Creative Approaches: GSI Award Essays on Teaching Critical Reading
Each year, a small group of GSIs receive the Teaching Effectiveness Award. The Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs receives entries from Outstanding GSIs in the form of essays about teaching interventions they came up with to address difficulties that arose in their sections or labs. The Advisory Committee reads through all the essays and chooses the best for the TEA awards.
Many of these select essays are about increasing students’ motivation to read, cultivating their strategies for reading difficult texts, or improving their sophistication in analyzing the claims and content of their readings. The links below are to just a few of the TEA essays that touch on the topic of reading. Many more are posted at the Teaching Effectiveness Award section of the GSI Center website.
A New Way to Appreciate Cicero’s Style, Yelena Baraz, Classics
Teaching Students ‘Street Smarts’ Necessary for Navigating Peer-Reviewed Literature, Jeffrey Benca, Integrative Biology
The Theory Scare: Teaching Students How to Grasp Abstract Ideas, Polina Dimova, Comparative Literature
Poetry and the Scientific Method, Hillary Gravendyk, English
Teaching Critical Skills in Legal Studies, Sonya Lebsack, Legal Studies
It Said What?: Reading Critically for Bias and Point of View, Amy Lerman, Political Science
Creating Coherence with Conceptual Maps, Edith Replogle Sheffer, History
Experiments in Communicative Latin, William Short, Classics
Sources into Evidence; or, Rethinking the Research Requirement in Reading and Composition Courses, Leonard von Morzé, English