October 11, 2004

Objective of the class: How to make a reference list in APA style.

In the planning stage, I wanted to use the book, but I realized that the information there was out of date. I then decided to use the web site only, which had additional information, and I also wanted to explore the online resources.

I opened the class by asking students what a reference list was and what information it contained so that their schemata would be activated. Then I paired them up by height, which was something they had never done with my cooperating teacher, so they weren’t sure what to do. Some found their partners and were making their way back to their seats and others continued to stand. I made sure that they would sit with someone they don’t work with often.

When I told them to open their GSU account, some immediately started following my directions. I had them listen to the whole set of instructions first and told them they had it on the worksheet because I knew that once their attention was on the screen I would lose them and, as a result, they wouldn’t know what to do. Even though I took all these precautions, Divine and Crishan asked me what they were supposed to do. I then referred   the instructions so they would become increasingly independent from me when carrying out instructions.

There was a major error on the worksheet ("the editor’s last name comes first and then the last name"), so I decided to interrupt the class to let them know. Next time, I will proofread the handout more carefully. Another problem I had was when the students turned to page 92. The instructions read “the first one is done for you” but I forgot to say that the example in the book was outdated, so they did number 2 based on that. Luckly, I realized that while they were still doing number 2 and I referred them to the web page.

They walked me through the typing stage and that allowed me to check their knowledge, answer their questions, and make sure they would be able to do number 3 following the model on the web site rather than the one on the book. I established that one student would be the typist and the other the monitor. Since references have so many tiny details, I thought that the students would stand a better chance of getting it right if they concentrated on one task only. They shared their answers and that was a great chance to provide peer-feedback.

We were running out of time, but I decided to give the instructions for the last section anyway so they would start the reference list and have a preview of what was going to happen the next class. They worked on it for about 5 minutes and I wrapped up the class by telling them what to do for the next day.

I feel that they still had many questions regarding online documents, which would be addressed the following class. However, they successfully demonstrated that they could do book and article reference. Next time I will tailor the class according to the sources they will most need rather than all types (films, interviews, etc). Most of the students had Internet sources, so I will concentrate on them.