Teaching Students with Disabilities: A Brief Introduction

TJ Dumansky

Last week, Robert Wickham and I led a workshop on “Creating an Inclusive Classroom: Diverse Learning Styles and Disabilities.” One of the questions that this workshop addressed was: how can students with learning and sensory disabilities be empowered to actively participate in classroom discussions and activities? We considered a variety of tools and practices that can be utilized to accommodate students who have processing challenges, visual impairments, or hearing impairments that impact their learning experience in the classroom.

The theme of disabilities in education is familiar to many elementary and middle school teachers, but may get less attention in the training of college and university teachers. One study found that the percentage of teachers who felt adequately prepared to teach students with learning disabilities dropped from 44% of elementary school teachers, to 10.9% of university science teachers.[1]

A recent study from researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, funded by the Research in Disabilities Education program of the National Science Foundation, noted a particularly striking statistic: when college freshman entered a required remedial math course, only 15% of students with hearing impairments achieved or exceeded their recommended performance level, leading to gaps between these students and their peers. However, when appropriate learning interventions were implemented, the percentage of students with hearing impairments who exceeded their performance levels jumped to 68%.[2]

More research needs to be done to determine if these kinds of results are typical, but it should nonetheless prompt university educators to consider the sorts of habits they can adopt in ordinary classroom practices to improve the learning experience of students with disabilities. While colleges have programs dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities, such as Yale’s excellent Resource Office on Disabilities (http://yalecollege.yale.edu/student-services/resource-office-disabilities), accommodating diverse learning needs is a team effort. It requires that teachers both create space for individual students to articulate their needs, and that teachers become aware of how their own verbal and nonverbal habits might present additional challenges for students with disabilities.

 

Here are some examples of the types of things to be aware of in your preparation and in the classroom:

·      Always include information for students with disabilities on your syllabus. A school’s disability resources office can provide information on school policies and services, but also indicate how a student can contact you confidentially if they so desire.

·      For people who are visually impaired, make sure to read aloud what you write on the board. Say “this painting by Rembrandt,” or “that glass jar” instead of just the words “this” or “that.”

·      For people who are hearing-impaired and need to read lips, be sure not to stand where you are backlit.

·      Treat students as individuals first. Two people with the same type of disability can have different accommodation needs and different levels of functioning. If you aren’t sure what language to use when talking about a disability, take a cue from how a student talks about him- or herself.

·      Provide multiple modes of instructional communication: if you give verbal instructions for an activity, repeat the instructions on a handout or on a visual aid; or, provide information through both text and graphics or images.

·      Consider sharing your lecture notes with students in advance, as this can be very helpful to students who need extra preparation time.

·      Be on the lookout for “trigger phrases.” Suggestions that students who need accommodation just need to “work harder” or that they are getting “special treatment” can marginalize students with accommodation needs. Students with disabilities encounter misunderstanding and negative attitudes about their learning abilities and teachers also have a responsibility to support their social inclusion in the classroom.

If you want more information on Yale’s policies and services, check out this Faculty Guidebook (http://yalecollege.yale.edu/student-services/resource-office-disabilities/faculty-and-instructor-guidebook#learningdisabilities).

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[1] Norman, K., Caseau, D., and Stefanich, G. (1998). Teaching students with disabilities in inclusive science classrooms: Survey results. Science Education 82(2): 127-146.

[2] Moon et al., (2012). “Accommodating students with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM),” SciTrain: 37 (http://www.catea.gatech.edu/scitrain/accommodating.pdf).

Math: Does the U.S. Teach It Well?

Elizabeth Boulton

I love math. Is that a weird thing to say? I love algebra, calculus, problem-solving math. I love working with equations and making them say what I want them to say. I like looking at the world in terms of math. When I’m driving on the highway, I try to guess how fast the cars around me are driving. Given that I am going 65 mph and I have gotten 5 car lengths (about 50 feet) closer to the blue Honda in front of me over the last 5 minutes, how fast is the blue Honda moving?

Unfortunately, there are many people in this world who don’t feel the same. Not everyone has to like math, but everyone should at least be given the tools to be comfortable with math. I have tutored many people in physics, and since physics has so much algebra in it, in reality, we spend a lot of time talking about math. It is always frustrating for me, when my tutees cannot rearrange an equation in order to find the variable they need, when they can’t figure out what equation to use, or when they can’t see how to make an equation out of the words in the problem. Let me be clear: I’m not frustrated with them. I’m frustrated because I can’t articulately explain how they can know to do those things. I can lead them through rearranging equations until I am blue in the face, but I can’t communicate any general rules that they can use for every problem.

A few months ago, a friend of mine sent me an article, “Teaching the Conceptual Structure of Mathematics.” She described herself as having hated math in school and we have discussed her frustrations many times. When she ran across this article, she sent it to me saying, “When I was a kid in math I would ask, every time, ‘but why would you use that formula there?’ and my teachers would (without fail) tell me I didn't need to know why—I just needed to memorize it and apply it on the exam.”

After I read the article, everything made sense: why so many of my students have trouble using algebra in physics, why my friend suffered through math classes, why I was frustrated at my own inability to teach my students the patterns of math. Could the answer to all of my questions be that math is very poorly taught in the United States public K-12 system?

According to the article, schools in the U.S. teach math by teaching the rules of math and having students apply these rules over and over. On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a bad way to teach, except when you consider that this doesn’t give anyone a framework to approach new math problems that maybe don’t look exactly like the ones for which they were taught the rules. The article lays out two main features of instruction that would allow students to form a framework for math. First, teachers and students need to explicitly discuss mathematical concepts. Second, students must struggle with the concepts in order to fit them into their emerging framework.

The authors of the article note two studies that corroborate these findings. The two studies looked at about a hundred teachers in each of the following countries: Germany, Japan, the U.S., Australia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The conductors of the study found that what separated the high-achieving countries (all of the above except the U.S. and Australia) from the low-achieving ones wasn’t the class size, the kinds of problems used, nor the teaching style, “but the kinds of learning opportunities teachers created for students, namely, making explicit connections in the lesson among mathematics procedures, problems, and concepts and finding ways to engage students in the kind of productive struggle that is required to understand these connections in a deep way.” The teachers in each country gave their students two main types of problems: problems that can be solved using a procedure and problems that must be solved by making connection between previously solved problems. In every country except Japan, many more procedure problems were given. However, in every classroom, the teacher transformed some of the connection problems into procedure problems by giving extra instruction. For example, a teacher might present a connection problem, and then solve a sample problem that was exactly like the connection problem, which would transform it into a procedure problem. Figure 1 shows the percentage of connection problems the teachers in each country transformed into procedure problems.

The compelling evidence from this articled supported by my personal experiences makes me firmly believe that the U.S. is teaching math the wrong way. What can we do about this? How can the system be changed in order to provide better math education? How can we in higher education correct for all the damage that has been done in lower level math? I don’t have any of these answers, but I’m hoping that together we can come up with some.

If you found this post interested, I urge you to read the full article that I discussed, “Teaching the conceptual Structure of Mathematics” by L.E Richland, J.W. Stigler and K.J. Holyoak. Another interesting read on the same topic is “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart.

Figure 1

Mindset: What is it and why does it matter?

Megan Ericson 

As instructors, we all have moments in the classroom that embody why we teach. For me, one of these happened this past summer when giving a seminar on my research to 7^th-grade students attending a two week SCHOLAR program at Yale.¹

I would see these students just once and had wracked my brain to figure out how to make an aspect of infectious disease research interesting, eventually deciding to work through two of the major discoveries in my field with them. My class met in the late afternoon, at the end of a long day and right before the students would be eating dinner.  They were a bit restless and a few pairs of eyes began to glaze over after ten minutes. Rather than spend more time continuing planned activities and risk seeing more unfocused gazes, I paused for a moment to talk to the students about the nature of science and discovery. 

In many classrooms, milestones in biology are presented as facts that were simply uncovered by very smart individuals. None of the backstories and pains of discovery are mentioned, but it’s important for students to know that scientists are not born, but made.

After a very brief exchange on the fact that science itself is actually very hard, but entirely worth the challenge, the students’ body language relaxed, facial expressions became more open, and (most excitingly!) levels of engagement increased. The students began working through major questions in my field and sharing ideas with each other. I even had a few students approach me at the end of the seminar to ask if they could do a research internship at Yale!

What was it about this quick discussion that made the students feel more open to participating? How could I capture that moment and replicate it multiple times during a semester? - I wouldn’t have the lexicon to discuss what I had a brief glimpse of in my classroom until a few months later while taking a MOOC entitled, “An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching,” offered through Coursera .^2.  One strength of the MOOC was its focus on the affective domain and its influence in the classroom. Of all the content used to cover this, I found that the idea of being cognizant of the mindsets of students and how this impacts their learning resonated with me the most.  The discussion not only prompted self-reflection on times when I was a student, but also reminded me of my experience with the7^th-grade students this summer.  I was so intrigued by this initial discussion that I decided to go back to the source of mindsets and read Dr. Carol Dweck’s fantastic book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”.³

Although I am still learning much about mindset myself, I’ve broken down what I gleaned from the book into two key takeaway points. The first will focus on what mindset is and how it affects learning. Secondly, I want to touch on how our interactions with students affect mindset and offer a few suggestions for supporting growth mindset in students.

What are the mindsets? How do they impact learning?

After extensive research on self-conceptions and motivations, Dr. Dweck and colleagues found that most individuals fall into one of two mindsets. One, the fixed mindset, occurs when people have a view that certain aspects of their personality, intelligence, athletic ability, etc are set and cannot be changed. At the other end of the spectrum is the aptly named growth mindset. People who have a growth mindset embrace the notion that they can push the boundaries of their abilities by working hard. 

The mindsets affect all aspects of how people perceive themselves, but the rest of this discussion will be focused on the self-perception of intelligence. (I refer you again to Carol Dweck’s phenomenal book³ if you are interested in learning more about mindset.) 

Pupils with a fixed mindset feel that their intelligence is constant regardless of how hard they work. One manifestation of the fixed mindset is found in students who believe that they are “stupid” and refuse to try in class because nothing can change that. On the other hand, as instructors we might encounter students who have always performed well but have only had to put in minimal effort with coursework. These students believe that they are just inherently smart and when they are suddenly confronted with an academic challenge, such as beginning college, a crisis of self-perception may occur as they worry that they are not as smart as they believed. Ironically, these students often won’t put effort into their courses because if they don’t try they can blame their lack of success on the fact that they didn’t put in effort. After all, if you believe there is nothing you can do to increase your intelligence and you don’t understand a question right away is there any point in trying only to fail? This mindset prevents students from reaching their full potential by restricting them to the boundaries that their self-perception has created and making them afraid to try as failure is a reflection of who they are.  

On the other hand, students who enter a classroom with a growth mindset will have a deep-seated belief that if they work hard, they can increase their knowledge. With this conviction, comes an appreciation of hard work and an idea that failure is not a bad outcome because the worst case scenario is not trying at all. These students are motivated by a challenge because when something is hard it only means they will learn that much more once they succeed. When students have this mindset, they are able to reach their full potential and will gain much more from their classes than peers with a fixed mindset. 

When discussing my excitement about mindsets with a friend, she, being a good skeptical academic, questioned whether any instructor actually supports the idea of a fixed mindset. After all, isn’t there a paradigm that hard work can lead to success and haven’t we heard this time and again when we were students? Unfortunately, even after having taught for only a few semesters, it is apparent that many students have a fixed mindset about their intelligence. What is fostering this self-perception in students and what can educators do to help promote growth mindset in students? 

How can we as instructors support the growth mindset in the classroom? 

Instructors may stress the importance of hard work, but when we think about education and how we classify students’ intelligence levels, it’s clear that we begin pigeon-holing them from the very beginning. Test scores when children are very young determine whether or not they can move to the gifted-and-talented class, placing a label on those “gifted” and those who are not. IQ scores, GPA, PSAT and SAT scores, and AP and IB results are all numbers that students use to classify their intelligence levels. If we think back to our own high school and college days, the kids considered to be the smartest had maximum achievement with minimal effort. After all, when was the last time that you were praised for the process you worked through to solve a problem or the amount of effort you put into a task? 

We are all so fixated on the end result that many times we praise students for the product, ensuring that their focus is on that number or letter grade. When that end product is so important, students believe it reflects their intelligence. They may even be driven to measures as desperate as cheating or lying about scores to ensure others don’t perceive them as less intelligent. All of the subtle messages students might obtain from teachers, parents, peers, and society at large about grades and test scores being a direct reflection of intelligence drives the formation of a fixed mindset. What are some ways that this can be ameliorated? 

First, we as instructors must be conscious of how we speak to our students about their performances in the classroom. When students perform well, this should be acknowledged, but we should praise them not for doing well quickly or with a lack of effort, we should focus instead on the effort they put into their work. By praising the process the student worked through to get to the end product, you encourage the student to put in that extra energy again. In the same vein, we need to be honest with students when their performance is lacking either in effort or in reaching the correct answer. The fixed mindset does not accept constructive criticism well, but the growth mindset accepts this criticism as a tool for growth. 

Students need to become accustomed to hearing the truth, in a helpful way, and not being constantly praised. Constant praise, which is something many parents and instructors may be guilty of, feeds the fixed mindset. If a student is already wonderful and is told this all the time, why bother changing? Instructors can help correct this stream of constant praise by ensuring that they are honest with students about their performance. This constructive criticism can help create a classroom environment where failure is an accepted process of learning. When students are no longer terrified that failure means they are stupid but just a part of becoming more intelligent, what reason do they have not to try? 

Finally, make sure to model the growth mindset for students in how you talk about yourself and other professionals. Discuss any challenges that you had pursuing your chosen field and think about how you overcame them to succeed. Introduce students to personal skill sets that they will need to develop to be successful in certain disciplines rather than just focusing on what content or techniques they need to know. One example of a focus on discipline-specific personal development can be found in the pedagogical use of rubrics delineating STEM skill sets.^4.  The instructors in this example generated a rubric focused on specific traits students would need to develop to be successful in their courses, like perseverance with a difficult question and self-compassion. Periodically, students would be asked to evaluate where on the rubric they fell and think about or ask for concrete things they could do to build up these skills.

To conclude, I’ll refer back to the moment in my classroom with which I began my blog post. By having a conversation that good scientists are made and not born, I hope that some of the students realized that if they continued to strive at their studies, they could become proficient in whichever career path they would someday choose. This one instance was not enough to shape the growing psyche of students or change any fixed mindset opinions, but it was a start.

To continue this conversation, what are some ways that you have incorporated growth mindset (consciously or subconsciously) into your classroom? Have you ever run into the challenge of trying to “reset” the mindset of a student who believed their intelligence was a fixed trait? 

References
1) Scholar Program link, http://onhsa.yale.edu/scholar-program-0

2) Vanderbilt University, CITRL. (2014). An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEMTeaching. Fall 2014. Retrieved from https://class.coursera.org/stemteaching-001/wiki/Week1

3) Dweck, Carol. Mindset: the new psychology of success. New York: Random House, 2006. Print.

4) Measuring Growth, Part 1: Origin of the Self-Evaluation Rubrics. (2012, November 28). Retrieved November 9, 2014, from http://www.berkeleycompassproject.org/measuring-growth-part-1-  origin-of-the-self-evaluation-rubrics/

The Diverse Classroom: Stereotype Threat & First-Generation Students

Luke Mayville

Stereotype threat, defined as “a situational predicament in which individuals are at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their group,” can be especially harmful in the classroom, where teachers and students alike often express negative stereotypes.

First-generation students—those without a parent who completed a bachelor’s degree—face unique challenges in a college environment that often seems foreign to them.

Ryan Cecil Jobson and I chose to combine these two diversity-related challenges in a single workshop because we found them to be interrelated in interesting ways. We wanted to invite workshop participants to think of the two issues side by side, giving rise to questions such as “How might first generation students experience stereotype threat?” and “How might we, as teachers, reach out to first-generation students to meet their needs without stereotyping them in the process?”

The workshop included two brief presentations in which we overviewed the unique challenges to student achievement posed by stereotype threat and first-generation status. Following these presentations we opened the workshop up for group discussion, asking participants how they might respond to these challenges. After generating a number of responses, we offered our own ideas. For example, participants were encouraged to engage first-generation students in the classroom with active-learning strategies, and to connect students vulnerable to stereotype threat with supportive university services. We ended the workshop by presenting four different problem-scenarios related to stereotype threat and first-generation status. Participants broke up into small groups to discuss how they would respond to the scenarios before sharing their ideas with the entire workshop.

After the workshop, participant feedback expressed a heightened sensitivity to the challenges associated with stereotype threat and first-generation status. Participants found the scenario activities particularly useful for helping them think through how they might discern problems when they arise and how to open up lines of communication with students at risk.

Five Strategies for Managing Your Fear of Public Speaking

Mark Twain identified two types of public speakers: those who are nervous, and those who are liars. Fear of public speaking afflicts us all.

This is not altogether bad. The nerves we bring to our speeches, presentations, and lectures can help focus our attention and can also give an air of gravity to our message.

Yet, as most of us have experienced, unmanaged fear can be an obstacle to effective communication and, in the case of the classroom, student learning.

Luckily, we need not simply accept and live with uncontrolled fear of public speaking. Here are five strategies for calming your nerves.

First, try cognitive techniques. If you’ve ever consulted a cognitive-behavioral therapist about your anxieties, you were probably advised to reinterpret your negative thoughts—to reframe the limiting beliefs you hold about your future. This technique can be highly effective for public speaking. Are you apprehensive about making mistakes? Reframe the thought by telling yourself that your audience will forget whatever mistakes you make, but will remember your best moments. To give another example, we sometimes multiply our nerves by overthinking them (“Why am I so nervous? I’m nervous about being nervous!”). Instead, we might reframe the thought by reminding ourselves that we need nerves to focus our attention.

Second, you might develop a pneumonic strategy. While we do not recommend rote memorization, a certain kind of selective memorization can calm your nerves by giving you a sense of control over your performance. Try memorizing the very first and the very last words of your talk. Starting of strong can build confidence for your entire presentation, and knowing exactly how you will end can provide a calming sense of direction as you move along. In between, try to hold in your memory key pivot points, or pegs, in your presentation. Perhaps these are moments when you transition from one section to the next, or when you emphasize a main point. Memorizing these strategic pegs will help you remain calm and focused throughout your talk.

Cognitive reframing and strategic memorization take practice. Fortunately, there are more readily available techniques you might employ right away. Mindfulness experts tell us that a number of simple physical techniques can help manage our nerves. Try inhaling and exhaling deeply and slowly through your nose while counting in your head “1,2,3” as you inhale and “1,2,3” as you exhale. Another helpful technique to use just before your talk is to tighten up part of your body that no one else can see (perhaps a foot or a hand under the table) and then slowly release the tension.

If the room or venue where you’ll be speaking is available before your talk, you might try a visual technique. Stand or sit in the exact spot where you will deliver. Look at the empty chairs and spaces in the room and imagine your audience. Keep this image in your mind later as you prepare. Visualization will help you avoid feeling overwhelmed by your audience when it comes time to speak.

Finally, consider an emotional strategy. Sometimes the best strategy for managing your fear of public speaking will be to counteract fearful emotions with positive ones. In the moments leading up to your talk, remind yourself of your genuine excitement about the opportunity to speak. What are the nuggets of knowledge that you are thrilled to leave with your audience? How are you determined to make your listeners a little bit different—even better—for having heard your talk?

Spring Teaching Forum 2014

Registration for the annual Yale Teaching Center forum is now open!

Registration: Please register here.

Location: Sterling Memorial Library (SML) Lecture Hall (Wall Street entrance)

For more details and information, please see our website.

We look forward to seeing you there!

ATW Teaching with Social Media

Please post your activity designs below. Thank you!

-Dustin and Alex

Can daily quizzes aid student engagement?

Marco Bonett-Matiz

Physics

I'm in the middle of an explanation, when Claudia turns to John and says: "..[look, John, I think Marco is trying to say that]...the electric-potential is to the potential-energy what the electric field is to the Coulomb force!...". a spontaneous intervention by then common in my class. There was a strong sense of confidence in her words, in contrast to her personality, which was very quiet, in fact. So, how did we get there?

Hola! I am Marco Bonett-Matiz, a PhD student and YTC fellow. I am passionate about teaching, and last summer was the third time I served as the instructor of an introductory physics class. Below, I want to share the results of my experiment: the evolution of quizzes in the course, and their contribution to the sense of camaraderie and rapport among my students.

It all started when, as an undergrad, daily quizzes had a strong influence on my study habits; based on the previous day's lecture, these quizzes forced us to stay on our toes. Right then and there I decided that I would implement them in my classes.

I co-taught the first version of my Phys 181 course with my best friend here at Yale (also a YTC fellow by the way). During the planning stages, one of my strongest suggestions for the class was to implement daily quizzes. In retrospect, I was not totally aware of their effect; my thinking was: this will keep them on their toes and primed for class. Later I realized the quizzes also made them arrive on time: they started at nine sharp without delay and with no make-ups permitted. Everyone was on their seats by the beginning of the lecture and this reduced interruptions due to late comers.

For the second version of the class, I felt confident and daring: I increased the frequency of clicker questions and allowed for Think-Pair-Share (TPS) activities. However, I did not change the structure of the quizzes. I cannot be sure what triggered it, but there was a time after the end of a quiz when I couldn't start the lecture because of the noise. My students were engaged in discussion about their answers. I was so pleased that, when they finally noticed me, I suggested they finish their deliberations without rush. This was their discussion and I was only an observer. Soon after it hit me: "Next summer I will have them submit their individual answers, followed by peer-discussion and then resubmission".

Full of positive feelings and excitement, I was ready to implement some changes into the structure of the quizzes. The third time I taught the class they consisted of: Three multiple-choice questions, four minutes total for individual submission, followed by three minutes of peer-discussion before resubmission. This strategy wasn't without its problems, and at first the students resented me for not giving them enough time. We struck a deal: they would have more time at the cost of staying five minutes later at the end of class. They accepted without hesitation. This third time however, there was a noticeable change: The students felt safe to intervene and engage with the material. As a class, we had pierced through that ice that sometimes prevents students from actively participating.

Having witnessed their engagement in a relaxed environment that we had built together was among the most rewarding moments with this class.

I don't think the quizzes by themselves were the only reason for their engagement. We also had TPS questions, strong encouragement to participate, and in-class activities. But I would dare to speculate that daily quizzes followed by peer discussion planted the seed that fostered a healthy environment for participation. They created an atmosphere where it is ok to be wrong, it is ok to intervene if you think you have the right answer, and it is ok to engage in cordial discourse. The consequence was enthusiastic participation by most, as they asked questions, answered them, or gave a better version if I, as the instructor, was not able to nail it with my answer.

At first, I naively thought all I wanted was for my students to be ready for my lecture. In the process, I discovered a tool that enabled them to engage with the material and helped create a healthy environment where it was safe to participate.

In case you hadn't noticed, I didn't mention the students' motivator...I had to make the quizzes worth 15% of their grade. Without it, the efficacy of the experiment would have been greatly diminished, I'm sure.

Please feel free to share; I'd love to hear your opinion.

Cheers!

Using Film (and Video!) in the Classroom

Claudia Calhoun
Film and Media Studies and American Studies

Everybody loves movies. Teachers across all of the disciplines integrate moving images into their classrooms, whether that means full-length theatrical screenings, television episodes, or videos from YouTube. Incorporating movies is a great way to attract student interest, appeal to different learning styles, and diversify classroom activities. Films can also raise their own questions, deepening content-area discussion.

Every screening, small or large, is also an opportunity to increase students’ visual literacy. Although students enter the classroom incredible knowledge of media, they often have not been asked to look critically, to understand how images create meaning. When you use media, think about encouraging students to develop these critical capacities. This blog post will introduce you to some ways to incorporate visual thinking strategies along with your content objectives.

1. Before you show a video or film, direct students as to what to look for.

Visual Literacy Incorporation Level: EASY.

Films have many elements, and they all move! This can make it hard to keep track. Asking students to pay attention to one aspect of a video will guide discussion toward your learning goals. Let’s say that you’re showing Jimmy Fallon and the Roots’ adaptation of the Sesame Street theme song as part of a lesson within a class on Puppets in Culture. Here are two ways to frame the video:

•  Pay attention to how the theme is adapted for Fallon’s 21^st-century audience. What instruments do they use, and how do they work together?   How does Black Thought’s rap revise the original song?

• Pay attention to the performance of the puppets.  How are the characters arranged, and what is the impact of their placement? How do the human and puppet characters interact with one another in this non-Street space?

 As you can see, these questions will anchor two very different discussions, so be sure to think about what observations are most appropriate for your learning goals.

2. Have students support their observations with visual evidence.

Visual Literacy Incorporation Level: INTERMEDIATE.

Without specialized knowledge, students can use close looking, prior knowledge, and contextual associations to make strong observations.  In the Fundamentals of Teaching with Images and Objects workshops, we use a worksheet to guide a progressive (or “scaffolded”) discussion, which you can adapt for your own uses. You can download that document here.

3. Integrate film terminology into your discussions.

Visual Literacy Incorporation Level: ADVANCED.

You don’t have to be a film scholar, or even have taken an Introduction to Film course, to gain comfort using film studies terms. Learning the terminology is itself productive, as students gain the ability to express new concepts once they have the language to describe them.  There are a number of videos on YouTube that help to explain basic film terminology. One of the clearest and thorough (yet not overlong!) was posted by user Scott Bradley and is called “Intro to Film Technique and Terminology.”

Using scenes from Lord of the Rings, the video clearly illustrates a glossary of film terms. One of the strengths of Bradley’s video is that he also describes the impact of certain choices.  For example, when explaining camera angles, a scene between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins clearly shows how “Characters shot from low angles tend to be more powerful, commanding” while “Characters shot from high angles tend to be weak, vulnerable” (2:04-3:17).

(If you’re looking for more examples and definitions than Bradley provides, another great resource for film language is Yale Film Studies’ in-depth online glossary, the Film Analysis Guide. )

One note: While The Fellowship of the Ring is a perfect example of “classical narrative” (meaning that all of the formal elements function to support an engrossing story) the film or video for your class may be aggressively un-classical. An avant-garde or ethnographic film, for example, is often not primarily concerned with narrative. Not to worry! The same language applies to non-classical films, and students who come to class with a lifetime’s worth of Hollywood films in their head will be well-prepared to draw out the differences between narrative and non-narrative filmmaking techniques.

To help students dissect an entire film, one strategy that I have had success with is to assign different formal elements to different students in the class. (This is the advanced version of the earlier suggestion, directing students what to look for.)  Before the screening, I will write the terms that we have recently learned on the board (say: lighting, camera movement, editing, sound), and ask students to choose an element on which to focus their attention.  I have found that this greatly improves the quality of the discussion after the film, allowing  us to talk in specific terms about  how each of the elements work together to create meaning – or, even better!,  where elements seem to clash with one another, and that effect that has within the film.

The next time you want to integrate film into a course, consider adding visual literacy to your learning goals. If you ask students what they see, you’ll find out what they think, too!

Have you tried using film and videos in your classroom? What activities did you design? How did students respond?

Let's Get to the Point: Implementing Two-Sentence Summaries in Your Classroom

Elizabeth Morse

Cell Biology Ph.D. Candidate, Yale Teaching Center Fellow

It's Tuesday night at 7PM, and it’s time to begin another one of your fantastically stimulating discussion sections. The article you assigned your students to read was, of course, academically intoxicating, and somehow, today, you overcame your research or grant-writing to get to this highly anticipated moment. This article represents a pivotal turning point in your field, a cataclysmic push to a new frontier of knowledge; its significance - clearly world-changing.  

 
And so you begin.    
 
“So, who wants to start us off and tell us about this week’s reading?”

Sudden silence. The pre-class chatter about exam results and Facebook and Miley Cyrus has ceased. There are twenty-three faces in front of you, carrying forty-six undergraduate eyes, and not one of them is looking at you. Did you realize how large that stain is on the carpet? Can you believe how many crumbs from dinner are now stuck behind your finger nails? Does the clock on the wall always tick that loudly?

 

Like most awkward silences, this moment was likely preventable. While I do not claim to have the miracle cure-all that will alleviate all of your symptoms of uncomfortable silence, sustained student disinterest or general academic complacency, I would like to offer you a technique proven (in my hands) to increase student engagement, bolster academic discussion and immediately focus student attention on course material. If desired, this technique can be adapted such that it simultaneously gauges initial student understanding (what the teaching world calls “pre-assessment”), takes your attendance and provides an easy means of encouraging – and grading – participation. It does just about everything but walk your dog.

Intrigued? I give you: The Two-Sentence Summary.

  

The Two-Sentence Summary: What Is It?

The beauty of the two-sentence summary is its simplicity: upon entering the classroom, students pick-up an index card and are instructed to compose a concise statement (no more than two sentences) that summarizes the main point of an assigned reading. That’s it. After students have had a few minutes to write, you, the instructor, begin class with a slightly altered version of the question above:

“So, who wants to start us off and share his or her two-sentence summary of this week’s reading?”

 Awesome. By giving students time to quietly think, and by making your initial question slightly more specific, suddenly there are hands raised. You have made your expectations clear, and you have given your students space to compose a response that reflects their current understanding of the material. The section begins with a discussion of the most important, take-home message, and you can immediately assess whether your students identified this point (or points) or will need your guidance to do so.

The Two-Sentence Summary: Advantages for Students and Instructors Alike

In regularly implementing two-sentence summaries in my class, a science section that discusses a primary scientific literature article each week, I observed four key advantages to this activity:

1)     A memorable main point – Countless studies have demonstrated that students learn better when they are actively involved in their own learning – through writing, discussing, participating in group work, problem-solving, etc. (i.e. “active learning”). When asked to critically evaluate the main point of an assignment rather than passively receiving this information from an instructor, students are more likely to remember the take-home message. 

 

2)     Students settle down to summarize – We must acknowledge that this week’s assignment might not be the first thing on our students’ minds when they enter our classrooms. As such, the brilliance of the authors’ experimental methods to determine the infection mode of the bacterium Listeria might not be their current focus. When students enter my class, I typically display a PowerPoint slide with a two-sentence summary prompt and the location of index cards. Without any additional direction from me, students wind down the pre-class chatter and begin to focus on the task at hand. Over time, I even noticed that some students started arriving a few minutes earlier to have more time to review their materials and compose their summaries before class. Ah, the joy of prepared students!

3)     Concise communication – Research from a wide variety of disciplines is often reported in the mass media, on the nightly news or on NPR, in short sound bites. How do we teach our students to accurately – and concisely – summarize important findings, so that no meaning is lost? Practice. Lots and lots of practice, beginning with when they first encounter the pivotal findings of others in our classrooms. Don’t be surprised if you encounter some resistance to brevity. I have had the pleasure of challenging the ninja-like semi-colon that camouflages superfluous independent clauses.

4)     Inclusivity – What I have loved about two-sentence summaries is the environment of inclusivity it creates at the start of class. Students who have struggled with the intricacies of a reading can check their understanding by focusing on the overarching message. As one of my students commented on a course evaluation, “Participation was handled in a way that everyone could contribute even if the information was difficult to understand.” On the other hand, advanced students who have readily digested the material may be challenged to develop the language skills required to concisely craft their statements. 

The Two-Sentence Summary: Adapting to Your Classroom

If you are considering implementing two-sentence summaries in your classroom, here are some adaptations you might consider:

Why, yes, I have attendance records! – Want to monitor attendance without taking extra time out of your class? Have students write their names on their two-sentence summaries and collect them. Voila! You know who was in class (and who did the reading).

Participation: To Grade or Not to Grade? – You might use the two-sentence summaries as an assessment, assigning point values to their completion and/or quality. In a class I taught in which the lead instructor required participation, I used the index card as the physical “ticket” to their participation grade. The first time that a student participated in a given class, he/she turned in his/her index card to me. At the start of class, everyone wanted to get rid of his or her card! This got the discussion rolling right from the start, and also prevented a handful of students from dominating the discussion. As one of my students wrote on the subsequent course evaluation, “I enjoy how my section leader goes out of her way to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate.”

 

Pre- and Post-Assessment – Have you asked your students to summarize a finding at the start of class to gauge their initial understanding (i.e. pre-assessment)? Why not collect these summaries, and have them again summarize the finding at the end of class, or at the end of a unit, to collect real data on the effectiveness of your teaching (i.e. post-assessment)? Has your students’ understanding evolved? For the true over-achieving teachers, present the “before” and “after” snapshots to your students to encourage them to be cognizant of their own learning (i.e. “meta-cognition”).

 

The Two-Sentence Summary: A Two-Sentence Summary 

When emphasizing the main point of an assignment or concept, students may be asked to produce a concise summary of the take-home message in two sentences or less. By providing students with time to independently reflect, your students will be more actively involved in their learning, and in your class! 

Tell us about it! If you have tried out two-sentence summaries in your class, we would love to hear from you! Please feel free to comment with your experiences or suggestions on this post.