I thought today might be an especially difficult class. Our midterm exam was last Monday, and I shall not be reviewing the papers in class until Friday. Sometimes, there's a little whiff of depression at this point in a course. As well as these considerations, today definitely seemed like summer and keeping our collective minds on the work is a little more difficult when we cannot help but think how others are out in the bright Vancouver sunshine.
Furthermore, our classroom was hot. It's seems there's some major construction in one wing of the NE 1 building and the air conditioning was not at all effective. The air wasn't moving in the slightest. Our classes last for four hours and I looked at my watch and was dismayed that we had a full 45 minutes remaining until the clock would read 12:30.
All seventeen of the attending students been very attentive and they'd finished the material quickly, in fact more quickly than I had planned for. The concepts in our unit had been about creating persuasive messages in a business environment. We completed discussing AIDA earlier and had studied about making special requests before break. There is little advantage for a receiver when getting one of these types of messages. I knew I should let the four tables of students work on something related.
I decided that I'd offer a "Get-Out-of-Jail" card to the group that could make the best written request. I had to offer a definition of that idiom first. It's really a wonder that anyone can learn a second-language with all of the assumed knowledge that goes along with words. This was not a game of Monopoly, but I offered the winning group a prize. I said I would choose the most presuasive memo. The winning group of four students could then use it to leave class 15 minutes early on any of the remaining days which we meet.
The seriousness in which they attacked the activity was surprising. All four groups turned in really good efforts. The winners got to keep the transparency in order to cash it in. All the groups did a good job of demonstrating the ideas presented in class. Some may have gone a bit overboard on the half hour project though. Do notice how one group addressed the message in this scanned copy.
God, I love teaching.
