Thanks to Dr. Hamid Rassoul for sending this one to me. When students are struggling with math and science, they often think it means they are incapable, when in fact it only means they need to work harder and persevere. Students are usually familari with this idea in sports, playing a musical instrument, and other areas, but for some reason don’t realize that the same idea also holds in education. So show them this great video in which Michael Jordan explains how hard work and failure helped lead to success.
Sticky Notes — A Strategy for Encouraging Participation in Large Classes
Suggestion Submitted by: Doug Duncan
Assuming that you have a cordless mike, and can move around the classroom, I advocate the use of “participation points.” This is a terrific idea that I got from colleague Nick Schneider, one of the authors of The Cosmic Perspective.
Keep a pad of colored “sticky notes” in your pocket. Tell the class that you reward students who answer your questions or ask good ones with a participation point. In my class they are worth 1/8 of 1% grade. When a student participates, give them the sticky note. They leave it with you at the end of class with their name written on it. So far 100 students out of 150 in my class have at least one this term. The highest so far is 12, so that person is raising their grade 1.5%.
You need to set (and this can help) a classroom climate that invites participation. Tell students what it’s like at a regular meeting of scientists. (They have no idea.) Ask if they think scientists talk mostly about what is known, or what is unknown. After they think about it, tell them that many (most?!) of the ideas of professional scientists are wrong, and that it’s ok if they venture an idea and it isn’t right. Often I give the participation points for reasonable but wrong student ideas; then we talk about the wrong and the right answer.
I actually tell them that there are right answers and wrong answers and both are welcome in class. Occasionally there are answers that make no sense. Those I don’t accept. For instance, we do a activity where students have to be very creative to measure the height of a building using a triangle, meter stick, and no instructions how to do it. The building is about 5 stories high, and one group of 3 students attempted to turn in an answer of 2 meters. We did not accept that. Non-science students often have learned to accept answers that they don’t understand, and they stop thinking. Your job is to convince them that they can. Good luck!
DO ALL THIS THE FIRST DAY OR WEEK. THE WAY YOU START A CLASS SETS THE TONE FOR ALL FUTURE CLASS MEETINGS.
The combination of colored cards or clickers enabling peer discussion of questions you have planned, PLUS the sticky notes to promote “unplanned” involvement make for a very engaging class.
When I started it would have been a challenge to have such an active classroom for 75. Now I can do it for 150. [I could not do it for 300, and I commend our Department for never teaching classes in the 300 person classroom we also have in our building.]
Dr. Douglas Duncan
Department of Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences
Director, Fiske Planetarium
Univ. of Colorado, UCB 391
Boulder CO 80301
http://casa.colorado.edu/~dduncan