FINAL THOUGHTS ON PEDAGOGY IN EDUCATION (Week 10)

Hello everyone.

I have finally reached the end of this course. Overall,I must say I am quite surprised with the outcome of this subject. I did not expect to gain this much of life changing knowledge. From the school of thoughts, to the mock teaching experience and finally the classroom management, it has been a beautiful journey. I really enjoyed learning about how to manage students behavior and mentality.

Image 10.1

As we can see in Image 10.1, a teacher has so many jobs to fulfill. I realize and understand that being a teacher is not easy. I know that I have to be passionate about bringing meaning into the lives of my students. Dedication and initiative must always be present in my life as I pave my way to be a cutting edge teacher as I had mentioned much earlier in my first post.

I hope these 10 weeks of reflection has helped you gain something as much as I have learned. I would like to thank my lecturer Ms Thana who always treated my opinions like diamonds and always polished me to be someone better because she knew my potential. If not for her, I would not have made it to the end of these posts. I would also like to thank my friends who always had my back. The fruitful discussions helped me to come up with meaningful points for my posts. 

In conclusion I have learned that at the end of the day, there are no bad students, only bad teachers, as my lecturer would say. A teacher has the power to make or break a student, therefore she must be careful in whatever said and done.

That is all for now, thank you for reading and have a great day ahead.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT (Week 9)

Hello everyone. 

In this post, I will share what I have learned in the classroom management chapter. This topic is closely related to pedagogy skills as a teacher must know how to manage the classroom so that she can teach effectively.

Image 9.1

As seen in Image 9.1, frequent practice to maintain a warm classroom environment is needed so that the teaching and learning process can go on smoothly. A teacher definitely cannot manage the classroom in a day as she must get to know the needs and abilities of the students in the class that she is teaching in. This shows that a teacher must be willing to undertake the responsibility of getting to know what her students are like.

We read a few news articles on students being bullied by schoolmates and teachers as well. I felt extremely sad while reading those articles because the actions of the teachers mentioned in the news were illogical and not right at all. They had failed to assume their role as a teacher and had forgotten that students can model after their inappropriate behavior. In one case, the teacher had badly hurt the student and then paid him some money to keep this issue down.When the student went to complain to other teachers, they gave him food and told him to keep quiet. This shows the current saddening state of the schools in our country. Where are we heading to? If teachers themselves approve of such behavior, how will we be able to correct students if they were to make the same mistake in the future?

This clearly shows that the classroom management is weak in schools. Some teachers have failed to abide by the rules and procedures of their school, leading to these problems. Professionalism is lacking in teachers as they tend to take simple matters personally and punish innocent students for something that could have actually been forgiven and let go. Thus educators must learn how to control their emotions as they will see many types of students who will get on their nerves. But students will eventually model after the teachers' behavior therefore teachers must a good example.

As for classroom routines when it comes to teaching, I would always want it to be effective. Thus there are a few points that I would like to share with all of you.

1. Explain.

• Always explain the meaning and make sure your students learn by definition.There is no point of a student learning the content if he does not understand the basic meaning of it.

2. Demonstrate and model.

• Make sure to show your students how to conduct an activity and how you would like the outcome to be. Giving them a pre-hand idea helps to build their confidence.

3. Rehearse and have guided practice.

• Take time to repeat the information and make sure your students understand it before moving on to another chapter or topic. Do guide the students to conduct group discussions so that they have interactive learning.

4. Perform independently.

• Encourage students to perform individually. This will help them come out from their cocoon and mingle around in the classroom, also while building their confidence level.

5. Review and reteach.

• Make it a point to do a weekly review and check up on whether students remember the content taught or not.

We also had a small discussion on what kinds of rules we would impose on our classrooms. I mentioned that I would encourage my students to ask at least a question. This is to help clear doubts and also break the block that stops them from asking questions. 

That is all for this week. Thank you and have an edifying day.

MOCK TEACHING FEEDBACK & IMPROVISATION (AO2) (Week 8)

Hello everyone.

As promised, I am back to share the feedback I got from my lecturer. The whole lesson conducted had been successful as most of the learning objectives and learning outcomes had been achieved. However there were a few elements that were either missing or too much in the mock teaching session that I had conducted. Allow me to share some of them with you.

1. Repetition of praise.

• I had used words of appraisal during the lesson. Unfortunately, I had repeated quite a number of words to appreciate my students instead of replacing them with other words. To improve, I will tell them to try harder and then proceed to praise them. This is to encourage them to work harder to gain recognition in a positive way. This is also known as positive reinforcement.

2. Excess of activities.

• I had prepared 3 activities to be done in 30 minutes which is not recommended as the students have to rush while conducting the activity. This results in the information learnt not moving into the long term memory, but instead stays in the short term memory which will then fade away because of lack of repetition. Thus I will prepare short but informative activities so that the students can still learn although the duration is short.

3. Teaching of grammar as a lesson.

• Grammar cannot be taught as a lesson on its own, but can be integrated while teaching other components. In my lesson, I had asked students to brainstorm descriptive words and jot them down in the circle map and then write an informal letter to their friend. The next time if I were to conduct this activity, I will ask the to write the informal letter first and then extract the adjectives from there. I would also take them to the field or ask them to observe the scenery from the classroom and describe anything that they see. In this way, they can also learn adjectives, but not directly as a lesson.

4. Correct punctuation usage.

• I was also corrected on the usage of punctuation. I had written some words and sentences on the white board while conducting the lesson. For the sentences, I had failed to punctuate hem with a full stop and comma. So I must be observant as my students are watching my every move and how I do things. If I were to be negligent and leave this mistake as it is, I will not be able to correct my students in the future if they make the same mistake as they can question me back. Thus I need to be careful when it comes to anything I do in the classroom.

5. Usage of informal language.

• I had used some informal language in the classroom environment. As the classroom is a place where formal language and the teaching and learning process goes on, it is best to avoid informal language as it kills the serious mode of the class. So I have to make sure that I am careful with the words I use in the classroom.

I have used the feedback given to improve myself and will continue to work on it as everyday in the classroom is an experiment. That is all for this post. Thank you and have an edifying day.

MOCK TEACHING (AO2) (Week 7)

Hello everyone.

This week, I will be sharing my experience about the mock teaching session which I had conducted in the class. It was an eye opening encounter for me as I had never done it before. This mock teaching was part of the assignment in this course. The purpose of this task was to give us a forecast of what will be happening in real classrooms when we go for our teaching practicum.

In this individual assignment, we were given two parts. The first part required us to create 3 lesson plans based on one school of thought that we could relate the most with. Then, we had to justify the flow of the lesson by explaining why we chose to do a certain activity and how it related to the theory we had chosen to base on. After that, in the second part of the assignment, we were given half an hour to conduct the class using one of the lesson plans as a guide. 

I had chosen the Humanistic school of thought as I feel that students' needs and feelings must be appreciated. In my lesson plan, I had incorporated a circle map and an informal essay writing activity which was done in the classroom itself. I prepared a circle map and informal essay template and gave it to my students as class worksheets. Then I asked them to describe their friends and write anything descriptive words in the circle map. Following that, I instructed them to write an informal essay to their friends using the words in the circle map earlier. In this way, the students had learned about adjectives, the format of an informal essay and how to brainstorm as well. Towards the end of the activity, they felt very happy and fulfilled when they read each others' letters. When I asked them to express their feelings, they said that they felt appreciated, loved and secure knowing that their friends will always have their back no matter what happens.

This was a wonderful experience to me as I could see how cheerful the students were after the whole activity. Their needs of esteem and sense of belonging according to Malsow's Hierarchy of Needs had been achieved and they also learned something fruitful that they can use to describe things and people. I could also understand the importance of the mental and emotional health of my students and when they felt secure, they tend to perform better. Their potential could be seen clearly and they did strive to achieve the learning objectives. Thus I would say that this mock teaching was a success, but there were certain issues that had to be polished. Those matters will be shared in the upcoming post next week.

Till then, thank you for reading this post and have an edifying day.