Best Practices and Strategies for Student Success

Ice-Breakers and Community Building Exercises

• People Bingo
• First Day Icebreaker
• Good Things I've Read

Connecting Students to Resources on Campus

• Two Strategies for Student Retention
• Three Quick and Easy Strategies for Student Success
• Webquest on Campus Resources
• Scavenger Hunt:  Get to Know Your Syllabus and Textbook

 Working with Grammar and Sentence Structure

• A Common Errors "Must Know" List
• Copying Models of Good Writing
• Seven Basic Comma Rules:  Apply and Illustrate

Teaching MLA Documentation

• The Documentation Olympics
• Integrating Quotations

Pre-Writing, Writing, and Post-Writing Assignments

• Two Essay Assignments, one Reader's Response Journal, and a Group Presentation
• Vocational I-Search Assignment
• Preparing for a Final Timed Essay
• Introduction to Comparison and Contrast
• Roosters:  An introduction to Metaphor
• Metagognition in Evaluating the Essay Process
• Using Notecards to Draft a Thesis Statement
• Making Comments Less "Marginal"

Strategies for Improving Reading

• SQ3R
• Teaching Active, not Passive, Reading

CCSSE Strategies for Student Engagement

These strategies were developed by Paradise Valley Community College to align with the research-based conference of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). Long, but contains excellent ideas.