Chapter 11. Activities

First-Day-of-Class Activities

On the first day of class faculty too often merely distribute the syllabus and release students early. This approach misses an opportunity to set a tone for the semester, to begin to establish rapport with your students, and to help them understand the kinds of work you’ll be doing together. The suggestions below offer creative alternatives to the bland “syllabus day” approach, and have been drawn from Graduate Center faculty and students. These originally appeared as part of the Teach@CUNY series on Visible Pedagogy (http://cuny.is/vp).

Writing a Recipe of Yourself: By Anke Geertsma

This semester I’m trying out a new first day of class activity. Rather than just asking for students to briefly introduce themselves, I want to ask them to write a recipe for themselves. I’m thinking of titles such as “Recipe for Sweet Steven” or “How to Make a Delicious Helen.” I’ll encourage students to be creative: tell what has gone into making them, such as personal or ethnic backgrounds, languages and experiences, but also what they care about and what motivates them. They can include a photo of what the recipe looks like when it’s ready (a selfie or something that stands for who they are).

I’ll explain the activity and ask them to write down some thoughts in our first class. During this first class I also plan to have them share some thoughts in small groups so that they can get to know each other already. I’m teaching a hybrid class with a course site, so I’ll ask them to publish their recipes online, but this type of activity would of course also work in a regular class by asking students to bring their recipes the second class and sharing them (in small groups or with the whole class).

Beyond introducing themselves, I also hope to direct my students’ focus to different genres of writing, for, while most students won’t immediately think of the recipe in these terms, it’s a genre just like the essay or an epic poem. I’ll ask them to consider the genre’s components (list of ingredients, directions, cooking time) and mimic these features in their recipes for themselves. Let’s see how it goes!

Anke Geertsma is a Teaching and Learning Center Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature.

First-Day Freewriting: By Luke Waltzer

My hope for the first day of class is to help students see how we’ll move as a learning community towards the goals of the course. After we all briefly introduce ourselves, we review the syllabus. Students should see the arc of the semester, the logic of selected readings, the intentionality and connection of assignments, and the space that’s available for modification. They should see a structure, but also how we might improvise.

A syllabus review is not enough, however. It’s crucial that students begin the course with an understanding of their roles and responsibilities. I ask them to do some freewriting about their points of entry into and goals for the course, and then they share what they’ve come up with. This exercise makes clear that they will be expected to be active participants in the classroom space, engaging, contributing their thoughts, bolstering the structure. This sometimes makes students uncomfortable, which is not necessarily a bad thing; good things can happen in a classroom when one grows comfortable with one’s own discomfort.

The prompt I give takes different shapes depending on the nature of the class. For instance, in the Digital Humanities (DH) Praxis course, students are expected to produce a working prototype of a digital project by the end of the semester, and the process requires significant attention to the rhetorical choices that come with project development and advocacy. On the first day students composed a tweet about their proposed project, and the enabling constraint of 280 characters emphasized the need for and challenges of precision, clarity, and simplicity when discussing complex projects. Returning to this exercise throughout the semester helped students recenter their understandings of their work, which is important when things are moving quickly. Courses that are less pressure-packed than DH Praxis, such as survey-based courses, have had prompts oriented to helping students situate themselves and their histories within the context of the course. By the end of the exercise, they should feel some ownership over and investment in the space we will all build together, and a readiness to work.

Luke Waltzer is the Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a member of the doctoral faculty in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program and the MA Program in Digital Humanities.

Imagining Artworks: By Joy Connolly

On the first day, I like to ask students the following questions: Imagine a non-verbal artwork—a musical composition, a painting, a sculpture, a digital image—that captures what you think an ideal class should be and feel like. Is it a jazz band or choral performance, where instruments or voices resonate with one another? Or the glorious chaos of a painting by Jackson Pollock? What kind of intellectual dialogic experience does your artwork convey?

The students describe their pieces and explain their reasoning. It’s a creative, encouraging way to explore and open up students’ ideas of what a classroom experience should be. For myself, I offer a picture of a sculpture by Anthony Caro.

For me, it embodies three important ideals: ideas and arguments burst forth from a level floor, conveying the dynamism and equity I value in the classroom, and it is slightly awkward, the L shape in front dominating the smaller planks in the background—like so many classes, with some voices louder or more frequent than others, but still maintaining an essential balance.

To imagine the classroom in aesthetic terms also allows the students to think of their contributions as artistic gestures made in collective space, which both challenges and frees them to think creatively and contribute more frequently. When this exercise works well, the classroom becomes an artwork that it is up to them to create—a memory whose effect can ripple through the entire semester. I occasionally end class meetings with the question of which artwork that particular class recalled—which allows for a peculiarly reflective and insightful self-criticism on all our parts.

Dr. Joy Connolly is the Interim President of the Graduate Center and a Professor of Classics.

Exploding the Text: By Wendy Tronrud

On the first day of class, I like to end with an “Explode the Text” exercise. As a strategy, “Explode the Text” requires all students to participate aloud and to collaborate in the meaning making process with a complex and challenging text; it opens up interpretive possibilities, rather than directing students to answers, and it builds in differentiation and student choice. Thus as a first-day exercise it models so much of what we want students to do for the semester as a community and as individuals, and it is perfect for a class that does not know one another yet.

Step 1: I begin with a poem that is complex but relatively brief (I’ve used Hayan Charara’s “Elegy with Apples . . .” or Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”). It is helpful to have a poem around twenty lines or so. The teacher reads the poem aloud in this exercise, while students have their own specific tasks.

Step 2: Once all students have a copy of the poem before them, I introduce the activity, explaining to students that as I read aloud, they should underline any line(s) that stand out or speak to them in some way. This ensures that students have a choice as to their entry point into the poem and allows them to appreciate and respond to a smaller section of language without the pressure of having to immediately grasp the poem as a whole. For a class of students with varying skill levels, this choice of entry point is essential; each student can choose a line whose language s/he feels more comfortable working with given my expectation of whole class participation.

Step 3: After I’ve read the poem aloud for the first time, students are given 3-4 minutes in which to freewrite using their choice of line as a starting point. I explain that the freewrite should and can take them wherever it needs to as the goal is to open up the complex language and connotations of a given poem through the images, associations, and personal responses students bring to it. I encourage students to freewrite directly on the printed handout of the poem.

Step 4: I then read the poem a second time, and this is where the text is “exploded.” As I get to the line a given student chose, the student interjects his/her freewriting aloud to the class. When I get to the end of the poem, every student in the class has “exploded the text” with his/her associations, ideas, images, etc.

Step 5: After this collective experiment, I open a whole-class conversation around any observations or reflections students have about the process, experience, or poem. For instance, a number of students may choose the same line from which to freewrite or a number of students may bring similar or conflicting connotations to various lines and all of this makes for great discussion. This part can take a more directed exploration of the text (perhaps you have questions you want students to consider), but I think what’s important is to first ask students to reflect aloud or in writing about the process of this strategy and what they noticed and learned from it.

Wendy Tronrud is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the Graduate Center and an instructor at Queens College and a Writing Associate at The Cooper Union.

Short In-Class Activities to Check for Understanding

Anonymous Writing

Give students a prompt and time (five minutes) to respond to the prompt. This prompt might address a classroom dynamic that you want to further explore, a response to a reading, or a survey. Once they have finished writing, collect them and redistribute them. Go around the room and ask students to read the response that they have.

Clearest and Muddiest Points

Ask students to write two things on a notecard or a half-sheet of paper: the clearest point (from the lecture, from last night’s reading, etc.) and the “muddiest” point (the most difficult to understand). You can make this function as a quiz. You could also count it as participation or use it to take attendance. If you do this at the end of class, you can use the questions as a way to start class during the next session. Or you could generate a list of “muddiest points” for students to discuss in groups and then conduct some whole-class feedback.

Read, Repeat I.

Before assigning a reading, have students preview the text by getting into small groups and reading an excerpt. Small groups can read the same excerpt, discuss, read again, and conclude with a final discussion. This gives students a good head start in engaging the reading, allowing them to spend some time with a small section in preparation for reading the entire thing.

Read, Repeat II.

Assign a short reading in class and ask students to write their initial thoughts, impressions, or responses. Collect them and then, pass them back out. Have each student read their colleague’s response and then reread the text. Afterward have a conversation about how they read differently the second time and what kinds of implications this has for rereading texts.

Following a Concept

Pick a concept that is relevant to the course that you imagine students might have some trouble understanding. Bring a collection of diverse artifacts—books, images, magazines, newspapers, etc. Give students time to “follow” that concept across media. They can keep track in a journal of some kind or make a collage. Ask them to post or email the photos and create a slideshow with all of the ways that students thought about the concepts. Go through the slideshows asking students to comment on what they were thinking when they took the photo. Conclude with a discussion about the concept.

Pairing

Choose excerpts from the text. Ask students to pair these with an image that they find and/or create. Ask students to place the image and the excerpt side-by-side and write briefly about how the text and images “work” together to offer relevant insight or knowledge.

Sorting and Matching

Identify key concepts, themes, or frames that you’d like students to think more about. Write these terms on different index cards or on the board. Ask students to categorize or match related quotes, examples, images, references, etc. that fall under these categories. This can happen as a whole class or can be done in small groups. If it is done in small groups, do a “gallery walk” and ask students to explore how groups differently categorized them.

Agree/Disagree/In-Between

Put signs up that say agree, disagree, or in-between. Read statements from the course material aloud—concepts, quotes, etc. and ask them to go stand under the signs that reflect their thinking. You can have students keep track on a sheet of their responses and use them to guide discussion.

Fishbowl Group Discussion

Invite students to share the labor of facilitating class discussion. The fishbowl structure divides the class into two groups, one group sits in an “inner-circle” and the other sitting on an “outer-circle.” The students positioned in the inner-circle are given a few talking points or specific questions they need to attend to over the course of the discussion; meanwhile, the students positioned on the outer-circle follow a rubric to evaluate the discussion. You can then switch the roles of the participants.

Creative Activities

The “Long Look”

A version of “close looking” drawn from Rika Burnham's "Long Look" gallery pedagogy. Essentially, you show students an image with little to no context, and ask them to observe the image and begin to construct ideas and responses. After approximately five minutes and initial responses, give the students some more contextualizing information, and ask them to view the image for another few minutes. Ask students as they are able to move around the space, to come closer or further away, to change their perspective. At the end of the close looking time, the class discusses their insights, impressions, and questions. The instructor guides the conversation towards the course objectives for the day.

Speed-Sharing (modeled after speed-dating)

Split your class in two groups and have students arrange their chairs so that they are facing each other. Give them two minutes to share their project idea, paper outline, or response to a text. Once the two minutes are up, ask them to move to the next person. Note: One group will remain seated, while the other group will move to one side in two-minute intervals. Once people are in their first pair a second time the activity ends.

Graffiti

Pull a relevant quote or image (or series of quotes and images) to project onto the board. Give students ten to fifteen minutes to write and draw on top of the projected quote or image. If you are repeating this activity, take a photo of each iteration. This can be a warm-up activity before writing or discussion time or can act as a way to conclude.

Creative Interpretation

Choose any text that we have read in our class and respond to it creatively. You can create a picture or write creatively in a genre of your choice. A brief write-up (150-300 words) should accompany your creative work explaining the connections that you made between the text and your own work.

Sticky Note Check-In

Put up three to four posters (or write topics on the board) related to the class content or the goals for the semester. For example, the posters could say “What do you want to learn in this class?” “What do you think you could teach other people in this class?” “What are your strengths as a ______ student?” “What skills would you like to improve?” Each student gets a post-it note for each poster. They should respond to each prompt anonymously on one post-it note and place it under the question that it answers.

Hashtagging

Have students bring in an image, a sound clip, or a video link in response to a reading or cultural text that has been assigned. Mount these images on a larger white piece of paper, so that there is room for others to write. Post these on the wall and have students walk around and look at what their colleagues have brought, adding hashtags and captions. These can be used to have a discussion about the responses and themes.

Activities based on Museum Pedagogy

"Museum Pedagogy in the Classroom" is a digital resource offering many points of access for those looking to incorporate museum pedagogies in their lesson, assignment or course design. Designed collaboratively by an interdisciplinary group of CUNY Graduate Center PhD and MA candidates as part of a 2017-2018 Focused Inquiry Group at the Teaching and Learning Center, this site offers synopses of the theories behind museum learning and describes specific activities grounded in the pedagogies of physicality, narrativity, and materiality that professors can incorporate into class work or take-home assignments. It also outlines a modular sequence of museum pedagogy-based activities that professors can use to convert their classes into curators and classrooms into galleries. We designed this sequence to be scalable for use in a single class period or as the organizing principle for an entire course.

These activities adapt specific museum education techniques for the classroom space. Professors can use physicality, narrativity, and materiality in a variety of ways to assess prior knowledge, spur interaction, and maintain students’ retention in their classrooms.

For more background on these pedagogies and to see lesson plans that use them, visit https://museumcuny.commons.gc.cuny.edu.

Physicality pays special attention to space and movement.

Human barometer

Present a debatable statement and have students position themselves on a spectrum of answers. Have students explain and elaborate. Invite students to reconsider and reposition. Great for starting and ending classes.

Gallery walk

Distribute textual or visual sources in different locations around the room and have students circulate, rather than each student or small group of students having a full set of materials in front of them.

Tableau

When fostering engagement with visual sources, have students act out the image. Great for close looking.

Soliciting group responses

• Designate a hand gesture or physical response students can make if they agree with what another student is saying.

• Include knowledge checks addressed to the whole class (e.g., “thumbs up if you have heard the term ‘zoning’ before”).

• Have students physically add their answers when asking a class-wide question, e.g., adding post-it reactions to images you present in a gallery walk or coming up and writing reactions/responses on the board.

Elbow partners

Students touch elbows with a person with whom they have something in common (e.g., “Link elbows if you live in Brooklyn”). They then continue this process until the entire class is linked. This is typically used for an ice breaker but can have potential as a content activity. Helps foster student interaction with each other.

Narrativity looks at story and story-telling as powerful tools for teaching and learning.

Role play

Encourages students to take on the perspective of one or more characters to tell (or re-tell) a story from a particular perspective in writing or orally.

What’s the story?

Invites students who have carefully observed one particular image or artifact to weave their observations or multiple viewpoints together into a coherent story about the source.

Materiality explores meaning-making through objects and images.

Rummaging

Invites participants to “browse omnivorously” through a variety of objects or images.

Close looking

Close looking is a method that often applies visual thinking strategies to ask students to carefully observe one particular image or artifact for a given period.

Handling objects

Pass around objects in class. This offers many of the benefits of multi-sensory learning, including opportunities to identify and share cultural beliefs, ideas, and emotional responses.