Teaching Journal: Week Two

Since I am sure you all in internet land are just dying to hear about my second week teaching at OU, I will delay no more and give you the low down...

...week two was a short week, only two class sessions (instead of 3) due to the Labor Day holiday. My Wednesday class was great! We worked further on building and understanding syntheses using music videos. The class was very active and engaged. We went between independent writing to group work to large class discussions, and everyone had something to say. My classes generally generate good participation, but this class especially got the students engaged and talking.

After the class, I asked students to write a synthesis based on the days lessons. After reviewing them, they are all right about at the same stage. I have a few high performers and a few low--but mostly, they gave me summaries that just started to make the moves of a synthesis. I noticed that when they attempt synthesis on their own (trying to relate the academic readings to one another), they just don't get what I am looking for. Using the music videos and explaining it in a different way helped them a lot. This tells me that I need to focus    more class time to these ideas and concepts rather than letting them go to it alone. So, I am going to do another in class synthesis exercise next week :)

Friday's class was my first kind of blah class. I was struck down by an evil virus Thursday and just felt like I had no spark of life in me at all Friday. Thankfully, I was at the library with my students that day and the wonderful Lorraine Wochna came in as a guest speaker to talk about using databases and how we begin to research.

And that was week two--nothing terribly exciting to report. I am having no problems in the classroom, everyone is showing up to class and handing in work and we are (hopefully) all on track to begin research for project one.