Do Now

Once a month, David Weimer uses critical-thinking prompts in section that students respond to via quick write or partner discussion. If the activity takes the form of a quick write, David will give the students a question, and they will have to write for...

In this activity, students appropriate and manipulate the words, grammar and themes of a “classic” work in order to develop their own styles as creative writers. By turning an iconic medium into a popular genre, students learn that classic writers have...

This course teaches students the skill and process of solving problems in discrete mathematics through active participation in every class. Rather than meeting for lectures, the class is a series of problem-solving sessions. Before class, students...

When students are in the revision stage of their paper, Jerusha Achterberg uses fruits to teach students how to structure their papers so that the organization coordinates with the thesis. The idea behind this activity is to break the 5 paragraph mold...

In Ursula Lindqvist's Swedish classes, she has the students "warm-up" by doing an exercise that gets everybody talking immediately. With the entire class standing up in a circle, Ursula throws a koosh ball to a student and asks that student a question in...

In this activity students work together in groups or as individuals on computers to understand how we can use photometric observations of stars to discover exoplanets. The concept prerequisites for the activity include: blackbody radiation, Kepler's laws...

This activity gets students in an active frame of mind at the start of section. If section meets a long time from the last lecture (say, for a Tuesday-Thursday lecture schedule, the relevant section meets on successive Mondays), the instructor can get...

Students respond to a quote by formulating for and against the position on the spot. Goals: Develop students' mental agility for analytical thinking Train students in concise argumentation Help students review course material Class: Any Procedure: The...

In this activity, students analyze Faulkner's various styles in the Sound and the Fury by contrasting different excerpts from the novel. Student receive a handout with paragraphs from each section. The class breaks up into groups tasked with determining...

This easy "Do Now" gets students engaged from the moment they enter the classroom. Students receive a handout when they enter the class ( see the document below). During the next few minutes, students respond to the questions on the handout, which prompt...