Entry the Eighth or: Please Don't Bring Your Battle Axe to Metal Class

I swear the hardest part of writing these blog entries is introducing them in a way that doesn't just recap known information like "this was the assignment...," "this is what the assignment said...,"or "blah blah blah..." So I'm not going to do that.

I. Activities!

• The first activity that came to mind when reading the Teaching Tips assignment this week involves low-stakes writing. I am designing a course that focuses on extreme music and it will contain a lot of terminology that is new to many students. What I would like to do for a class activity is to assign weekly journal entries (in blog form) about the music we are discussing in class. I would make a few songs available to the students and they will then have to listen to them and then analyze them in a blogpost. The goal of this activity is to get students used to writing about music. It is often difficult to write about the things going on in a song and it’s important that students are able to be able to describe stylistic indicators as well as for their own opinions about the music. Being critical of music is a learned skill, and this activity will prepare them for the term papers they will be writing for the course.

• Another activity that I would like to do in this course is tied to the idea of high-stakes writing (page 196) and peer learning (page 214). The activity will be an in-class peer review day which will fall a week before the first term paper is due. The term paper is designed to showcase how much the students have learned as well as test their ability to write well based on the criteria listed in the syllabus (grammar, scope, mechanics, etc…). The term paper will be worth 30% of their overall grade so I think having a peer review day will help boost grades, answer questions, and ease nerves. The structure of the peer review will consist of students bringing two copies of their paper to class for two other students to review. Each student will then spend 15 minutes per paper reading and writing down comments. Then I will have students get into groups and discuss what they saw in each others papers. The goal is to get students thinking about their writing and also to give them the opportunity to see some examples of the writing of their peers.

• The third activity functions almost as a bunch of mini case studies, which is the focus of pages 222-225 in Teaching Tips. What I would like to do is have students bring in approved (by me) examples of extreme music for students to listen to in class. There will be a sign-up sheet passed around at the beginning of the term so that students can pick when they want to bring in music and what style is being taught in class at that time. The class will listen to the selected music and then discuss what style(s) they think it reflects and why. The goal of this activity is to get students thinking about extreme music outside of the classroom and to have an opportunity to share new music with their peers.

II. "Best" Practices

• I have learned more about teaching from the observations than I ever thought I would. The great thing about the observation process is that it offers very constructive feedback in a very palatable way. The “best practices” I’ve taken from the teaching demos are all things that I struggle with but want to improve upon in my teaching. First is organization, because I am terrible about staying organized but have seen from the demos that it can really help teaching and learning. I also think enthusiasm is an important aspect to teaching and helps students get involved. The other concept that I really think works is summarizing. I always forget to summarize for my students and have learned from the demos that it really helps round out a lesson and helps students retain information. Other than those I think that well constructed visual aids and activities, clear directions, and knowing the information are all key to success in a classroom setting.

Here's a little something to get you through the cruddy weather: