retention
i work with a wide section of student abilitys. i seem to have hard time with the realy brite students. they will lose sight of the goal. how do i adress this in the class?
Certainly this can be a challenge. How do you handle it? Does your college provide training to help instructors?
The brighter students sometimes get the material on the first go around and may start to do other things that may distract the students that need to hear the information in another format. this may hurt both types of student.
I find that teaming the "good" student with a "lesser" student makes the latter one simply copy the labs. When I get a bright student, I always seem to have some basket case of a project for them to work on that challenges them. They get focused and other students tend to follw to see what is going on. Most students a sheep for the good or the bad, they all want to belong and fit into the group. The trick is to get them to follow a good path or example.
I find that when I ask a advanced student to work with a strugling student, it is a win win for both.The advanced student reenforces their knowlage and the strugling student gets the extra help they need.
i try to team up good and bad students so they can help each other
This is so true. I encourage the stronger students to help the struggling students. I explain to the stronger student that you will benefit from helping struggling students.
If they get to this stage,is mixing up the teams after the present activity is completed an option? Get the students to work with others and learn from their peers from different styles.
Both the stronger student and struggling student can benefit by teaming up. This may challenge the students to remain focused and at the same time develope leadership skills and talents as well as continue with their studies.
They do not always get the team concept.The world and the technology they are used too seems to isolate them from human interaction. We have to somtimes teach them some social and communication skills as part of the training.I have seen some good things happen in the team setting once they learn the value of communication with each other and then relate it to helping their future customers understand why they want to do business with you.The students who accelerate seem to need extra challenges above the course work,and even like to shine in front of the class while explaining their findings to others.
I do a similar thing Randy, the other thing that I do is tell these types of students to use the time and their knowledge to develope their skills of team leading and how that is a valuable lesson that will complement their abillities.
In the classes we teach, most of us will ask the advanced /bored student a question for him/her to figure out on their own to keep form being bored
Do they lose sight of the goal or get bored? Try introducing them to more advanced concepts and giving them more challenging assignments.
I agree George, one of the things I have seen from this is when mixing the students together they will still seperate amongst there group into little "subcultures". They will let the poor students flounder and get discouraged or they will let them pencil whip the answers on labs and let them fail everything on end of course labs. The problem is getting them to work together. I see Wallace's point on finding them early enough to do something about it.
I seem to have success by writing the learning objectives or goals on the board every day. I will also explain to the class what we are doing each day and the reason why we do it. Lastly, I am able to relate classroom lecture to lab activities specifically aimed at the days learning objectives. I understand what you mean about the brighter students in the class. If you are teaching at an institution where your class is in a lab type environment, try to pick out the better students ASAP and match them with students who don't comprehend the material as readily as those who do.
