up to 10 minutes

Equitable Academic Discussion Routines

 

This activity follows an adjustable sequence of steps and rules for engagement to ensure that all students, even in large classes, are able to find each session clear, accessible, rigorous, and relevant and to feel that the classroom culture offers them an equal opportunity to speak. As part of these routines, hands are never immediately called on when the instructor asks a question. Instead, all students are expected to develop an answer and then collaborate with their peers to develop a group answer, and a representative from each group shares the group’s response. Rules for engagement, explicit criteria for meeting and exceeding expectations, and transparent discussion routines ensure that all students can access the discussion and be optimally challenged during class.

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Reasoning to the Best Conclusion

 

Students are asked to write down a weird or random fact about themselves on a sticky note and to pass it to the person to their left. Each student is then asked to brainstorm logically possible explanations of the fact he or she has received. Through this activity, students learn to distinguish the best or most likely explanations from all the logically possible ones.

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Current Events Do Now

 

In this short warm up activity, students share current events with the class and briefly discuss the issue. The activity promotes student engagement in the classroom and encourages students to be informed on current international affairs. 

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Heads-Up Seven-Up Quiz

 

In Emily Riehl's Topology I: Topological Spaces and the Fundamental Group, she uses a fun heads-up-seven-up style quiz to quickly engage students and test the level of confusion among the students. This activity not only helps students participate and actively take a part in their learning, but also assists the instructor in increasing the effectiveness of their lectures. 

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Globe Toss Icebreaker

 

For the STAT104 first class of the semester, Lecturer Michael Parzen throws an inflatable globe of the world into the class audience to get the class excited about learning future topics of experimentation, randomness, and estimation.

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Past-Tense Song

 

In Swedish Aa, Ursula Lindqvist and Suzanne Martin used the song "Den första gång jag såg dig" (The First Time I Saw You) by well-known Swedish troubador Birger Sjöberg to help students learn past-tense verbs and about Swedish culture.  

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