AY 300 - Fall 2010: Seventh Day Lesson Plan

• Finish DaD presentations
• Discuss the ideas behind TPS and other interactive lecturing techniques and familiarize with the implementation
• Discuss running review sessions, both in-section and class-wide
• Give out our mid-sem eval (take-home?)
• Plan for next sections!

Start in small groups for 10-15 minutes. Transition to the larger group.

• How did sections go?
• What worked/didn't work?
• Thoughts/concerns to discuss?

• Allow students to lead the discussion…
• Particular points:
  • What is active/collaborative learning?
  • How does it look in your class/Alex's class?
  • What is the primary conclusion of both articles?
  • What helpful advice is offered for implementing collaborative learning effectively?

• Break up into groups that read about the same technique
• 10 mins of discussion in the group on the technique and developing an example/demo.
• 5 mins presentation of the technique per group, as many as we can before 6:20 at the latest.

• Discuss the concept (much below is from Slater & Adams)
  • Developed by Lyman and popularized in physics by Mazur in Peer Instruction (1997)
  • Involving learner-centered techniques in big lecture setting
  • Hopefully the questions confront common difficulties and misconceptions
• A general procedure:
  • Ask a probing question (preferrably a “how” or “why” rather than a “what”)
  • Ask students to think about it and commit to an answer of their own
    • “Committing” can be in writing, voting, etc.
  • Give time to discuss their answer with a neighbor, trying to convince each other
  • Poll the students again
  • If the class is not converging, discuss why/revisit the material covered in the question
• The Prather-Brissenden model (see their guide for more):
  • Ask a probing, exam-level or harder multiple-choice question (“conceptually rich”)
  • Read the question, and (maybe) the four options
    • They advise you don't read the options, but in practice, not everyone can see all the options all the time…
  • Give a moment to consider after reading (if unsure, ask e.g., “How many people need more time?”
  • Have students vote anonymously using, e.g., colored ABCD cards
    • Anonymity is kept by voting in front of chest, not in the air
    • Showing all four squares = “no idea/guessing”
  • Assess the percentage right
    • If > 80%, address that most agree and maybe discuss how the right people would have reached the answer (don't give the answer).
    • If < 50%, try to find out if there's a need for clarification (i.e., it's not that the question is hard, but that it's confusing..). If can't just clarify, may need to revisit the material.
    • If 50% < perc < 80%, then it's time to pair & share!
  • Have them pair with someone who disagrees, and try to convince each other of their own answer. Give them a time limit here.
    • Try to walk around the room during this part
  • Vote again and hopefully the percentage is > 80%. If so, go over the reasoning as described above.

• Come up with TPS questions from slide ranges individually..
  • This week – Slides 244-258, 258-275, 276-295
  • Next week – Slides 296-303, 303-312, 312-323
  • Two weeks – Slides 324-331, 331-343, 344-377
• Group up and share your question with group. Read each other's critically. Ask:
  • Will it spark discussion?
  • Does it test an important concept?
  • Is it at exam level or higher?
  • Does the lecture give them the necessary information?
• I will come around and discuss with groups
• Choose one from your group to present.
  • Presentation will be broken into three parts
    • One person sets up the question
    • Another polls for answers and assesses what to do next (i.e., pair-share or not)
    • The third calls back to order and polls again, then recaps.

• The two groups that didn't go last week, talk for ~ 5 mins about their idea and get feedback from the class.

• Don't tailor to actual exam questions or drop hints about what's specifically covered. This is essentially cheating because it gives certain students (those in your section or those who went to the session) an unfair advantage. (Hopefully your students are getting a fair advantage by going to a review session though…)
• In-Section Review Sessions
  • Most GSIs will hold a review for students in the Section before the exam.
  • Four (of many) ways to go about it:
    1. Standard review session
       • Prepare a quick review of major topics beforehand, then take questions
       • Upside - can be very useful for some students for the topics you cover
       • Downside - intro astro is so broad it's impossible to summarize everything for even a midterm in 50 mins
       • Downside - the general review session (which we'll discuss in a minute) is basically the same thing
    2. Play a game
       • Astro Jeopardy is a favorite
       • Upside - students (and many GSIs) love it
       • Downside - kind of immature
       • There are many versions with different sets of rules that have been used in Ay 10 sections
         • How many teams?
         • How to choose teams?
         • Which group answers a question and are there 'steals'?
         • In a group, who answers a question and how is that decided?
       • The EBRB page on reviews has a few sets of Jeopardy review questions, but feel free to come up with your own!
    3. Student review sheets
       • Handout a worksheet or a handout that lists or summarizes the topics that could be covered on the exam.
       • Possibly have students work in groups to summarize each topic on the board or fill-in-the-blanks on a worksheet
       • If each group only reviews a certain topic, be sure to have plenty of time at the end of section to discuss them all or as the GSI you should write it all down and send it to the students
       • Upside - interactive, puts responsibility in student's hands
       • Downside - they're often not prepared to make it any good, so you have to do tons of editing and correcting both during section and afterward
       • The EBRB page on reviews has a couple full semester reviews that could be broken up for each midterm, but again, feel free to make your own and possibly make it more interactive!
    4. No review session - cover only the most recent material (i.e. run a normal section)
  • Do whatever works for you!
  • Do whatever you think will help your students most!
• General review session for anyone in the course
  • Usually run by 2 GSIs
  • Typically held during the week or so before an exam (possibly in place of TALC for that week)
  • No need to prepare anything specific (at Ay 10 level) since it's mostly Q&A, but you could try to predict where people might have questions and possibly prepare a short lecture on some of the major topics.
  • Going in to the review session you should know:
    1. The time and place of the exam
    2. What chapters/lectures/topics are covered (which will dictate what mini-lectures you might prepare)
    3. What students need to bring (i.e. calculator, pen/pencil, blue book and/or scantron)
  • Students always ask these kinds of questions at review sessions no matter how many times you might give them the answers in lecture or section or syllabi.
  • Stay focused - you'll often be drowning in questions. Defer overly complicated questions (to email or office hours) and focus on topics that they really need to know for the exam.
  • All the lecture tips apply here.
  • Especially if the review session is in a bigger room than you're used to, speak loudly! And hope your voice doesn't give out.
  • One possible strategy:
    1. Collect all the questions at the beginning of the session and write them on the board
    2. Go through them in your own order, probably alternating with the other GSI. (This gives you more time to think about what you're going talking about and to divvy up who can best answer which question. It also allows you to combine similar questions since students probably won't realize how related certain questions are to each other.)

• Taping of sections will come sometime in the next ~ 3 weeks, so be prepared for Aaron or I to hang out with you and your students for an hour!
• Design-a-Demo final presentations will be pushed back one week for everyone. So they won't start next week.
• Please fill out the AY 300 Mid-Semester Evaluation and put it in either Josh's or Aaron's box before Monday (10/11)
• Next week we will be talking about writing your own mid-semester evaluations. As your HOMEWORK, look at examples on the EBRB and our Ay300 evaluation and write a skeleton draft of your own mid-semester evaluation to give to your discussion sections. After talking about them in class on Wednesday, we will have some time for you to collaborate with each other to perfect your own evaluations.