Tip: Take a Break
In honor of (American) Thanksgiving this week, here are three quick ideas you might want to consider over the break to make the final few weeks of the semester a bit smoother, plus some bonus Thanksgiving resources.
The “Clean Slate”
This suggestion of offering failing students a last-chance opportunity to pass engendered some heated opinions when I first wrote about it.
Identify a set of (perhaps simplified) assignments that students must complete in order to earn a C, and no additional opportunities to re-do other assignments or earn anything but the C. I’m envisioning this as a late addition, specs grading approach, where you’re essentially telling the student: “You are on track to fail (and/or) have missed too many assignments to be able to pass. Here’s a set of assignments to complete that will minimally allow you to demonstrate mastery of the course objectives, and earn a passing grade.”
The goal is to help students avoid earning a DFW - which can have long-lasting impacts on their GPA and financial aid - by giving them a concrete target of what to do to earn a C grade. Like many of the strategies I share, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and this strategy may not work for you. But, if you have a class that has been particularly hit hard with extenuating circumstances this semester, it might be worth pondering whether and how a “clean slate” might be helpful.
Friends Without Pens
The strategy of allowing students to see and discuss an exam with peers for a few minutes before beginning the exam:
Students are given a free-response question, quiz, or challenging problem. “Friends without pens” takes place in two rounds: the first round is the timed “friends without pens” round, in which students are grouped together and can discuss— but not write about—the question. At the end of the time, students return to their desks for the “pens without friends” round, where they tackle the assignment in the traditional, independent sense.
Since one of the common concerns I hear from students is exam/quiz anxiety, I think this has the potential to be a very successful strategy. Even if it does nothing to help students refresh their knowledge or fill in some gaps, just having an opportunity to reflect and talk quietly with friendly faces is a much lower-stress start to an exam.
Think Triage
With only a couple of weeks remaining in the semester, I would argue that now is a time to focus on the things that most immediately need our attention - but the trick is that they must be tasks where we can make a positive difference in the outcome. It’s a form of academic triage where we identify which items on our to-do list fit each of the following descriptions:
Those who are likely to survive, regardless of what care they receive.
Those who are unlikely to survive, regardless of what care they receive;
Those for whom immediate care may make a positive difference in outcome.
Focusing on putting our limited resource of time towards actions where we have the possibility of improving the outcome is a slight shift from thinking about “tackling low-hanging fruit first,” but an important shift, I think.
The Thanksgiving Story(-ies)
This is the first semester in a very long time that I'm not teaching a class of English as a second language students, and so I thought that I would share with you one of the resources that I usually share with them during Thanksgiving week. I always use a version of this article, The Plymouth Thanksgiving Story (by Chuck Larson, © Manataka American Indian Council), because it centers the Wampanoag people rather than the Pilgrims, and asks students to consider that there are many stories about America, rather than just one story.
More resources
What will you be celebrating this Thanksgiving week?
