Pedagogy Course Activities

Classroom Discourse

The POGIL project has designed a one hour lesson to introduce the principles of process orientated guided inquiry learning, which dovetails with the classroom discourse strategies that LAs seek to foster in the classroom. Contact Prof. Mary von Opstal at Harper College (mvanopst@harpercollege.edu) for the activity.

A lesson from  CU Boulder has LA contemplate challenging group work scenarios and develop skits on how LAs can respond to facilitate classroom discourse. 

Questions and Questioning Strategies

A lesson from CU Boulder, asks students to create questions about rocks as a means to discuss open and closed questions.

Eliciting Student Ideas

A lesson from UC-Boulder has LAs contemplate Bloom's Taxonomy and review scenarios of LA/Student interactions in a variety of content areas to practice determining student ideas.  

In a second week of the lesson, students practice listening and questioning with LA partners and think about wait time.

“Bridging” / Formative Assessment

A lesson from UC-Boulder has LAs reflect on the bridging model to help guide students from initial knowledge about a concept to targeted understanding. 

Diversity and Equity

In this activity from UC-Boulder LAs are asked to think about concepts including implicit bias, microaggressions, and stereotype threat in their LA class assignment and their own experiences.  The goal it to determine strategies to foster inclusive, equitable learning environments.

At CSU-Chico, they include a 3-week equity unit based on materials from  the article"Teaching About Racial Equity in Introductory Physics Courses" published in The Physics Teacher. 

Mindset

A lesson from UC-Boulder uses skits of LA interaction to investigate mindset.  Growth versus fixed mindset is discussed.

Metacognition

This lesson from UC-Boulder teaches LAs about metacognition while also providing study strategies that LAs can provide to students and use themselves.

Periscope by PhysPort

Periscope has several discussion activities centered on video clips of student discussion in LA supported classes and LA-student interactions.  Registration is required to access Periscope activities; however, registration is free.  While many Periscope lessons are useful for the pedagogy course, some are physics specific and focus on learning physics concepts.  The following are a sample of broader Periscope lessons that are readily usable in multidisciplinary contexts:

• • What instructor behaviors facilitate student learning? I

  • What instructor behaviors might impede student learning?

  • How can I facilitate students working well in groups? I

  • How can I tailor a task to a specific group of students?