Large class size weighing you down? Looking for ways to work smarter and not just harder and longer?
Go to the OEA Website to explore practical and specific tips for teaching large class sizes for K-12 teachers and paraprofessionals as well as community college faculty:
Here’s a preview of things you will find at this link:
ü Create specific, seamless procedures for attendance, collecting or distributing papers, asking questions, etc. that utilize student helpers. Give reinforcement, extra credit, etc. to helpers that perform their duties without distraction, reminding or interrupting. Develop a system for changing helpers.
ü As much as possible reduce the “feeling of overcrowding” that can affect learning and limit movement in the classroom by removing or replacing oversized or unnecessary furniture. This also allows you, the teacher, to move around the room getting closer to as many students as possible and making the class “feel” smaller to the students.
ü Be sure to develop in your classroom management system, routines and ground rules for movement around the classroom (passing assignments in, sharpening your pencil, entering and exiting, etc.) as well as activities or tasks that students are routinely expected to do at their desks when they enter to minimize crowding.
ü Group projects encourage rich, inclusive and interactive learning that, if you can manage it well, will motivate a large classroom. Be sure to structure it so that each group is also judged, graded, awarded points daily for working well together and including everyone, but be very specific about what that “looks like” and reinforce it consistently.
ü To allow for differentiation and to minimize volumes of papers to grade, you can create menu options for ways to complete an assignment (problems/questions in a text, essay of the major points, flow charts/diagrams or pictures with explanations, point/counterpoint outlines, etc.) and then create and manage an in-class review committee for each type of assignment choice. Students group themselves in the review committee that matches their assignment choice. Give each committee clear and rigorous guidelines for how to review each assignment. They can “grade” them in three categories of exceeds, meets or needs improvement. You can then do a very quick review of their assessments to determine accuracy and intervention strategies.
It is a good learning experience for students to grade their own tests. First create a solid rubric for grading each question. For a certain beginning algebra problem a rubric might be: Assigned variables 1 pt; Formed 2 independent equations 2 pts; Attempted solution by substitution or elimination. 1 pt; correct answer 1 pt. This is similar to the AP style scoring in high school. Students need to be taught & practice scoring in class in advance. If a few are not honest that is a small price to pay for students learning what is expected and how steps can be broken out. The whole score is not based on getting the correct answer. The papers are collected by the teacher who checks the scores. Works well for a large CC class.
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