PRESSURE WITHOUT STRESS
One of my personal techniques that I use in the class room is what I call the "No Fear Rule" This rule is simply this, I tell the students on the first day "Do not be afraid to learn" What this means is that if there is anything in my presentations to the class that they do not understand, ASK! If I find out you did not know something and did not ask, I will remind you "Do not be afraid to learn" Of course through expierence I know what they don't know, and I will wait for a question from them after presenting them with some information. If I do not recieve any questions, I will anounce "Well if there are not any questions, I must assume you understand the subject completely" and then I will pick on a student at random and challenge them with a question they should have asked. This will immediatly put pressure on the student to answer, but I give them just as fast an immediate out, I will say, "and if you don't know, just say so" I will then pick on several more students until finally someones asks me the question. "AHH, I am glad you asked, let me explain" This now just turned into a game for them. I find that this technique places pressure on the student (challenges the student) with out stress and forces them to ask more questions to understand the material. Once they understand, when it comes to test time, they do well by their own merit and when the succed, their stress falls away.
Martin that is a great way of delevering the information. I use a system like that. i will use multiple choice type questions in class, i make sure to ask something that is harder of a concept for them. i too get good results.
That sounds like a great way to bring out responses. Getting students to respond to questions has been one of the most difficult things for me. I always tell them that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but very often they are afraid of being embarassed in front the class.
This is a great system. Students don't like to ask questions because of peer pressure. They are afraid the other students will call them dumb and make fun of them.We have to try and get them past this.
One of the things I use is to ask what they think a bought a cretin question.
Stating that there are no wrong answers, once I have a dialog then I can steer them to the correct answerer and they believe it was there thought
If I have a student that cannot answer a question or gets a question wrong I always tell them "thats OK, that's why we're learning". I believe that that helps the student from feeling stupid.
