Post 2

This week’s reading had several pieces of useful information. The more we read From First Day to Final Grade, the more I appreciate the book. Not only does the book provide many useful points, it gives techniques that are highly applicable to the field of communication, and provides me with ideas that I would like to incorporate into my own teaching.

I found the chapter on weekly class preparation very useful. The chapter answered some of the questions I face as I write lesson plans from week to week. Some of the material I found redundant as we had discussed it in orientation, but many insights I found to be highly useful.

The book touches on using the board rather than power point presentations. I found this to be a good idea because I have been using power point in my classroom and students haven’t been active in taking notes. I think there are two reasons for this. First, students aren’t necessarily sure what the most important points are. Secondly, I think I may move a little too quickly through my power point presentations. Writing on the board should slow me down a little, and also clearly illustrate what I find to be important points from the textbook.

I still plan on using power point in the classroom however; I’m going to use the board to illustrate the most important ideas. Hopefully this will get students more actively taking notes, and slow me down enough so that it is possible to take notes. Using the board wasn’t the only useful piece of information from this week. I also liked the ideas on discussion in the classroom.

My biggest complaint about my classroom is that when I ask questions and try to initiate discussions I get blank stares. I now know some of the reasons why, and have ideas how to fix this.

The biggest problem I have in the classroom is that I have been trying to run task-based discussions without the knowledge of how to properly do that. I thought discussion was discussion until I read this chapter and learned about the two types of discussions. With the tools provided in the text book I think I will be better equipped to run task-based discussions in my classroom.

Regarding discussions, the text speaks to reasons why students are silent. I feel the text leaves out a very important reason for silent students. I think that the culture of the geographical area where students are from can affect the amount of conversation in the classroom. For example, in the Midwest, some students are raised not to make themselves appear as if they are a know it all. Many students feel that they are being ostentatious when they speak up in class, rather that contributing to knowledge. In cultures, or co-cultures in this case, where modesty is valued; I feel that students are less likely to speak up in the classroom. I believe that framing discussion as a way of learning, rather than a way of showing what students know may help students overcome this cultural phenomena. In communication understanding the culture is an important part of running a classroom.


Communication has several solid uses for some of the techniques found in the text. Discussions on issues are a great way to come up with speech topics. Additionally, when discussing an issue, I feel it is a good idea to make students take the opposite position and formulate an argument for that position. In my opinion, most of our field‘s work doesn’t revolve around being right but, forming an argument to defend what you think.

Students should also feel comfortable working together in a communication classroom. I liked the ideas presented about different ways to divide students up so that they all work with different partners. Especially in the Fundamentals of Public Speaking classroom, students need to feel comfortable with each other and feel as if they are amongst friends rather than strangers. I feel that when students feel like they are among friends they will also have better discussions.

The text gave some very good advice on how to run a discussion. I have had issues running discussions in my classroom in the past, and now feel far better equipped to do so. As I mentioned in my last blog I would like to move my classroom from primarily lecture based, to more discussion based. After reading this section I think that this is a good idea because students can learn many things from a good discussion. I also feel like I will be able to effectively run a discussion in my classroom. Hopefully the ideas I drew from the reading for the week will make my classroom a place of livelier discussion and active learning.

Interesting links:

American Classroom Culture

Research Article on Classroom Discussions

Lesson Planning Resource