Today I gave my classes an outline for the last chpater we are responsible to know before the winter break. The 12 page outline had about 30 blanks in it (primary vocab words from the chapter) and one student asked if we were going to go over the blanks. I am not sure if they were serious or not, but I have not done something like this before because I thought it was too much like hand feeding them information. Now giving them those 30 blanks would be just like giving them an outline and have them not read the book at all, that and with that we take away the motivation to do better.
But...having said that, and having listened and read to ideas about popular branding (Obama bumper stickers) I think that for the first test next semester, I am going to ask my classes what and how they want me to teach. This is obviously contradictory to every teaching and authority idea. I think it will work. Having others take control of your idea is a good thing. It works in marketing and many educaitonal ideas say it should work here as well (but they dont go quite as drastic) so i'll try it. What is the worst? I'll make an outline of a chapter and give it to them? Maybe worse, but maybe worse might help them. Obvioulsy I'll reply here with some results.
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