So far, so good!

My class seems to be really friendly and engaged in the material so far.  Still, knock on wood.

I'm re-reading or re-visiting John Bean's _Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom_ and getting a lot out of it.  If you're a teacherly sort, I recommend it.

To some degree, I've been following these principles all along, thanks to my excellent teacher training here at the university.  But the book offers good reminders about ways to break up lecture-ish classes with small "write-to-learn" exercises that help cement key concepts and strategies in students' thinking.  

I've never cared *too* much for the whole free-writing genre, because, so often, I don't respond to them or feel guilty that students might think its just busy work.  But Dr. Bean's book really helps me re-think this genre in terms of guided writing activities and exercises that allow students to engage in lecture/discussion with more ownership of the material.  So I'm trying out some new handouts/guided free-writes in the next week to break up the material, and I'll post updates about how it all goes.

Probably more on this later.