Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Biodiversity Discussion

Okay, so the day came on the class schedule that said “biodiversity paper discussion.” From the loud chatter, I could tell right away when I walked in that my students were excited and nervous. As the long hand on the clock ticked closer to 11:00 when class begins everyone settled and looked at me expectantly. I took a moment and explained what we were going to do – count off into eight groups, each group assign a “recorder” and a “reporter,” work on the prompts together and then report out the answers. Before I had even finished explaining, everyone was standing and chatting excitedly – as I was trying to bring the class together for another moment, one young man leaned over and said, “We’re just excited because we have never done this before.” I appreciated the insight that comment provided for me.

After the groups discussed the prompts (I had asked them to try to speak English so I could understand – some groups did this better than others), they reported out. At first no one wanted to speak, but one group reported and then another, and eventually everyone got bolder and more confident, and we had a good discussion of the reading with quite a few people participating. Overall, I think this was a novel learning experience for almost all of the students - they were great! I concluded the lecture period with a smile and a good feeling. It will be interesting to see if folks jump into the discussion next time, now that they know it is a fun process. We’ll see!

Students from the class listening.

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