This resource is intended for CAs/TAs leading a discussion section that is part of a class taught by another instructor. It focuses on discussion-based teaching approaches.
Teaching Assistant roles can vary widely across the disciplines, and can include lecturing, discussion leading, assignment and paper grading, assignment design, syllabus design, administrative responsibilities, and a number of other minor and major responsibilities. The TA will probably find her assignment most rewarding if she is willing to think of herself as accountable both to the professor and to the students — TAs sometimes think of themselves as accountable primarily to the professor, but considering yourself an apprentice teacher and not an “assistant” will help you to learn more from the TA experience.
Faculty, staff, lecturers, teaching assistants, postdoctoral fellows, and all others who have an teaching responsibilities in the classroom and/or lab are considered Individuals with Title IX Reporting Responsibilities, and must report on gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, or stalking to the University Title IX Coordinators. Please see the Title IX policy website and the University's handout for more details. For questions or concerns, please contact the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs at equalopportunity@uchicago.edu.
The list below contains some suggestions for ways to handle the first day of teaching your own class. It is not comprehensive—every class will differ—but we hope it serves as a useful guide for strategies to make your first day successful and set the tone for a productive class.
The list below it contains the basics of good classroom management, logistics, and built-in daily reflection on the teaching process. It is by no means complete or unalterable, but it covers most of the daily essentials that provide the ground for success in the classroom.
Part of the process of student learning involves students reflecting about their own learning throughout the course. Soliciting this type of feedback from your students will help you assess their progress towards understanding the course’s content, the skills they are practicing through the course and also whether the various components of the course are helping students meet these objectives.
Below are a few suggestions on how to initiate a discussion or approach a discussion topic. Varying activities and approaches helps keep students engaged; and by involving them in generating the discussion you ensure that they are prepared and participating.
Class discussions can be used for a variety of purposes: to rehearse and solidify previously acquired knowledge, to evaluate your students’ understanding, to improve their oral abilities, to foster analysis and synthesis of different viewpoints about a problem, to generate debates and arguments amongst students, etc. These goals are not mutually exclusive, but it is important to determine which have more priority given what you want your students to learn.
While asking questions may seem a simple task, it is perhaps the most powerful tool we possess as teachers. If we ask the right question of the right student at the right moment we may inspire her to new heights of vision and insight. A good question can excite, disturb, or comfort, and eventually yield an unexpected bounty of understanding and critical awareness. But even apart from such serendipitous moments, question-asking serves many functions that make it the stock in trade of the skillful teacher.
Communication takes place along four modalities: speaking, writing, listening, and reading. It is common for instructors to teach speaking, writing, and reading skills, and yet, listening is at once the least understood and most important of these competencies.
Listening is an important communication competence that includes complex cognitive processes like understanding and interpreting messages, affective processes like being motivated to pay attention, and behavioral processes like responding with both verbal and nonverbal feedback. In other words, to be an effective listener, the listener has to take into consideration what he or she is thinking about the communication being received, what he or she is feeling about the communication and also the context of the conversation, and what he or she will do in the process and as a result of the communication.
The characteristics of effective listening thus range across these cognitive, affective, and behavioral frames.
Working in small groups gives students a chance to practice the higher-order thinking skills that instructors love to teach. Students who do small group work generally learn more of the material and retain their knowledge longer than students who don’t (Davis, 1993). Small group work can range from short, informal exercises to formalized problem sets that make up the majority of class. Contrary to popular belief, instructors can incorporate small group work into large lectures as well as seminars and discussion sections. Here we have compiled examples of small group exercises that range from informal to formal and that work well with a variety of class sizes.
Small group work can significantly enhance student learning by transforming students from passive recipients of knowledge into active participants in the learning process. Research suggests that students who engage in small group activities, inside or outside of the classroom, achieve a deeper understanding of the material and demonstrate better retention than students who do not participate in such activities. Small group work also aids in vesting students with a sense of ownership over their own learning and provides students with opportunities to hone critical communication and social skills.
Below, we outline four steps to successfully implement small group work in your classroom.