Lecturing is Dead:

Rejuvenating Peer Teaching

in the Composition Classroom

by Dr. Natalie Dorfeld (ndorfeld@fit.edu)

Assistant Professor of English / Florida Institute of Technology

Fun Facts

Students born after 1990 retain 90 percent of all pictures that they see.

They tend to disregard things written in black and white as unimportant.

(Think about your notes for students.)

When looking at a page, they scan from left corner to right corner and then down to bottom left corner and on to bottom right -- reading the middle LAST!

They are drawn to bright colors, such as bright red, orange, and green.

Eighty-seven percent of all of our learners are visual-kinesthetic.

A University of Michigan study found that both students taught nontraditionally and traditionally scored the same on tests at the end of the year, but the following year the nontraditional group retained 70 percent of the information while the traditionally taught retained only 15 percent. This is called velcro learning (Mall).

Literature Circles

Discussion Director (Boss Hogg)

Your job is to develop a list of questions that your group might want to discuss about todays reading. Dont worry about the small details. Your task is to help people talk over the big ideas in the reading and share reflections. Usually the best discussion questions come from your own thoughts, feelings, and concerns.

However, you may use some of the general questions below to develop topics for your group:

How did you feel?

What was discussed here?

Did anything surprise you?

What questions were left unanswered?

What were you reminded of in particular?

What are the one or two most important ideas?

What was going through your mind as you read this?

Connector (Magnum, P.I.)

Your job is to find connections between the material your group is reading, the materials you have read earlier in this class, and the outside world.

This means connecting the reading to your own life, to happenings on campus or in the community, to similar events at other times and places, and to other people or problems.

There are no wrong answers here. Whatever the reading connects you with is worth sharing. Please jot a few connections down while conversing with your group.

Connections . . .

1.____________________________________________

2.____________________________________________

3.____________________________________________

4.____________________________________________

Literary Luminary (Cliff Clavin)

Your job is to locate a few special sections of the reading that the group should review. Help people notice the most interesting, funny, puzzling, or important sections of the text.

You decide which passages or paragraphs are worth reviewing and then jot down plans for how they should be shared with the group. You can read passages aloud, ask someone else to read, or have people read them silently.

Possible reasons for picking a passage may include:

FunnySurprising

ImportantConfusing

ControversialWell written

Tone or attitudeThought provoking

Illustrator (Bob Ross)

Your job is to draw some kind of picture related to the reading. It can be a sketch, cartoon, diagram, flow chart, or stick figure scene.

You can draw a picture of something that is discussed specifically in the text, something that the reading reminded you of, or a picture that conveys any idea or feeling you got from the reading. Any sort of drawing or graphic representation is okay. You can label ideas with words if that helps.

One at a time, others in the group speculate what the picture means. (Is that an elephant or a house?) After everyone has had a say, you get the last word. You get to tell them what your picture means, where it comes from, or what it represents to you.

Benefits

There is less boredom and/or more connections to the real world.

There is a break from the monotony of lecturing.

Multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner) are utilized.

Instantaneous feedback strengthens the whole language learning experience.

The implementation of electronic mediums, such as YouTube clips, blogging sites, and photography stills, can reach more international students via the left and right brain connection.

Work Cited

Mall, Kristy. Are You Reaching Your Digital Narratives? Scholastic. 15 February 2012. Web. 4 September 2014.