Study how to give the ideal Ted Talk and you'll learn that the sweet spot is 18 minutes, about the attention span of people living in our digital age.
MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her book Alone Together, which I teach in English 1A, writes about how our generation lives in perpetual adolescence, what she calls "continual partial attention."
My students are always taking sneak peeks at their smartphones, holding them under their coats or under books or under their desks. I see them furtively texting as I lecture. I resent the enemy of smartphones and imagine some day I'll have to find a way to use them in the classroom (a subject for a future post).
So what do I do in a two-hour class? Or let's put it this way: Have you ever tried to do a two-hour lecture about a text that only two students in the class have read? You want to talk about a tough crowd? You want to talk about feeling like you're smelling up the joint? You want to talk about feeling demoralized?
To combat these scenarios, I need to break down the class into segments. This would be a sample:
One. Lexicon. Go over terms that the students will need to understand for today's lesson.
Two. Study questions of the assignmed text.
Three. Go over common student errors in usage, mechanics, and grammar
Four. Writing methods, thesis, transitions, analyzing sources, part of grading rubric, etc.
Five. Review the one or two "big ideas" of today's lecture to underscore those thoughts you'd like your students to marinate in for the rest of the day or the rest of their lives (if you should be so ambitious).
Six. Video instruction
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