Like Rick Said

"Week one's over and we're still alive."
-Rick

So, I've gone a week as a TA and I'm starting to relax a bit. Each day I write up notes about what I want to cover in class and how (now that there are groups, there's another layer to the how). I type them up all pretty-like and print them out, then I re-read and add handwritten notes. After class I go back over and add more notes to reflect what actually happened in class, and so goes my running record of each day. Turns out these will be handy for Katherine's class (Teaching College Composition, the supplementary TA class) because she wants weekly teaching logs. It's nice when things work out like that.

Today, as everyone trickled in, I told them to find their group. Yup, I'm doing groups. Here's the quick version of how I'm doing them:
Groups are home-base for students, they're the four/five people each student is going to be spending the most time with in class. Whenever we do small group discussions, peer review, etc., these are the groups students will be working in. My plan is to have the same groups for the whole semester, though that's not a hard and fast plan. There's also a grade component that goes into groups, though not in the way most group work works. Basically, it only factors in on the big papers. If everybody in the group gets a base grade of X, then each person in the group gets X points added to their grade. If the group doesn't meet that base grade, then each person just gets their own grade on that paper. In short, the grade component can only help students, never hurt them.

The class spent a lot of time in their groups today, and a little bit of time as a class. The beautiful thing is since I made them talk in groups first (and everybody has to talk while they're doing groups) they were much more comfortable talking while in the class group. I only had to pick on someone once, it was great.

End of week one. I know everyone's names. I have a plan. My first couple of experiments have gone all right or well. It's been a good week.