Social Science Homework Help

  Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your peers’ posts. Analyze the proposed solutions for holding students accountable for their reading. Ask your classmates to clarify any confusing elements of a post and extend thinking by offering additional solutions. 

Kim Spiegel

In an online classroom setting, how would you ensure your students are reading the material? 

In an on-line classroom one of the ways that I would ensure my students read the article I assigned would be to either create a discussion forum where they need to answer specific questions centered around the article, or have them write a paper that addresses specific topics that were talked about in the article.  

What about in a traditional (ground campus) classroom setting? 

In a traditional classroom i would have my students write a one to two page paper addressing some of the topics that were talked about in the article.  To ensure they read it, i would also ask them to use the article as a source and provide at least two quotes from it.  this way I know they at least have to look at the article to formulate their paper.

If your students were not reading the materials, what would you do to increase their motivation to read them (in both the traditional and online environment)? 

One way in which I would try and motivate my students to make sure they are doing the readings in the classroom would be to create a game out of the readings.  I would break students out into two groups and have them compete against each other.  People of all ages love games and offering a small prize to the winners tends to motivate people.  In an on-line environment, things are a little more difficult because there isn’t the same personal interaction with teacher and students.  I think that providing videos that may feed off of the readings could be motivation.  Also, using the readings in class exercises can increase motivation because students may be called on to comment.  According to McKeachie (2014), “A second strategy is to consistently use the readings as the basis of in-class activities” (p.2).  If students understand that the expectation is to do the readings to perform well in class, it may motivate them to do so.

How will you increase critical reading ability?These activities will increase critical reading ability because students will understand that in order to play the trivia game or answer questions, they will need to focus on the content of what they are reading.  Also, adding reading into the grading procedure may help students focus more on reading.  If students know that not doing the readings may affect their overall grade, they may want to concentrate more on the material.

References

McKeachie, W. J. & Svinicki, M. (2014). Mckeachie’s teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (14th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.vitalsource.com/