I normally enjoy the text, but I thought the readings for this week were very repetitive. In each chapter of McKeachie’s text and the supplemental “What the Best Teachers Do”, the tip that assessing students is not just for grading purposes was given numerous times in different ways. It is an important realization that teachers need to be aware of, but I think teachers will come to this knowledge on their own. This week I wrote my first test for my COMM 110 students, so the majority of information in these readings was pretty helpful. I found myself writing down quite a few smaller tips and then marking a few as most important. While writing my test questions I was not thinking in terms of how can I write difficult questions to give me a visible spread of grades, but rather so my students will be able to display what they have learned from lecture, discussion, activities, and writing and delivering two speeches. The test has a format that needs to be consistent across all COMM 110 sections, so it consists of multiple choice and true and false questions. These are some of the most common types of assessment for students, so I thought McKeachie’s alternative teaching methods was new and very interesting.

Alternative Assessment Models

• Group testing, online testing, graphic concept representation, and portfolios were a few methods McKeachie suggested. I liked the group testing and online testing suggestions best. Group testing is having students that have already been working in groups take a test, and then get together in groups to go over answers and discuss where they were coming from in their answers. Online testing is simply having students take their exams using a computer instead of on paper. Each method has their drawbacks, but I think both are a good alternative to normal assessment.
• I think group testing would be beneficial to the field of communication because it involves plenty of discourse. A lot of information can be justified to fit different concepts, so short answer and essay questions could bring great discussion forward. Also, students commonly work in groups in communication so this would extend that experience one more step. Online testing would also work in communication. I think online testing is difficult for many reasons, but having a secure testing center on campus like McKeachie suggested would clear up any concerns. If students take online tests at home, they can use textbooks, friends, or web sites. They can even print out the test questions and pass them along to friends that have not taken the exam yet. This not only compromises the integrity of the exam, but also makes more work for the teacher because their test bank has been compromised also. If all students were taking the exam in one room, nobody would be able to have textbooks, no talking, and the computers would probably have some sort of program on them that makes the exam the only available window open. Online testing would also be beneficial for essay based questions. Students can type a lot quicker than writing, and the test will be legible for teachers to grade.
• I don’t think I will incorporate group testing into my teaching of COMM 110, but if I had my own course in the future I think this is something I would like to do. I think I personally learn better when I teach others what I know, so I think this style of testing will increase retention of the knowledge after testing. Online testing for COMM 110 may be difficult also because the test needs to be standard for all 60+ sections. Students could easily take the exam with other friend or use their text because NDSU does not have a secure testing center.

Another method McKeachie mentioned that lends itself nicely to group work is using peer assessment.
Peer and self assessment:

• Students can assess other students’ work before final copies are turned in. This is a way to get feedback to correct errors in their work. Students don’t often take the time to proofread their work before turning it in, so giving this opportunity in class can make noticeable differences in the quality of work.
• This can be implemented in the field of communication by having students review papers, essays, review questions, presentations, etc. This can be done in hard copy or even online. Blackboard and many other programs other universities have come with a discussion board feature or way for students to post their work and reply to each other with feedback. Technology lends itself nicely in the way that students could also e-mail each other copies and give feedback through comments or track changes on Microsoft Word.
• This is definitely something I am going to incorporate into my teaching. In fact, I am going to do something similar this week in my COMM 110 class. I am first going to create rubrics or specific criteria for what I am looking for in assignments. I will go through with students what each of the items mean. Students will then deliver their speech and give a formal outline version to group members. Those reading and listening will look for and listen for each element. If it is there, they will grade it. If the element is not there, they can give feedback to the student to fix before delivering the speech for a grade. I also like this because it will make the students more aware of what I will be looking for when grading. I also do this after students give their speeches. I have them evaluate themselves. I have them write what they think they did well, what they can work on for next time, and if they feel comfortable a grade they would give themselves. The students are also required to evaluate two of their peers. They have to provide similar information to what they critique themselves on.

The next important tip from McKeache is in regard to teaching students how to take a test.
Test taking:

• Many students may not be familiar with multiple formats of test taking. Most have taken multiple choice and true and false tests, but some have not. Essay tests are something new to college students, and every teacher writes questions differently. In chapter 9, McKeachie suggests to take about 15 minutes to teach students to take a test in the format you are giving.
• I think this is a good idea in all fields. As a student, I liked when teachers gave as much information as they could about tests to ease any concerns or anxiety I had. Now as a teacher, I sometimes feel like I am spoon feeding the students or giving them a crutch through the class, but I always give myself a reality check and remember what I liked as a student.
• To incorporate this into my teaching, I will give the following tips during review day:
  -go through the entire test and answer the questions you do know. Going through the
  test might give you an idea of other concepts and you can apply the knowledge from
  the questions to other more difficult questions.
  -eliminate some of the choices. If you can eliminate on or two choices, you can have a
  50/50 chance of getting the question correct!
  - When completed, go through the test again to make sure you answered all of the
  questions. I do not think I will give any advice in regards to changing answers when
  you go through the test again. I always like to say go with your gut instinct, but
  McKeache talked about no positive research saying that changing answers makes
  scores go down. I will however ease students worry and anxiety about the test by
  telling them to relax, breathe, and to not over analyze the questions. I did not write the
  questions to be tricky, have a certain number of answers be A, B, C or that they are in
  any particular order.

Late work:

• The last tip I will address is about late work in the supplemental reading, “What the Best Teachers Do”. We also talked a little bit about this in class last week, but I decided to concretely figure out my stance on late work. The article suggested that late work is OK. I do not agree with this. The text argued in favor of students needing to still learn from the work and simply taking a letter grade off does not do this.
• In the field of communication, many people are working against deadlines. I think that having a no late work policy is important in these classes. I think it instills these values in students. However, I was always a student that was aware of deadlines and did not have to worry about consequences of late work. However, I am divided on this issue. I am understanding in special circumstances. I am human also and had to ask for an extension on a paper. The paper turned out much better than it would have been if I turned it in on the day I had chosen for my due date. Class work is a lot different than assignments given in a professional setting. As an intern at MeritCare, I had deadlines all the time. If I did not have something proofed, it could not be sent to the graphic designer to get started. Most projects had an absolute finish deadline, so it would not be fair of me to be late and still expect the graphic designer to rush and finish before the deadline.
• In my classroom, I will implement a concrete late work policy at the beginning. This semester, I just kind of used the canned policy that was already on the syllabus. However, I want my students to know that I do not want work coming in late unless they were given previous permission or have a special circumstance. I think that teachers would go absolutely crazy if they had random assignments being turned in at different times. I want everything at once. I can keep the assignments organized, and get my grading done all at once. Students are notorious for just handing in papers with no explanation of what it is or when it was actually due. As a teacher, I do not have time to try to figure out what assignment it was or when it was due. I understand that students still need to learn, so I will also state that all assignments must be completed. I also think point deductions are better than a complete zero. I think it is only fair that students that completed the work on time be given an advantage to students that were not as organized or dedicated as they were.
  

Some helpful links I found this week regarding the readings:
Alternative Assessment Methods
This site gives some more information about alternative assessment methods.

Blackboard's Peer and Self Assessment Directions
Blackboard has a peer and self assessment function built right in. I might try this for my COMM 110 class. The students have a group speech coming up so they can give each other feedback over Blackboard this time. If I do not use this now, I will have the link handy for when I want to in the future.

Blog 4 - Grading and Cheating

I enjoy in class when we discuss the readings that were due for the day as a whole class. The beginning of this post will be a few things to help jog my memory later of insightful teaching tips that classmates shared from class last week.

• Sometimes students do not read before class because they learn better by coming to class first, hearing the lecture, and then do the readings to make it easier to understand the information.


• Give the students a list of things to look for as they read. The day the reading is due, the teacher can walk around and check whether the students did this in their notebooks and give a grade.
  

Now for this week's readings. I have been waiting for helpful information regarding grading because it is something I had not done before until grading the first round of speeches my students gave. Sure, I have corrected a few multiple choice assignments or exams before, but never such a subjective assignment like a speech. Here are a few tips regarding grading and combating cheating that I found most helpful this week.

Grade Books:

• In First Day to Final Grade, it is suggested to arrange your grade book by grouping different assignment types together, and even have an area to write notes about participation. Group tests together, quizzes together, in-class assignments, other assignments, and attendance in their own sections.


• I think this would be useful because it would be so much easier to stay organized! If you or a student ever have questions about a grade, you can easily find that group of scores and use the information you need.


• I did not organize my grade book this way this semester. I wish I would have thought of this before the semester started. I already have quite a few items in my grade book, so it would take quite a bit of time to start new records for both of my classes. I also do not want to rearrange my grade book at this time in case of errors in transferring scores. Something I will implement still this semester is having a blank sheet of paper clipped into my grade book that I can write down who contributed well or not so well in class for the day. I am not giving a grade specifically for participation, but it will be nice at the end of the semester to remember who participated nicely. I can also write down what I did during class that really got the class to interact and participate so I can do those things when I teach the class again next semester. Group arrangement of a grade book would be helpful in many communication classes because there are often many different types of assignments along with tests in communication classes. In comparison, many other college classes have only 4 tests for the semester and this tip would not be as useful for those professors. Even though it might be too late to arrange my grade book this way this semester, I can try this tip still if I implement my next idea, an electronic grade book.

Electronic Grade Books

• First Day to Final Grade suggests creating an electronic grade book. It is important to keep your grade book records in a few ways in case one method fails. It is wise to have grades written down, in an electronic version, and in our case at NDSU, posted on Blackboard. Electronic grade books made with a program such as Excel can be time consuming to set up, but makes record keeping much easier at calculating final grades at the end of the semester a snap!


• I think a system like this would be useful because it was be very easy to stay organized. I would like to do this because it is so much easier to move records around without having to erase and start over like I do in my paper grade book. I could move an entire column in seconds. The computer would also accurately calculate final grades with a simple formula compared to me having to add each individual score together. However, if I do implement this, I am going to wait until next semester and try to get it done before the semester starts or definitely before the first graded assignment comes up. Over semester break I think I will begin setting the files up so all I will have to do is enter in the names when I get my class rosters. I am not an excel whiz, so I will have to review my skills. I will still keep a paper copy of my grades however, because I have had technology fail on me before. Electronic grade books could be a negative idea however because the file could potentially land in the wrong hands. I will probably keep the file on a flash drive, so I will also learn how to work the password feature on my flash drive in case I ever leave my flash drive in the library or lose it on campus.


• I think electronic grade books are widely implemented in many fields already. Again, many communication classes have multiple assignments over a semester, so the computer doing the computing of adding in many trivial 5-point in-class assignments can save a lot of time.
  

Now that I have tips on keeping efficient records of student exams and assignments, it is time to write, give, and correct some exams! Here are some tips I found helpful regarding exams.

Grading Exams:

• First Day to Final Grade suggests to take a look at the scores when you are done grading and see if there were any questions that were missed multiple times. These questions might be bad questions, so you should re-evaluate and decide if it was a fair question. Was it something you did not cover in class? Was it written poorly? Or, was it simply just a challenging question and the students were not prepared?


• I find this useful because I have taken a few exams where questions were written poorly or, there were multiple answers that could have been correct. I usually chose the answer the teacher was not accepting and became frustrated. In turn, as a teacher I would like to be understanding and take a look at what went wrong to benefit my students. A student will not learn anything from poorly written questions that frustrate them and not allow them to display what they know.


• This tip can be implemented in the communication field because many questions are written subjectively. Often, questions are not like a math problem where there is clearly one solution. Communication teachers should be open to listening to student concerns and arguments over why they think an answer applies. Sometimes when one word is forgotten in the question or it is written unclear, the concept you are testing on can become completely different. An example of this is in true and false questions or when the word "not" is used. The answer can quickly change if words are omitted.
  
  A final tip taken from First Day to Final Grade is a grading tip for assignments.


• Comment on each assignment without writing a score, and arrange the papers best to worst. Arranging the papers best to worst can give you an idea of how you think each ranks in comparison to others. This can help in grading fairly across the board. After arranging, give a score and mix the papers up again so students do not notice a pattern when the papers are returned.


• I find this tip useful because it is helpful to look at the big picture of the class. I do not like this idea as a means to compare students and find grades this way, but as a way to keep myself in check to fairly and consistently grade. If I think one student's speech was better than another, I will look at what I commented and gave or took away points for and make sure I am doing this consistently for all of the speeches.


• I think this tip will be useful in the communication field because many assignments require feedback along with a grade. By doing this, teachers can make their comments on what students did well and what they need to work on. Based on the comments, the papers can be arranged and graded accordingly.
  

Lastly, I would like to touch on a tip found in McKeachie's Teaching Tips. I do not always find the most helpful tips from this text, but always learn things about topics I did not think about in the ways he presents before. McKeachie's experience in teaching made the definitions of what grades mean to students, professors and employers very interesting. His information about cheating students makes it seem like he has seen every trick in the book. I have never thought of cheating in the ways he describes. Here is what I found most useful.

Cheating

• Reduce the pressure put on grades in your classroom by having many different types of assignments for students to earn points on rather than just one or two exams. When students do not have so much pressure put on one exam that will determine their final grade, they will hopefully be less likely to use the many tactics McKeachie mentioned to cheat on this exam.


• I think this is useful because students learn in many different ways. Some students just are not good test takers and may feel the need to cheat to succeed. When you give students assignments, they can do them at their own pace. Whether students put in the effort of doing the other assignments well is up to them. Some students may do their best on papers because they are good at researching and writing. Others might get great marks on participation because they are prepared for class and contribute.


• The communication field can use this tip because teachers can see the skills of students by giving a wide variety of assignments instead of a test that asks students to recite what they know by answering one hundred multiple choice questions.

Some helpful links I found relating to this week's reading:

Plagiarism Checker
This plagiarism check is called SafeAssign. It is a component of Blackboard. I have not quite learned all I need about it, but I hope we have access to it since we use Blackboard at NDSU. Just yesterday, my mentor observed me teach COMM 110. She sat in the back of the room next to a group of students. These students were friends previously to my class and are upperclassmen. During an activity, she heard them talking about looking at speech textbooks from other universities and taking a speech from there and I won't notice. She could not believe they said this, especially with her being a stranger in the room sitting next to them. I was very clear on the fact that I have a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism and will follow school policy accordingly, even though McKeachie suggests instilling a learning policy rather than just lowering grades.

Create a Grade Book in Excel
This is a simple tutorial on how to make a grade book using Excel. It is pretty basic, but a good starting place for someone like myself that has not used Excel very much.

The following video is of a girl cheating. She writes the answers to the test very tiny on a piece of paper and tucks it into her ring. I have never heard of this and many of the other ways McKeachie mentioned that students cheat today. I went to YouTube originally searching for videos that showed students getting caught for cheating and was shocked to see how many videos were giving tips on how to cheat! The number of views were in the thousands!

Blog 3

Another week brings more new information and more experience. This is the first week that I can visibly tell my own coursework has competed with planning for my COMM 110 classes. The previous weeks, my coursework was a little less, but now deadlines are drawing closer, and COMM 110 required 50 minutes of teaching new material Monday, Wednesday, and again on Friday. I have had the luxury the previous weeks of having days off or students giving speeches, so now I know what a real week of teaching feels like! I am glad I read this assigned reading over the weekend because a few of McKeachie's tips stuck with me as I was planning and lecturing this week. Here are a few I found useful and how I will incorporate them into my field and my teaching:

How to get students to do assigned readings-

• McKeachie reiterates to us that students learn more efficiently from reading than from listening, so it is important to make sure students have the textbooks for class and are reading them. I have had classes that all of the material for tests come from lecture and I wasted my money on the textbooks. I have also had classes that I don't think the teacher even opened the textbook. Therefore, I want my students to use the textbook they are paying for!
• Effective use of textbooks can be implemented in the Communication field by having quizzes over the material, asking students to write reflection papers on some main points they found, or discussing topics the students found difficult. The teacher can also write questions that go along with the reading so students can stay on track while reading and make sure they are going through the material well enough to pick out the important parts. Teaching the students how to read their textbooks can also be beneficial, especially in a smaller communication class where discussion and interaction is easier. Teaching students to write in the margins of their textbooks and highlight and underline information might be new for those that are used to the rules of high school where you were often penalized for writing in textbooks.
• Reading of the textbook is very important for COMM 110, since that is where the majority of the material for exams and quizzes comes from. The textbook also gives a good background of public speaking tips, and by taking the class, the students get to execute this information by actually giving speeches. I used to hate as an undergrad when professors would give quizzes to see if anyone in the class read the book, even though I usually had done the reading! The quizzes brought on unnecessary anxiety about going to class and when we would have the quiz. In my class, I would like to use McKeachie's tip of encouraging students to read by frequently saying while lecturing, "as you read in your textbook for today." I think by doing this, students will be able to keep to themselves if they actually read or not and feel prepared or unprepared. Hopefully they will catch on that they need to read so they understand the lecture even more and feel confident to answer questions and participate in discussion. I also plan to have the students take out a sheet of paper and summarize some main points they read about or to write any questions they had about the reading and be required to bring it to class the next day like we do in my graduate classes.

More Helpful Discussion Tips-

• Discussion is something I have taken for granted until I learned that there are actually methods that lead to better discussion. I really liked the link I posted last week that had the "bridges" or ways to get students to elaborate and say more of what they are thinking. Something valuable I learned from McKeachie this week that I think I am guilty of is trying to ask questions to start a discussion, but making it sound as though, "I know something you don't know." I often ask if anyone in the class can name the 5 Canons of Rhetoric or other questions that are found in the readings. This probably is not the best approach because it often does not lead to a discussion like I hope it would. To correct this, McKeachie suggests relating information to other things for students to better understand.
• Relating information you are trying to teach can be easily implemented into the Communication field. Students process information better when they can compare what they are reading to scenarios or experiences they have had. Professors can ask for students to chime in with examples, show Youtube clips, check what was in the news, and other ways of relating information.
• I will implement this in my classroom by not rehearsing my lectures. This is something I am working on. I have been having problems with filling the 50 minutes I have to lecture, while other teachers are complaining of not having enough time. My activities go well and the students participate, but I think I need more interaction and discussion in my class rather than me lecturing quickly, which I will discuss in my next point of interest. Circling the desks is a very common way to encourage participation. I have not tried this yet, but I think Friday's lecture on topic selection will lend itself nicely to a discussion based class of generating potential informative speech topics. It might be difficult to keep some students' attention, so I will need to be on the lookout to keep everyone on task and participating.

How to plan better lectures -

• Even though lecturing is one of the oldest teaching methods, I think it is still very effective. The information you are lecturing on needs to be organized in a way so that it is easy to learn from. I have had professors that read PowerPoints verbatim leaving me with poor notes and others that have very minimal slides that lead me to have a page or two filled by the end of the class.
• Lectures in communication are usually done well I think. Most communication professionals know the rules of presenting and what to do and not to do when it comes to PowerPoints, tone of voice etc.
• Some tips for planning lectures that I will try to implement in my classroom include using signposts and better transitions, having periodic summaries in my lecture, and using remaining time to write summaries. I am waiting for my teaching mentor to evaluate me and tell me exactly where I am going wrong in being that I seem to go through my lectures so fast and have time at the end resulting in the students getting out early. Perhaps this is where I can have students write a small summary of what we covered to show they were paying attention and actually learned something. When writing my lesson plans, I have noticed that I do need to work harder on forming relationships and transitioning from one subject matter to the next. I think I do this well when I am working on academic papers, so now it is time to put that attention into my lesson plans so my students can connect the information better.

My teaching tips for myself continue to grow as the weeks go on. Here are a few links to additional readings I have found that are relevant to the tips I learned this week.

I like this link because it suggests going to friends for help with questions you may have. However, don't go to friends when you haven't done your work! Nonetheless, many find that when they explain material to others, they also learn the material more.
How to read college textbooks

I like these tips for holding discussion forums online because Blackboard's discussion board can be a great tool. I plan to use discussion board for my students to post topics, and respond to each other if they think that topic would be a good fit for our class through audience analysis.
Online Discussion Tips


I found this when searching for more information about transitioning and using signposts in lectures. I also like the idea here of "gapped worksheets" which goes to another link about handouts and how to effectively use worksheets in class.
Lecture Tips

Another week of learning and teaching is done. I am starting to get a routine going as far as teaching, planning, going to my classes, and doing course work. This week in COMM 110, students are giving their first speeches so I took the time that I normally would have been lesson planning to “front-load” and get some other work done. The time I would normally get that work done might be interrupted by grading these first speeches. While I am learning from first-hand teaching experience, the readings for this week also gave me a few pointers about aspects of teaching that I never really thought about.

A few useful topics I found:

• The beginning of chapter 3 in First Day to Final Grade stated that even experienced teachers need to plan how their classes are going to go. Having a goal for class will help students know what they are supposed to get out of each class period. When planning material, have useful transitions so that the material flows together. Students have many different types of learning styles, so varying the way material is taught day to day may spark some students one day and not others. I am a much better presenter when I am prepared, so I know lesson planning is time-consuming, but something I will need to take seriously. Having a goal will help me to know if the students learned anything for the day.
  
• Discussion is an activity that is often taken for granted in the classroom. A discussion needs to be run properly in order to be effective. I found this chapter useful because I often wondered how it could possibly be hard to run a discussion? I found the answer to that question last year when I tried to facilitate a discussion with 24 freshman students in their skills for academic success class. The students had to read a novel and spend the next class period discussing the entire novel. I felt like a huge failure when no students had anything to say and I couldn't even make discussing an entire novel take 50 minutes. We should have had enough material to discuss for multiple class periods!
  Never making a student feel sorry that they spoke is also something helpful from this chapter. Silence is hard to sit through, but some students are truly worried about what others will think of their answers.
  
• Finally, the last chapter of this week’s reading provided helpful tips for ways of teaching in the classroom. I think the most relevant ways for me will be information exchange, pros and cons, exam preparation tips, and paper workshops.

I would implement these new tips into teaching in my field by:

• Planning lesson plans a week or so in advance. By doing this I would have time to better prepare and adjust for any students that will be absent. I will know how much talking I will be doing in class and how much student interaction should be happening. In my lesson plans, I will start writing a goal for each class period. When I wrote health education lesson plans, I wrote goals and also what North Dakota and National Health Education Standard each goal and objective met.
• Discussions are very important in the field of communication since so many topics can be subjective. I think having students take a few minutes to prepare by themselves or through a pair and share activity will give everyone an equal chance to participate in discussions. Discussions help students know that it is alright to agree and disagree with what is in their textbooks. Through discussion in my COMM 110 class, many students came up with different definitions of the word “communication” and had their own models for the communication process.
• Finally, I would implement some of the class plan ideas by incorporating a few into my lesson plans for each class period. By doing this, you can target a few different learning styles in one. Some students will learn best by watching a video, while others may learn better from the PowerPoint presentation at the beginning.
  

I would like to incorporate the following into my teaching:

• I have a student that comes into class late every class meeting. He often misses attendance, so I have to remember to mark that he was there later. I also have to fill him in on what we just covered. Two of the times we were doing group work so his group had to fill him in before they could do their work. I think I will send him an e-mail or pull him aside after class. As the text mentioned, once he realizes I notice this, I think he will start being on time.
• I sometimes have problems filling 50 minutes of lecture, so I think I will start writing in possible discussion questions into my lesson plans. My students are pretty receptive to questions so I think now that I have learned how to properly run a discussion, the discussion will be more successful. One thing I am working on is when students respond or ask questions. I am having a hard time thinking of what to say back. It is not that I don't have a personality for interacting with others, I just always find myself agreeing or simply saying yes or no. I think I will start trying to remember to ask other students what their response would be.
• Finally, I think the information exchange plan for class would be successful in my classes. It is a win-win activity because some students don't read the entire chapter (if any at all) and are always in need of practicing speaking in front of each other. Assigning smaller parts of the chapter to become "experts" on to teach the class will benefit the student as well as the class.

Based on this week's readings, I found a few links for more information.

• Lesson Plan Maker
• More Discussion Leading Tips
• Discussion Tips - I really liked outline item D. These are helpful bridges to keep the discussion going and students to elaborate more.

Whew! One Week of Teaching Down, Many to Go!

I have subtitled my blog “Educating an Educator” to remind myself and my readers that I am actually an educator right now responsible for teaching 44 lucky students at NDSU. However, this educator still has a lot to learn, making me very fortunate to have the accepting students, classmates, and professors that I do.

I have always seen myself continuing in the field of academia. I think this is a result of never being in the real world working a 9-5 job, and being in school is all I am used to. When asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I always wanted to be a teacher. During the last semester of my undergrad, I was required to take “Materials and Concepts of Health Education” in which I learned many teaching and organizational skills such as lesson planning and the importance of addressing the many learning styles students have. This class further led me to wanting to at least try teaching. Having my own classroom and students for the first time this semester will definitely play a key role in whether being a teacher is my ultimate goal.

The Communication Department is very organized in the fact that they hold a week long orientation for new graduate teaching assistants. Us newbies were also required to attend the general NDSU graduate teaching assistant orientation in which we quickly found out how fortunate we are to be guided through this transition from being a student a mere three months ago to teaching and leading a classroom. The first reading assignment and the assignment for this week proved very helpful and somewhat of a refresher from orientation. However, I wish I would have read the “First Day to Final Grade” textbook over the summer and had this information before the first day of class. Had it not been for the second-year master’s students that had been through all of this before to answer my questions about the first week, I would have been lost!

Some helpful tips I took from the “First Day to Final Grade” were:

• Get to know the names of your students. Knowing the names of your students can increase your credibility, help class run more smoothly, and make you seem more conversational.
• Look at your classroom before the first day of class. I think this tip can be one of the most important. You must know where your classroom is and what the room is equipped with for proper planning. Arriving on time is crucial and planning activities around the arrangement of the desks or technology available can prevent unorganized and inefficient class meetings.
• The section on dressing up was one I read carefully. I have had professors that dress casually and I always took them just as seriously as those that wore ties everyday. However, these were established professors, not a graduate teaching assistant that is actually younger than some of her students. I think the cons outweigh the pros, but dressing up is something that is a must to establish authority and credibility when you are in my situation. I had to buy more dress clothes, which are significantly more expensive than casual clothes, but I think it will be worth it in the end.
• One last important tip is balancing being a teacher and graduate student at the same time. Not being overly adaptable and available to meet with students can be a challenge for some new teaching assistants that want to be liked.

Tips that showed up in both texts can easily be implemented into any field of teaching.

• I have 22 students in each of my classes, so this is a very reasonable goal to know all of their names within the first few class meetings. I found my roster on Campus Connection and went over names for pronunciations. The text suggested possibly looking for pictures with the roster or checking Facebook. I do not think searching for my students on Facebook would be very productive. I can only wish I had time to search Facebook for that long as a new grad student! I have also personally decided that I will not accept any of my students’ friend requests on Facebook until the semester has ended like many professionals across many fields may also agree with.
• Being too accessible to students and colleagues may lead to you using your time less efficiently. Whether you are a business executive or teacher, you must set aside specific times for anyone to come in (office hours), time for checking e-mails, personal time, time for coursework, and other time for important parts of your position. Do not let people pop in at random times. This will lead them to think this is acceptable and interrupt your work so you have to take the needed time to regroup and begin from where you were before.
• Dress codes need to be implemented in most fields also. Dress codes establish credibility and also help with performing the job you do. If you work in construction, you would want to wear appropriate clothing for your duties, just as a professor wants to look professional and dress a step above what the students are wearing to establish authority.

Most of the readings and discussion topics have had me jotting down notes and suggestions all over my notebook. These ideas are things I can still implement for this semester, and also things I can do for the first day of next semester and the semesters that follow.

• When I go over the syllabus on the first day of next semester, I will stress the importance of the attendance policy more. Since the COMM 110 syllabus was already made for us by the department, I will make my syllabus more detailed so there are no contested policies.
• I have dressed up every class meeting so far and plan to continue to do this. I definitely think the students take me more seriously than if I was wearing jeans.
• I have been doing well in getting to know the students with ice breakers and activities. I had the students make information cards as suggested in the text and challenge myself to hand them out to the right person at the beginning of each class. Today I had a student volunteer to try to pass them out. Public Speaking is a unique class that you get very close with your fellow classmates as you encourage them along the way and grow as a communicator together. Something I faltered with a bit on the first day of getting to know students was not completely actively listening. I did an activity where students had to share a fact based on a color of candy they picked out. One student did not take any candy and just told a fact. I then asked them to share another interesting fact, not completely processing that they had just shared three.
• I also checked out my classroom before the first day. This is one of the best tips out there. I have never taught a class before, so I went in my assigned room when it was empty one night and walked around the desks, the front of the room, and pictured myself lecturing. I noted there is a white board with markers, the desks can be moved, and I have all the necessary technology I will need. This answered a lot of questions and enabled me to make a quiz I could simply put on the document camera instead of printing one for each student. I also found that standing in front of the room on the first day was a little less daunting because I had pictured myself there already.

The readings for this week were helpful, and they only covered what to do while preparing for and teaching on the first day! It's going to be a very educational semester for this new educator! Here are a few links to some teaching tips.

Florida State University has an entire section of their web site devoted to preparing for teaching. I found the "Prepare for your first semester" section the most helpful. http://learningforlife.fsu.edu/ctl/firstSemester/index.cfm

As cheesy as they are, and as much as people hate them, ice breakers are beneficial and really do "break the ice" to get people talking. Here is a site with many ice breakers that can be adapted or used with many age groups.
http://www.teach-nology.com/ideas/ice_breakers/

Finally, in all seriousness with a little humor, the following is a must read that addresses the dress code of teachers and what to never EVER wear.
http://www.theapple.com/careers/articles/8431-what-teachers-should-never-ever-wear?page=1