My students need a framework that organizes what's expected and codifies how they should learn in a discussion based environment. Our Biology teacher stresses the 5E method, but that didn't seem to adapt to our classroom learning environment (which is a shame because it would have been nice to align methods across disciplines). After a little research, I decided that the Study Cycle was a really good fit-with some modifications. After showing the above clip to the class, we had a conversation about what they noticed and wondered. There are comments generally fell into two categories:
1. Preview: This step is taken care of with our problem sets. The psets are are designed topic centric and use previously learned material to introduce new material. I need to remind students that they are not expected to come to class the next day with all the answers. Instead, they are expected to put in a focused effort to get through all the questions and develop questions that they need to get answers in class the next day. I also tell them that if they shouldn't spend more than an hour on a pset. I tell students that this is the reading and the prompts that your English teacher assigns before class. It's not a very productive English class when no-one has read the book. 2. Class: Students need to be active and engaged in class. After students put their efforts on the board, we discuss each. During this discussion the details come out and we write them on the board in a different color. This becomes their notes and annotations and I try to connect these to their learning outcomes. 3. Review: At the beginning of class I always ask what they thought is the theme of the problem set. I ask them to write this on the back of the pset. The theme becomes the title to their review. Before they start the next problem set, they should take 10 minutes to look over their notes and annotations of the preview set and summarize the main ideas on the back of the pset. This process should take no more than 10 minutes and feeds back into the preview step because a lot of times the problem sets build off each other. 4. Study: Steps 1-3 are what students are doing a majority of the time. Once or twice a week they should engage in the study step. This is a 60-90 minute session focused goal driven session. Ideas for what to do during this time come from the book, Powerful Teaching.
Bonus: I ask students if they every have 5-10 minutes a day when they are flipping through Instagram, SnapChat or on a bus to game. This is a great time to view some of the videos I make available to them. Sprinkling them into your week is a game changer. Summary: Most of the time students spend between 45-60 min a day where the first 10 minutes is spent reviewing that days pset and notes from class. The remaining time is spent doing the next pset. Once or twice a week they should plan on a goal oriented focused period of time to synthesize the material.
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Author"Your only as good as your record collection." -DJ Spooky Archives
September 2020
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