October 16 and 18, 2006 Observation

October 16, 2006

The second paper was due today and many students had last minute pre-print questions. I realized I need to do a quick brush up on my Word file menus. I know how to do the formatting the students were asking, but I was having trouble formulating the directions so that the students would do the work rather than me clicking the mouse for them. The students were asked to do a ‘look back’ or debriefing of their last paper, while at the same time looking forward to their next paper. The students went over the third assignment and discussed the specifics of the paper to prepare for their proposal that is due on Wednesday. Anna made a direct connection to the student’s various majors and the next assignment.

More work was done in class with the grammar website and quizzes, dealing with combining sentences. This time I think the students found purpose with the quiz and really participated with the assignment. There was direct application from the quiz to their next paper.

October 18, 2006

The students had some individual research time in class today to find the answers to questions that Anna posed at the beginning of class. I noticed, and found interesting, that about half of the students went to google to search and the rest went to the library homepage. It was nice to see that all the talk about the library and the inclass library database searches were paying off. After the students answered the questions, the students paired off and interviewed each other with the same questions. The person asking the questions was to take notes on the other person’s topic. The idea was that the student explaining his or her topic would say more stuff than he or she typed and since the other student was to be taking notes on what he or she said, the student would have extra information. I think all in all the activity worked and the students like the opportunity to get up and walk around and work together.