Yesterday
was my first class of the new semester.
After 47.5 years at this job, walking back into a classroom felt a
little bit like returning home. If you
are teaching this semester, I hope you enjoyed the first day experience as much
I did.
**
As I
get older, I become ever more convinced that teachers need to guide each
student on how to approach their particular style of teaching. My students here at the University of
Richmond have probably had 30-40 teachers since they entered kindergarten, each
with a unique approach to education. It
is unfair of me to expect new students to immediately catch on to what I want
from them and why. Therefore, this
semester I am focusing more on introducing my students to the learning strategies
that I believe work best in my class. So,
even after 47.5 years on the job, I did two things relatively new in hopes of
showing my students how to be successful.
If
you have followed this blog for long, you know that I put a lot of stress on (a)
what students should do to prepare before each new class session and (b) what
students should do soon after class to get the material organized in their
brains. Here is advice I gave (by email)
three days prior to the first class and additional advice that I gave (by
email) three hours after our first class. I want every student to get off to a great start. If a student falls behind at the
beginning, it often becomes a semester of playing “catch up.”
EMAIL
-- THREE DAYS BEFORE CLASS
As
many of you likely know, I teach using a rather intense version of the Socratic
Method based on presenting odd and unusual puzzles to the students that I then
help them solve. It is a method that I
enjoy and seems to work well for my style of teaching. However, that approach is different from what
many of my students have previously encountered. They occasionally experience problems learning how
to prepare for my class. When I begin to question
them in class, I am frequently amazed by how poorly they are ready to answer
questions they have had for 48 hours.
In
my email (which went out 72 hours before they even met me for the first time),
I explained, “Let me help you get ready in an efficient manner. For each question, you should consider following four
basic steps.
“(1)
– Go through the problem/puzzle and write down the actual facts. Most class puzzles have 4-5 basic facts and then a
lot of fluff. For example, a puzzle
might provide a cost, an expected life, some time periods, and the like. Don’t circle those. Physically write them down. Writing down the facts of a question will not
take long and the act of writing helps them stay in your mind.
“(2)
– Identify the basic question. What are
we trying to address? Ultimately, in
even the most complex puzzle, there has to be a question that we must answer. You need to know that. Write down the question just to make sure you
are clear on what is being asked.
“(3)
– Assume that I am going to look you in the eye and ask you to start answering the
question. Write down the first sentence
of your response. Do not abbreviate it or use short hand. You do not have to
write down the entire answer but I think writing down the first
sentence will force you to think about the facts and think about the direction
of your answer. The first sentence
establishes where you are going with an answer.
I actually believe writing down the first sentence of your answer might
be the most important thing you can do to be well prepared for my class. For one thing, having that sentence in front of
you will give you confidence in class. I
don’t want you sitting there in fear.
“(4)
– Outline the rest of your answer. I
don’t need for you to write out a long answer.
By writing out the opening sentence and then outlining the rest of your answer,
I think you will be prepared for our conversation and ready to learn.
“I
think that is a reasonable amount of work.
---Write
down the facts.
---Write
out the question.
---Write
out the first sentence of your answer.
---Outline
the rest of the answer.
“In
my class, I think that is good guidance for being ready to be engaged in a genuine Socratic method conversation.”
EMAIL
THREE HOURS AFTER CLASS.
I
have written often about Swiss cheese knowledge. Students leave the classroom thinking their
understanding is solid when it is actually full of holes. Their knowledge is weak at places, disorganized
at others. Students need to take almost
immediate action to organize and solidify what they have learned.
Students
often have developed no learning tactics at that point other than recopying their notes. That is nice but it is hardly an essential key
to in-depth learning. From my
experience, immediately after class is a point when students need some serious
guidance before the knowledge seems to seep away.
In
my mind, students often look at learning new material as if they are attacking
a gigantic block of concrete. Because
the material is new to them, it initially looks huge. Getting their brains wrapped around that new block
of concrete knowledge must seem overwhelming and, thus, impossible. Many lack any type of strategy for filling in the holes in their Swiss cheese knowledge so they can get a
handle on complex, new material.
I prefer to look at new material as a vast bowl of marbles. Each marble represents a tiny piece of
information that is relatively easy to absorb.
Once students start to grasp a sufficient number of those marbles, they begin to
develop a logical understanding of even the most esoteric subject.
For
that reason, three hours after my first class yesterday, I emailed them the
following suggestion.
“We
covered a lot of material today that you need to absorb. Here is a hint. Take your notes and break the coverage down
into what I call, ‘Three-second questions.’
These are questions that you should already know so well that if I asked
you in class, you could quietly count to three and then rattle off the answer
without further thinking. For a 50-minute
class, you can probably write out 20-50 questions. Break the subject down into very small parts.
If you can learn enough three-second
questions for each class, you can make a triple A plus in this class.”
If students
break down the material into small enough pieces, they will come up with a
string of questions that they know or can learn. Holes in their knowledge are spotlighted. I
want them to be able to read those questions, count to three, and then give the
answer. The questions organize the material and provide a method for review.
Writing
the questions takes a bit of practice so I wrote them for yesterday’s class. I just took the class notes and wrote out a
simple question for each small “marble” of information. I do it sequentially so that one question
will almost always lead to the next question.
In most subjects, learning seems to improve if the material can be
arranged sequentially.
Once
the student has a list of three-second questions for a class, review and
practice becomes simple. Heck, they can
carry the questions around with them and review them as they eat their lunch.
MY
POINT
My
point is that I am starting the semester giving my students two techniques that
I think work well in my class. I do not
know if they would work in any other class but I believe they work for my
students. Why hide that knowledge? Why wait until they are lost before offering
advice. I want them to learn how to do well for
me right from the very beginning.
For
my students, before class, I think they should
---Write
out the facts
---Write
out the question
---Write
out the first sentence of the answer
---Write
out an outline of the rest of the answer
For
my students, after class, I think they should
---Go
through their notes and write out a sequential series of three-second questions
to cover every piece of information that we covered. The three-second questions mean that they can
read each question, count slowly to three, and then provide the answer. If they have that level of knowledge, the
understanding of even the most complex material will start to develop rather
quickly.
