Archive of Teaching Ideas:  Instructors across TVI's curriculum share what has worked in their classrooms

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• Who speaks for the group? Sandra Luck, Health Occupations instructor, uses a technique that ensures full participation in collaborative learning groups.
• Take a stand--literally.  Nancy King, DADE English instructor, describes a technique that gets all students involved in talking and listening during a class discussion.
• Evaluate the Evaluator.  Robin Ramsey, DADE English and Reading instructor, explains a method for involving students in evaluating each other's writing and the evaluations they receive from each other.
• "Discovering" Math Formulas.  Joe Krzyzanowski, DADE math instructor, uses these activities "to try to show [students] that they are perfectly capable of coming up with formulas and solutions on their own--if they observe, think, guess, and check."
• "What are the characteristics of ______?" Patrick Houlihan, A&S English instructor, describes how he involves students in defining the characteristics of an art form, poetry, that they are about to practice. However, this teaching idea could work to involve students in analyzing products or concepts in chemistry, nursing, and other fields as well.
• Precursor #1 to Critical Thinking. Joe Krzyzanowski believes that "we need to observe more fully, organize more efficiently, and follow through more creatively if we want to more effectively use our higher thinking skills.  Here he offers classroom activities to improve observation skills as a 'precursor to critical thinking.'
• Critical Thinking Exercises.  Rick Randolph, DADE English instructor, presents developmental writing students with models of reality that they compare and evaluate, which requires them to consider the consequences of each view.  Rick says these models are easy to create and good for generating ideas, making students think critically and enjoy writing, and getting active class discussions.
• "Is This 'Art'?"  Vicki Hagen, another DADE English instructor, uses the following activity in her basic essay writing classes to demonstrate the importance of clearly defining our terms. This activity "helps point out the (often hidden) beliefs and assumptions that lie behind our opinions and value judgments."
• "Defining Critical Thinking" Greg Murrell, Philosophy instructor, uses this technique to focus and conduct a group activity and point to relationships among the various student responses to characteristics of CT, to show students how to get to the CTAC website, and to use criteria like "clarity" and "depth" as criteria for assessment of written paragraphs.
• "Writing Assignment--Modern Culture Markers" Katherine Green, English Instructor, uses this technique to teach students to impartially and intelligently observe, describe, explain and make judgments about objects in everyday life.
• "Sticky Points" Carol Martinez, Arts & Sciences Instructor, uses this exercise to  encourage her students to ask questions anonymously.  This exercise helps build confidence when questions are discussed later in class and the students understand that the questions they ask are often asked by others too.
• "What's Wrong with My Sentence?" Ann Tran, English Instructor, uses variations of this exercise with different levels of her developmental English classes to encourage students to think about the structure of language.  This group activity encourages students to provide peer responses to the question "What's Wrong with My Sentence," an activity that opens the way for other peer review exercises.
• "Creating Meaningful Essays" Patrick Houlihan, A&S English instructor, designed this interactive exercise to heighten students' understanding of writing theory and practice [though the exercise could work as well in other subject areas where summarizing, analyzing, and evaluating any work is useful]. 

• "Role Playing in Computer Science" Gary Walters, A&S Computer Science instructor, provides this activity to give the students a better understanding of the way in which a computer program with several functions and various kinds of arguments is actually executed by the computer.

• "Polya Math Strategy" Linda Martin, A&S Math instructor, uses a process that was outlined by the mathematician George Polya in this activity to teach students not just problem solving but how to think critically and to behave like Polya did.

• "Brainstorming To Find A Thesis And Create An Outline"
  Donna Metreger, Reading/Writing Specialist in TVI's Tutorial Learning Center, presents a critical thinking brainstorming exercise she uses with students who can’t decide what to write about.

• "Chemistry Unknowns" Arnold Crelier, A & S Chemistry instructor, has students work in pairs to analyze "knowns" and "unknowns". They work together on the "known" to observe the respective precipitates and their colors as well as the colors of ions in flame tests. Each student must serve as a "detective" with their unknown and a "consultant" to their partner.

• "Communication Studies Group Consensus Exam" LaVonne K. Wahl, A & S Communications Instructor, contributes a critical thinking technique that she uses in her Mass Media class. This is a "group exam" in which several scenarios are presented to students relating to ethical and legal issues in various contexts. Students use critical thinking and group decision-making skills to compose group essays outlining their agreed upon decisions concerning each of the scenarios.

• History in Context In this technique used to spur thinking, Robert Teigrob, A & S History instructor, aims "to endorse notions that 1) the understanding of historical events requires an appreciation of context, and 2) that students are progressing in their development of this contextual knowledge and in their broader critical thinking skills as budding historians."

• "Learning from  Our Mistakes in Journalism" Patrick Houlihan, A&S Journalism instructor, explains, "As we went over students' common mistakes, I decided that we needed to do some of the shorter exercises in class for no credit and go over their typical rookie slip-ups so they could learn from their mistakes before the graded assignments were due."

Share your teaching ideas

If you have a tip, technique or assignment that has worked successfully in your classroom to elicit active thinking, please share it with us.