The first day of the new semester

Today was the beginning of the new term, the first day of the new semester. I reached early, just in case my laptop has any problem connecting with the projector. Everything was fine and students started arriving. This was year one students, pretty new to the college environment. They seemed quiet and a bit shy initially, but as we progressed with some of the introductory team activities, they started to participate better.

After completing the introduction, we developed class rules or the learning contract as I call it, for smooth functioning of the classroom learning. Among them most important ones were the need to be attentive to listen to other people, reduce distractions from hand phone, Facebook, etc., and contribute actively in team and class discussions. All of them agreed, though at times I had to remind them about these rules!

All the students focused quite well on the topic, which was learning the different types of tissues present in human body, and prepared reasonably good PPT. They managed to present their slides well, though there were a few mistakes and none of the teams had put any diagrams to illustrate the structures of the tissues. I explained the importance of diagrams in explaining the structures and extolled them to do so in future lessons.

Last 15 minutes were reserved for attempting the quiz questions in exam-like environment, which serves as an indicator of how much knowledge they were able to attain during the lesson. After submitting the quiz, they were dismissed. Some students stayed back, asking for reference books, some questions to clarify, etc. One student came to me and confessed that she was totally 'lost' and didn't know how to go about researching information on the topic, and what to present on the slides. I sat down with her, and showed her some website links and how to source for the information. Then we discussed some of the concepts which she was unsure of , and after half an hour, when she was pretty sure, she left.

Overall it was a satisfying day with my new batch of students. Though they are new and 'young', they demonstrated the desire to learn and do well!