Reflection #6: Application

          Solid snowballs are made by carefully packing new snow onto the already firm ball and, perhaps, even freezing the addition to the already formed sphere. The educational counterpart of that activity is the provision of ample application experience. A good lesson ought to include provision for application (or practice) of the material presented.  Sometimes less euphemistically called homework, there are a number of strategies you might want to utilize to insure that the new material from the presentation has been firmly imbedded in the student’s ball of knowledge.  (Although sometimes students ignore this aspect of the lesson, it is an important part of the process and must be encouraged to be performed well in order to make sure that the lesson “has stuck.”)

           First and foremost, the application must be perceivably pertinent to the material presented.  Do not assign "homework" just to be assigning it or because you think it is expected of you. It must have perceived value, or the students will not always “play” your little “game”.  If you can make the work meaningful and then make the students see that they are not humoring you in doing busy work, you have a better than average chance of having most of the students perform this step.

        Second, you must make sure that the students know what is expected of them.  You must give adequate explanation / seat work / class time to make sure the students know how to do what you want of them.  It is worse than no work at all to give them an assignment that they will do incorrectly. Then you have to go to all the work of blasting the wrong idea out of their heads, and that can be very difficult if they have practiced the wrong thing a number of repetitions.

        Last, you need to be very clear about how you plan to evaluate this practice.  If you plan to give grades, students need to know.  If you plan to tally their efforts and record in some other fashion than a grade, they have a right to know that. One valuable technique is to encourage group work on the practice, and to give participation credit rather than grades.  This takes the heat out of the work to the extent that there is less outright cheating. Make the learning the goal and not the grade. Whatever you do, you must make it clear that this practice will contribute to the students' mastery of the necessary material, or you won't get the cooperation you would hope.

Although there is a great variety of strategies for practice from which to choose, some of the most readily obvious include:

·       Structured discussion

·       Practice exercises

·       Drill and recitation

·       Supervised study

·       Writing assignments