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Helpful books for first-time 309K teachers

Submitted by michelle_jd on December 5, 2008 - 10:43am

It has been my task for the CWRL this last semester to review the books in the CWRL library dedicated to pedagogy. Luckily, this task coincided with the time frame wherein I had to create my first 309K proposal. I found three of the books in the library to be exceptionally helpful, and wanted to offer them up for anyone else struggling to conceptualize their course.

The first book that I recommend is Understanding by Design, authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Chapter 1 describes the "backward design" process of creating your course content -- beginning with the end in mind. The book invites you to envision your end-goals first, and create course content that works continually toward those goals.

The second book that is helpful for conceptualizing your course is Classroom Assessment Techniques, by authors Thomas Angelo and K. Patricia Cross. Chapter 2 of this book offers a questionnaire - the Teaching Goals Inventory. This is a great exercise to help you work through what's most important to you as a teacher. Chapters 3&4 take you through the process of using your goals to create assessment tools.

The final book is the one I found to be the most helpful: Engaging Ideas by John C. Bean. This book takes you through the process of creating assignments meant to foster critical thinking. It is written as a "how-to" manual for writing across the curriculum, and it is a very practical guide for creating assignments, helping students with reading difficult texts, dealing effectively with writing error, etc. For the first-year teacher, the book also has two chapters on grading and giving feedback. This book has clear examples of assignments -- including how to present them.

You can check out these and many other books from the CWRL library in FAC 8. You can also access these books through Good Reads

Another good one ...

Submitted by wdmartin on December 20, 2008 - 6:24pm.

... is "What the Best College Teachers Do" by Ken Bain. They define "best" as teachers whose students still knew what they had learned in the class years later. Then, having identified a bunch of teachers like that across many disciplines, they did a fifteen year study of them. The book is the result. I found it very helpful when I first began teaching Rhetoric.