went, or asking for written or oral feedback from your students (ideally, you'll do both). To aid in this, you'll be keeping a teaching log during the semester. After every section, reflect on your section. What worked? What didn't work? What would you do differently? (or, did you do something differently from previous sections? Did it work?) Bring these with you to class. We will be checking them periodically.

How to wrap up section.