An excerpt from a recent e-newsletter from Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D. from RetrievalPractice.org
Want more tips for building rapport with students? We highly recommend Professor James Lang’s series in the Chronicle of Higher Education on how to make the most of:
We love his book, Small Teaching. It’s full of practical teaching strategies and the science behind them. For example, combine retrieval, spacing, feedback, and more with quick and easy Connection Notebooks!
Excerpt from the last 5 minutes of class (emphasis DSC):
Don’t waste them trying to cram in eight more points or call out as many reminders as possible
The minute paper. You can’t wade very far into the literature of teaching and learning in higher education without encountering some version of the Minute Paper, a technique made justly famous by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross in their book Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. The Minute Paper comes in many variations, but the simplest one involves wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes early and posing two questions to your students:
- What was the most important thing you learned today?
- What question still remains in your mind?
Taken together, those two questions accomplish multiple objectives. The first one not only requires students to remember something from class and articulate it in their own words (more about that in a moment), but it also requires them to do some quick thinking. They have to reflect on the material and make a judgment about the main point of that day’s class.