Unlike previous occasions, the student-to-student engagement with each other did not end when the ice breaker task had been completed. Eyes moved from my face to the faces of their group members as students within groups made a communal effort to translate the writings into understandable English. Then I began humming Twinkle, twinkle… Before I could complete the line, simultaneously students in every group shouted out the nursery rhyme. I explained ways of discerning meaning when the words are old English, but they were not getting it. The words on one line were: Scintillate, scintillate asteroid minific. I explained that the words were another way of saying a line of poetry, an axiom, or a line from a nursery rhyme that was familiar to them. Each line consisted of words written in obscure English. I asked students to look at four lines that appeared on an overhead screen. The class discussion topic was ‘Effective Communication with Parents.’ I assigned students to different groups and began with an ice breaker. I discovered their effectiveness when I first used disguised nursery rhymes in an instructor’s manual for an old edition of Becoming a Master Student, by Ellis. Nursery rhymes speak the language of childhood and all of us are fluent in this language. The tool I use to help make this happen is disguised nursery rhymes. They share the notes they’ve taken in classĪnd converse about the status of a parent in hospice or a trying workīut in my classes, I want to create an atmosphere in which breadwinners and students who don’t yet have these responsibilities feel comfortable enough to express their opinions, question positions taken in textbooks, and park their sailboats on any island group within the class. The breadwinners create support networks among themselves. In less obvious ways they self-identify their These breadwinner students make themselves known to me. Through emails, copies of doctors’ appointments and work schedules, Their social life in college but students who have real responsibilities for ![]() Others others can consist of parents, children, a neighbor, siblings, aĪre adult students, older than 24, but not always. Student breadwinners are financially responsible for themselves and Membership groups based upon what I call “breadwinner status.” ![]() That two weeks into a semester, students begin subdividing themselves into Gender, ethnicity, race, or regional demographics. That the failure of students to bond with each other is not related to age, From observations in the education courses I teach, I have concluded
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