{"id":7614,"date":"2018-06-27T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T08:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/fctl\/?p=7614"},"modified":"2019-05-22T17:52:16","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T17:52:16","slug":"rethinking-mantras-even-those-that-serve-us-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/2018\/06\/27\/rethinking-mantras-even-those-that-serve-us-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Mantras (Even Those That Serve Us Well)"},"content":{"rendered":"

by – Anja Ketcham
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the mantras that I\u2019ve lived by in my teaching career is that I can\u2019t expect students to know a concept I haven\u2019t taught them. \u00a0I teach composition, and even though students can write paragraphs when they get to my class, they rarely have a clear sense of what makes a paragraph. \u00a0Or they\u2019ve been out of academia for so long that they don\u2019t remember. So I start by defining what a paragraph is and what it needs. This technique serves me and my students well, but at some point, I got carried away with my information-based teaching. \u00a0I started viewing everything through the lens of definitions and knowledge.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I read Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning<\/i> by Davis and Arend that I started to rethink my approach. Their discussion of instructional objectives (those that occur at the lesson- or task-level) made me realize that the only objective my approach accomplished was giving students knowledge. \u00a0I was frustrated that students couldn\u2019t take that knowledge and turn it into a successful product, but that was a different objective that I wasn\u2019t preparing my students to meet. Those students who already knew how to turn knowledge into a product were doing well; students who didn\u2019t felt enlightened in class but struggled as they tried to complete assignments on their own.<\/p>\n

After reading Davis and Arend, I\u2019ve tried to define specific instructional objectives for each lesson and design activities that meet those objectives. \u00a0This change required me to rework my lectures (mostly by trimming them significantly) and to devote more class time to activities. Initially, I was concerned about the changes: Would my students understand the trimmed-down information? Would the activities allow them to make sense of the concepts?<\/i><\/p>\n

Earlier this week, I was running short on time in my class. \u00a0I realized that I could either run through a lecture about the structure of an upcoming essay or I could do an active learning activity where students looked at samples of the upcoming essay. \u00a0I could no longer do both. I chose the active learning activity; it\u2019s called Great Examples and requires students to read a sample paragraph, discuss the strengths of the paragraph in small groups, and report two pieces of advice for achieving success on a similar assignment.<\/p>\n

And, here\u2019s the thing. \u00a0As a class, the students hit on every point <\/i><\/b>my lecture would have covered. They <\/i><\/b>recognized how the paragraph made use of textual examples. \u00a0They <\/i><\/b>noted how the topic sentence carried through the paragraph and wrapped up in the final sentence. \u00a0They <\/i><\/b>pointed out how the paragraphs tied to the overall purpose of the assignment. \u00a0At the end of class, I told them as much and a few of them chuckled in surprise.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, my concerns about their ability to make sense of trimmed-down information proved unnecessary. \u00a0With the right balance, I can continue to teach by my mantra (a trimmed down version of it) and offer students more opportunities to surprise me and themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by – Anja Ketcam<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the mantras that I\u2019ve lived by in my teaching career is that I can\u2019t expect students to know a concept I haven\u2019t taught them. I teach composition, and even though students can write paragraphs when they get to my class, they rarely have a clear sense of what makes a paragraph. Or they\u2019ve been out of academia for so long that they don\u2019t remember. So I start by defining what a paragraph is and what it needs. This technique serves me and my students well, but at some point, I got carried away with my information-based teaching. I started viewing everything through the lens of definitions and knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by-faculty"],"acf":{"carousel_content":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instruction.austincc.edu\/tledupdates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}