Running out of time
I found myself in this position before. Im presenting material and run out of time or run out of material. In some cases i'll have an assignment and other cases I wouldn't and the students are sitting in class not doing anything. Any suggestion that would help so that i'm not handing the students assignments after assignments or just not doing anything.
Hi Chad:
For instructors who are not teaching about career oriented information, a similar tactic can be to have a number of back-up plans ready to go.
Regards, Barry
Hi Michael:
For some reason, students listen to student peers and graduates with as much interest as they do thier teachers. It's really an amazing power of influence! In this instance, whenever you use this exercise, if it gets the job done then you've achieved success.
Regards, Barry
While this won't work in every situation, I usually teach a class that has to prepare for a grad review that they must pass in order to graduate. After seeing them drag their feet in preparing for it, I've enlisted the aid of a recent graduate to come in early in the term and talk about their experiences in the class. This has changed the overall performance of the last couple classes in which I've done this.
Hi Glenn:
Good planning should address this. Nonetheless, in reality sometimes we have extra time at the end of a class. This is a good place to mention back up plans: activities that are low tech, can be implemmented on short notice, are relative to the topic, and contribute to the students learning. Examples might include group discussions, individuals summarizing the lesson, competitions of learned material from the daily lesson among teams of classmates...and a gazillion related ideas that achieve the same purpose.
We don't want time fillers, it needs to be productive time.
Regards, Barry
I agree that the realworld situations are very valuable. It gives them ideas on how they should or shouldn't act if they are in the same situation when they are in the real word.
If in the event I am done with the lesson plan ahead of schedule I always have course material I can fall back on or elaborate further. Real life scenario's pertaining to the subject matter can often times keep them engaged and lead into further questioning. I always find they enjoy the real world type of information because it affects them directly. having the class not doing anything for me is not an option there is always somethinf I can teach them in regards to my field.
