Alien Pedagogy

I broke today’s exam review into stations. It worked well, so here it is.

I waited until one minute after class began to let students into class and broke them into groups of five while they were still in the hallway. When they came in, they had to put their backpacks in one corner to allow for movement. There was an unusual seating arrangement.

Five stations, five minutes per station. Each station has a question like:

• Mechanics: Write a works cited for “The Gift of the Magi.”
• Analytic Terminology: Explain the difference between personification, metaphor, and simile. Explain how they are similar.
• Writing Form: Turn the following five phrases into a one-sentence thesis statement.
• Interpretation and Analysis
• Comparison / Contrast

Content Review: There was a ten minute mega-station that every group did at the end.

We then used the digital projector to create answers and refresh processes that we’d gone over during class.

I pointed out the daily exam study questions that I’d put on Moodle for them to use as well as the quizlet flashcard review that I’d set up. (Many students have just printed the set, so they don’t show up as users.)

The last minutes of class were about stress and study procedures.

Out of laziness / necessity I use multiple-choice questions on every test and exam, but I don’t trust them. I was taught to never try to trick students — quite fair — yet in MCQ, I find students getting tricked so easily.

Here are two stylistically-common MCQ questions from me:

***

1. “A bell is tolling, fading, fading / just like love” is an example of:

• Simile
• Metaphor
• Personification
• Imagery

2. “This ain’t a scene, it’s an arms race” is an example of:

• Simile
• Metaphor
• Personification
• Imagery

***

And so the list of quotes / poetic devices would continue.

This is me trying to be as direct as I can be, but students still find tricks and while marking even I find myself thinking “oh. That was tricky.”

Worse. I never use MCQ during the teaching of a unit. Only the testing.

Do I dare to turn my back on them?

Following Jim’s advice, I set up an account at quizlet.com and it was the top-rated set by the end of the day.

As of now, my class of ESL students have not yet read “The Cask of Amontillado.” However, they have watched an animated music video based on the text and I also invited them to skim the text for new or unfamiliar words. We then created a list as a group using the digital projector.

Quizlet currently offers two game functions that allow me to compete against the students. They are now beating me at Scatter and Space Race.

“Cask” is a difficult text to comprehend, due both to its vocabulary and its sentence structure, but at least one hurdle is out of the way for now.