Best Teaching Practices
Ashley Rickard
News Announcements
Reflection
The course schedule is full of information, but I discovered early on this semester that my students often don't take the time to go through it. I found that providing a News Announcement that listed the upcoming assignments was extremely beneficial to my students, and it served as a review tool for me to recall what was ahead for that week. Because the student attendance for synchronous sessions was so low, I used News Announcements to post reminders about the chats and to advertise Extra Learning Opportunities that would be offered during the chat.
Graded Student Work
REFLECTION
Grading in a Language Arts classroom is always time-consuming. When I was teaching face-to-face, I had as many as 150 students at a time, so only having 30 students was a pleasant change. I also enjoyed exploring different grading methods within BrightSpace. My students particularly enjoyed the audio feedback on essays, and I was more than happy to record my thoughts and provide extra resources to go with my suggestions. I absolutely saw students improve as a result of listening to the feedback, and it's a method that I will surely use again.
Relevance in Synchronous Sessions
Reflection
Although attendance in my synchronous sessions was very, very low, I enjoyed preparing topics for discussion on The Great Gatsby. I found that many of the activities that I have previously used in my face-to-face classroom transfer well to spark discussions in my synchronous sessions.