Review Session

My first two review sessions were somewhat of a disappointment to myself, and I was unsure of how to better them.  After the e-mail that Dr. G sent that listed how students had felt about previous review sessions and some main points of reference, I felt more nervous about the review session, but I also was happy having the pointers.  I was slightly frusterated knowing that some of the students felt as though the sessions were going too fast, and the students did not always leave with a full understanding of what the correct and incorrect information was.  I was frusterated because I did not complete the review sessions fast on purpose, and I did not purposefully avoid clarifying answers, I was never asked questions to answer.  I also more often than not had one student that answered all of the questions, with no participation from anyone else.  I made a point to ask if there were questions, to pause and ensure that there were no students that were confused, but with no participation it was very difficult to decide if something need clarification. 

However, after the e-mail, Alli and I discussed the plan for this review session.  We discussed maybe giving each student a question to answer (which could lead to a lot of discomfort for individuals), allowing the students to get into groups to discuss the answers and decide on an answer as one (which could still allow for students to not get questions answered, and as a student told us on the walk over was too much work for a review session) or simply a general raise hands if you think the answer is “this” (which we were told as we were walking to the session with students that noone would raise their hands).  Instead of choosing one of these techniques, we simply made an annoucement at the beginning of the session that this review session was going to be more discussion based, and if anyone had any questions, or felt we were going too fast, to simply let us know.  Clearly, this little announcement worked!

During the review session, we spent an entire hour discussing anwers, developing questions, and answering questions.  All of the students participated in the review session, and more often than not, when one student had  a question another student had the answer, they were teaching each other!  Also, there were questions, and quite a few of them.  There were questions on why the answer was not what the student was thinking, and there were debates on which answer was the correct answer.  After discussing the possibilities, it was easy to see that suddenly the correct answer “clicked” with the students.  There were students that were discussing the answers, and misunderstandings with each other, and if it still wasn’t clear they asked everyone.  There was also a huge variety of students answering the questions.  It was a really great review session and I really felt like the students left with a good understanding of the material, and I felt better with the session that I produced.  I felt much more comfortable in front of the students this time, and I was okay with the silence, which I was not before.  I was still apprehensive when answering questions, but when I didn’t know the answer I was able to give the students the comfort in knowing that I was going to get them the best answer.