Teaching and learning using practical approach

By 'practical work' we mean tasks in which students observe or manipulate real objects or materials or they witness a teacher demonstration.

Practical work can:

• motivate pupils, by stimulating interest and enjoyment 
• teach laboratory skills 
• enhance the learning of scientific knowledge 
• give insight into scientific method and develop expertise in using it 
• develop 'scientific attitudes', such as open-mindedness and objectivity

Example in year 3, students learn about finding length of objects using measurement units like 'cm' and 'mm'. To re-enforce the concept learnt in class and to give it a practical application, the students were asked to find the length of various objects in the school campus.

 

 

Summative and Formative Through Fairytale..

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named ‘ONGOING’. H e lived in a tiny, little house with his mother named ‘SUMMI’, who loved to eat fruits and in getting only the fruits. But she did not like the hard work of planting, sowing, watering.

On the other end her son Ongoing liked the hard work of buying. Sowing, planting and watering. He took care of the plant and made it grow little by little, everyday to make it feel important and not lonely. He would give ideas to the plant ‘How to get more fruits’.

Then at the end of the spring season, the plant had many fruits. He then gifted to SUMMI his mum.

Summi who only wanted fruits, now understood Ongoing and gave more seeds to him to sow so they both worked together to get more juicy fruits next season.

Different ways of evaluation our own teaching practise

Different ways of evaluation our own teaching practise
Basically, evaluation is either about proving something is working or needed, or improving practice or a project (Rogers and Smith 2006).

There Methods for Evaluating Your Teaching
1.Self-monitoring:
Teachers monitor their own performance as they teach. Teachers should monitor themselves while teaching. After each teaching session, teachers should ask themselves (or complete a brief self-evaluation form) on whether they have met their determined goals and objectives, and evaluate the good and the to-be-improved aspects of the session. Teachers can keep a log (i.e. a teaching portfolio, or video log as described in the next section) to track their own progress and improvement over time.
2. Audio and video recording: Teachers can audio- or video-tape their teaching sessions, which allows them to keep record of and investigate their actual teaching performance in detail. Teachers can review the records with other colleagues to discuss the areas for improvements.
3. Students’ feedback on teaching: Students' perception of learning experience in class is sometimes the
most direct way to weigh how effective a teacher delivers his teaching.
Feedback from observation by other colleagues and experts: Teachers can invite other colleagues or experts to sit in their classes and directly observe how the teaching is conducted (including teaching style, contents, pace etc.), to give feedback and constructive criticisms. Similar to video recording, observation by other people allows teachers to become aware of many things that they are too busy to notice while conducting their teaching. Teachers can negotiate with the observers before the class observation regarding the areas of focus, and discuss the important points in a debriefing meeting afterwards.

A new starter activity

 

A new starter activity : FUN n LEARN

I used a new starter activity in class 3. They were learning the topic grouping and sharing. I asked my 30 students to get up from their place and play a game. I called a number and the children had to form groups with that number of children. They were very excited to play the game and wanted to play it again. The activity also gave a practical aspect of learning grouping as division (which is an abstract concept for learners of year 3) and they grasped the idea of concept through starter itself.

Questioning strategies used by me

From the CICT training workshop I learnt two new ways of questioning strategies, which I had not used in my teaching career.

1.  Lifeline (ask a peer) : If a child does not a answer to the question, the child can seek help from one of his friend. The friend would guide that child to find the answer, but not give the actual answer.

I used this strategy in class, and was very effective for learning. If the child did not know the answer, he learnt how to get it from his peer and thus was motivated and happy about it.

2. Asked the expert :
One of the child is made a expert and the other children question him. This really helped for effective questioning, because children understood what type of questions could be asked on a particular topic and what would be the expected answer.

Different ways of obtaining feedback from learners

Different ways of obtaining feedback from learners :
Obtaining a feedback from the learners is very essential part of teaching and learning.

It gives the teacher a clear picture of what the learner the learner thinks of the teaching learning process.

It helps to evaluate a lesson and implement those suggestions and feedback for a better teaching learning experience next time.

There are different ways of obtaining a learner feedback :

Some of them are describe in brief below :

1. Teacher designed feedback forms
 Ask students to complete a brief questionnaire with multiple choice questions or questions with scaled responses about aspects of your teaching that you would like feedback on.
2. Open-ended questions
 Post open-ended questions about aspects of the class or your teaching in email, discussion boards, or live instant messaging sessions

 
3.Critical learning statements
 Ask students to write down the critical points they have most clearly learned from class and the points they are still most clear about. A variation is to ask students to write down the questions they have about a topic just covered in the class

4.Small group instructional feedback

 

 In small groups, students address the following questions: What aspects help you learn most effectively? What aspects do not? What suggestions do you have for improving your learning? They accumulate and summarize the points discussed and report back to you as a group