Today is the last day of class at ISU, which means there’s only a couple more weeks until grades are turned in and winter break officially begins. If you don’t have final exams to worry about, your semester might end even earlier! So, what kinds of winter break activities do I recommend for grad students, especially those who teach? Here’s a list of fun and productive activities to try out over the break.
Continue readingErika Romero
PhD Candidate and Education Blogger
Category: Full Archive (page 1 of 13)
At this point, you’re probably starting to get distracted more and more by the knowledge of how much you have to get done during this last month of the semester. Grading, final meetings, exams, papers, etc. are all going to be due pretty soon. So, how can you prevent yourself from feeling super overwhelmed? From failing to keep track of an important task and needing to scramble to get it done? In today’s post, I start with a short video with a few simple productivity activities to help keep you on track. Then, I offer a couple extra tips that will help you end the semester on a productivity high note!
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There are about four weeks left in the fall semester, which means times of epic stress and overwhelm are likely coming up in your near future. I’ve already written one post about how to carefully plan this time in ways that account for self-care, but I thought I’d write from a different perspective this semester. There’s a short video you can watch with my six self-care activities suggestions, or you can read the quick list in this post. In any case, let’s take the time to take care of ourselves as the semester ends.
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We are more than halfway through the semester, so hopefully you’ve been able to get most of your students speaking up during class discussions. If you’ve done a Midterm Chat, then you also have a good idea of what students consider to be stronger and weaker elements of your teaching style. But, there are probably still some shy students that you are having trouble getting to speak up in class. They sit quietly in their seats and seem to be listening to your lectures and the class discussions, but you have no idea what their voices sound like. In today’s post, I go over three strategies for communicating with shy students, or those who are just too self-conscious to ask questions in class. If you’d rather see a video version of these strategies, that’s an option for you, too.
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October is here and Halloween falls on a school day this year. As the only holiday I’ve used as inspiration in my classroom, I thought this month would be the perfect time to share my ideas on how to create holiday themed class activities that are fun for your students while still being educational. It’s not about “wasting” the day celebrating a holiday. It’s about taking a break from the usual classroom routine and livening up things a bit (while still staying relevant to your course subject). Here are three ways you can bring your favorite holidays into the classroom.
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Recently I’ve been spending most of my time thinking about my dissertation research and my academic job applications. My dissertation focuses heavily on multimodal texts and their new media adaptations. Many of the jobs I’m applying to have a focus on digital texts and composition, which fits well not just with my research, but also my teaching practices in writing and literature courses. I’ve already gone over a literary analysis group project that works well with my literature students. So today, I thought I’d break down a multimodal composition group project that has worked really well in my first year writing courses. If you’re looking for a creative group activity for your composition students that requires a good amount of research and analytical thinking, this post is for you.
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