Recently in Class Exercise Suggestions Category

I've been thinking about last week's practical activity on and off this week.  Thanks Jess and Michelle for your hard work. The parts that have resonated with me the most were: the process of drawing on the board and the chance for all of us to voice our conceptions of dis/ability. 

I appreciated the drawings and have been thinking about hangups many high school students have about their inability to draw.  As a teacher, I often would draw diagrams on the board, and I would proudly draw my stick figures.  On occasion I'd ask students to draw what they conceptualized about biology on the board - but I see a real power to this.  A chance to stretch our usual way of thinking and learning in science class, away from words and vocabulary lists, and towards a different way to depict our understandings. 

This lends very nicely to the content that we were discussing about access and dis/abilities.  If nothing else, it reminds students about the various difficulties a school environment imposes on its students.  And there is greater likelihood that it will lead deeper conversations about access at a school, increasing awareness, and empowering students to act on behalf of other students.  Thanks - bb

In your midterm evaluations, several of you mentioned that it is difficult to keep up with reading so many long blog entries. In response to this concern, I thought we could try an experiment (not required but strongly encouraged). Make your next entry or comment 200 words or less. Although I am (very) guilty of writing ridiculously long entries on my own trouble blog (like here),  I have also experimented with a shorter form (see here for my explanation of this experiment and here for my attempts on my blog). So, can you do it?

By the way, this entry is only 95 words.

I am in the process of doing a close reading of your essays (so far, they are wonderful) and it got me thinking: what do our different models of feminist pedagogy look like? By "look," I don't mean how would/should we implement them in the classroom. No, I mean, if you had to draw your vision of feminist pedagogy (as a picture, a chart, some sort of image), what would it look like? How might you draw the relationship that exists between the instructor and the students or the instructor/students/methods? Would it be a triangle? A circle? Something else? Does representing your vision of feminist pedagogy in picture form help you to understand and communicate it better?

If you know how to do it, feel free to post your picture on the blog. If not, maybe some of you could bring an image to class next Wednesday...

Happy Halloween everyone!

The question: When putting students in small groups, do you let them chose their own or do you assign them to groups? And if you assign them, how do you do it?

When students pick their own groups they tend to stick with people they know and they also tend to talk about things not related to the class, so I usually like to assign groups. Although I have tried a couple of different approaches, I often end up having students count off. Sometimes students resent this method. One time I had a student grumble, "We aren't in grade school anymore so don't make us count off." Regardless of how I do it, the process of assigning students to groups has always been just a a way to get to the real aim of the assignment: the small group discussion. But, what if the process of forming groups was more important? What if the process of forming into small groups was a crucial part of the learning exercise?

Here is something to try with small groups that my sister, who teaches geography (GIS to be exact) at Wollongong University in Australia, just told me about:

The goal: To review topology and how it works in GIS: how does the computer know what points link up to define lines and which lines join together to form polygons and therefore which polygons touch each other and which don't.

The exercise: Different signs (vector line, vector point, vector polygon, or roster) are posted around the room. These signs represent the different groups. Each student gets a card that has a description of something that would fit with a particular sign/group. They have to figure out which sign they belong to and then convince the other members that they belong. Then they have to explain, to the class and to the instructor, why they should be there.

While I can't envision this specific exercise working in any of my classes, the idea of making group formation be part of the process seems really cool.

Questions: Have any of you done something similar in your classes (either as the instructor or the student)? How have you used (or participated in) small groups?