Teaching Tip #135

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #135

This was aimed at beginning teachers, but can’t it apply to us all?

Commandment #4 – Emphasize key points when you’re teaching large classes of students

I struggle with this.  What helps me with my large, three hour night class at UND is ahead of time, I come up with four or five big ideas or objectives for that night’s class.  Then I write them up on the board.

And in the magic that is teaching, somehow we always end up talking about them.  So when a student shares a story that ties in to an objective, I walk up to the board and put a check mark by it.  I continue this throughout the evening. As the night unfolds, I’ll peek at it and see which objectives have been touched upon several times and which ones haven’t been.  

I try to adjust our discussion and examples accordingly.