After introducing myself, we talked about expectations, and so I polled the class on what they thought my expectations were, which they knew: come on time, bring books and pens to class, bring your own brain, and show respect. By BYOB, I explained that getting enough sleep, eating breakfast, and being mentally prepared were important. I explained why sleep deprivation damaged their ability to think and remember, by decreasing the availability of neurotransmittance and re-generation of neurotransmitter stock in the synapse bulbs (in much easier language, of course).
Fig. 1: Sleep deprivation & Neurotransmitter sites:
Decreased activity & re-generation cycle
We then talked about their experiences in the past semester. They were under no illusions about how education ran here, and were aware of the student protest, which they said were focused on the assessment regime in place at the time. They were not happy with their essay writing teacher, whose class taught them nothing. I asked them if they could recall what aspects of writing were difficult. They told me the teacher talked about the general structure of essays, but how sentence construction could change within the essay, and why, was not covered. Specifically, they did not practice distinguishing between opinions and facts; reports are associated with factual writing, but essays require both in tandem in order to persuade.
Fig. 2: Distinguishing facts from opinions
We then went through an essay they chose and collaborated on. We seized upon the controversial issue (they knew about "controversy"): "The most important contribution to the world from Saudi Arabia is the export of dates", knowing of course that oil probably is. We talked about background, how the topic (dates) might need an introductory statement, as date eating is not common in North America. At the same time, the statement needs to be made in an attention-grabbing way: "Middle-eastern peoples have been eating dates for over 5000 years." The body of the essay entailed the concepts of rarity, health, and deliciousness. Cosntucting the sentences and the facts each point needed followed, and writing a conclusion that tied with the background: "Dates will continue to be important in the future, and likely will become the main export from Mars once humans establish habitations there." That took up the first class (from 8 until 940AM). One student said he learned more about essays in this class than everything his teacher taught last semester.
From 10 til 1140, we played a game. I gave them topics, for which they constructed 2 opinion and 2 factual sentences. Each team in turn would then read one sentence, and based on it the other teams had to guess what it was. If they could guess after the first clue, they got 4 points, three after the second, and so on. If teams could not guess, the reading team would get the four points. We tried that twice, and then one student suggested they write the questions, instead of the clues, in order to get more specific information. That variation worked as well. Between topic choice, sentence and question formation, and then team interaction, the game took about one hour.
In the last fifteen minutes or so, we reviewed the expectations for the class, and then I practiced the names of the students for 5 minutes, and I am pretty sure I have their 11 faces and names now (attending out of 14 students registered): Sulaiman, Faisal, Abdul-rahman, Kamal, Khaled X2, Monamur, Achmed, Abdullah X2, and Mohammed (maybe...).
That was the end of class. I hope to get my textbook and teaching materials in a moment, so that tomorrow I can actually teach according to the set curriculum.
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