What has worked extremely well for me is to blend a little bit of lecture with a lot of cooperative learning. Normally, what I’ll do in a class period—once or twice or even three times during the class period—depends upon the particular topics and the complexity of them and how disjunctive they are and what kind of pieces I can break them into, I’ll usually begin—I think they call this the Bookends method—with a small lecturette—five minutes, maybe three minutes—just setting the stage so that everyone knows the direction I want them to go. Then I will assign a task that needs to be done in class by the students themselves. I’ll check for understanding to make certain they know the direction I want them to go. They will work on this for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes—whatever the appropriate period is. We’ll stop. I will call on teams at random to report what they’ve got. Then I’ll be the Greek chorus, and I’ll comment on what that team has done, and on whether I thought it was successful or unsuccessful, or if it could lead to something right, or if they are going down the wrong path. And then perhaps [I’ll] show a few more hints, some suggestions, some paths and directions to follow. Perhaps ask for other students’ comments at this point and then let them work some more. Then, finally, [I’ll] wrap up the class again with another little lecturette to produce closure…

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