| Teaching Tips |
| Learning and Memory Tricks Continued |
| An interesting twist is to reward students for teaching well by evaluating how many questions (over material they covered in their teaching) were answered correctly on the chapter test. For example, there are five groups, each teaching a section. The teacher designs a 25-question chapter test with five questions from each unit, making sure that the questions are of comparable difficulty. A prize or extra credit is given to the group whose questions are answered correctly by the most students. |
| This type of activity has the added benefits of: teaching computer skills (like PowerPoint) and office skills (such as operating a photocopier) that students may be unfamiliar with; encouraging team collaboration; building public speaking skills; and increasing students' abilities to write about, organize, and present knowledge. |
| Provide students with plenty of examples. |
| Most students have never seen a typed, referenced research paper. There are samples available on the internet. Print up a few and pass them around the class as you assign a research paper. Keep the samples in a convenient location so that students may refer to them. |
| Many students simply do not know what a "good answer" looks like. Take advantage of your state's standardizing testing preparation materials. Most contain essay questions from previous tests followed by A, B, C, D, and F answers. When a test question matches the content of your unit, assign the essay question to students. Then, showing the examples provided by the state materials, go through these samples from worst to best, explaining the mistakes and improvements. Students will quickly learn what is expected of them on tests once they understand how graders look at their responses. (This strategy is not limited to improving scores on state proficiency tests. Many of your students will be expected to answer essay questions in college.) |
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