Reflective Letter to an Newbie Teacher

Dear Reader,

First of all, I would like to commend you on your decision of becoming a teacher. Imparting knowledge is an age old profession and is among the noblest. It is a means of paying back to the society we live in….the society that made us what we are today.

Writing this letter to you, thinking about my first experiences with teaching has been a walk down memory lane. It has been fifteen years since I started teaching and till date I have no regrets about my decision.

When I began teaching, I was a mere level 1 teacher, probably due to lack of guidance. But over time I tried to evolve and thanks to the PGCTHE course which I have taken up for the past one and a half year, I have resurfaced as a level three teacher. However, you should try to directly hit the bulls eye and start off as a level three teacher. The primary difference between the two is that for a level one teacher teaching is all about exams and about sorting the good students from the bad. However for a level 3 teacher teaching and learning goes beyond the limits of exams and grades.To become an effective teacher you should have clear aims and objectives which you should also state clearly at the start of the class so that the students know what is the learning outcome. Also assessments should be based on these goals for only then will you manage to engage the whole class. Design the assessment paper in such a way that it assesses the students' abilities to understand, analyze and evaluate

The students are the pioneers of tomorrow and teachers have a very influential role in the life of students. Some students consider us as their role-model. Hence, we should to to induce a positive effect on their lives. Also, I abide by the rule that you should practice what you preach and hence consider it of utmost importance to first try to become the ideal sort of personality which I wish the students to be. Moreover, this is the demand of the subject (Religious Studies) that both you and I teach.

As for the method of teaching, basically the type of teaching strategy you use depends upon your students. You should adopt a way of teaching that leaves you satisfied that there has been a constructive flow of knowledge and understanding in your class.

Try to teach in an innovative way that engages your students. Group discussions are a great tool in our field since religious studies is all about the point of views of different people. What you need to be careful about is that your students should be given a chance to use their higher cognitive powers, ie they should be able to not only comprehend what they learn, but they should also be able to analyse, evaluate and apply the knowledge gained to novel situations. Another requirement of our subject is that we should make the students to be able to apply religious knowledge in their everyday life. For this purpose, every now and then I keep activities where I give them a real life problem and ask them to solve it in light of the religious teachings. 

Good luck!

How effective was the selected teaching strategy?

After applying my two new teaching strategies, I personally felt that the students were actively involved in the course and there were no “passive” listeners.

I asked the students opinions on these strategies and almost all of the the students were quite happy with the think-pair-share technique. One of the students said that she preferred it to the other group activities and group discussions they had earlier been doing as this required a small group to collaborate together. She said that having a amall group is more effective as it allowed all the students to participate and learn keeping arguments minimum. Also in a large group it is often that some students end up doing most of the work while some do not bother.

When I asked the opinions of the weaker students they said that they liked this strategy as they were better able to learn as what they didn’t understand was explained to them by their team mates. They also said that it was sort of like each one of us was getting individual attention which would not have been the case if the groups were large.

Regarding the second strategy in which I asked the students to deliver lectures, some loved the idea and said that it was a great tool for learning as when they were preparing the lesson to be delivered they ended up learning the whole lesson themselves….They said that when you teach others you end up acquiring a deeper understanding of the subject matter yourself. However, some students said that they were not comfortable with this method as they were shy of public speaking.

Trying a new teaching strategy

Although I have previously tried many collaborative learning techniques such as assigning a group of student’s projects to do, I had not tried the Think-Pair-Share technique. Thus after learning about it through the PGCTHE course, I have tested it out for myself in my classroom.

I found this to be a very effective way of ensuring learning in class and found it to meet the demands of my subject. For example, when I was teaching the students about The Sanctity of Life, I posed them with the problem of euthanasia…I basically gave them a situation where euthanasia  seemed like the solution to a problem and asked them to think about it…to think whether euthanasia would have been the best solution. Then I divided them into groups of threes and asked them to discuss their thoughts and opinions among themselves and then to share it with the class. I found that students came up with such wonderful arguments which they would never have bothered thinking about if I had just delivered my lecture. Likewise, I found this strategy applicable to most of the topics in my course. Although the classroom did get a little noisy what with all the discussions going on, but it was controllable as the students were divided into small groups of just three members. All in all, I noticed that this strategy promoted classroom participation by encouraging a high degree of pupil response.

Another teaching technique I tried out asking the students to prepare a topic and to deliver the lecture. The students themselves delivered lectures using multimedia tools. Although earlier I had asked students to prepare and present presentations I had never asked them to teach a whole topic. I found this to work quite smoothly and was even quite surprised at the way some students delivered their lectures radiating poise, confidence and knowledge.

But, of course, what I noticed was that although this method promised the flow of knowledge in my classroom, students being students sometimes missed out some essential points in their lectures.

 

However, over all, I found that both these methods required the students to actively participate in the classroom and thus increased student engagement.

Teaching strategies - individual reflection

After viewing the presentations of all the groups the conclusion I have drawn is that one should not restrict themselves to a single strategy but should apply all of them from time to time in their course where appropriate.

All the teaching strategies hold their own ground with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Interactive lecturing corresponds to the level 3 teacher as not only are the students told at the start of the lecture what they are supposed to learn but are also kept engaged and active in a number of different ways.

Interactive lecturing provides high retention rates through student involvement and can also incorporate methods such as Think-Pair-Share which is also a method of Collaborative Learning. Basically, all these teaching strategies are interlinked with each other. The main disadvantage of Interactive Lecturing that I find is that it requires a lot of time and is hence not suitable for long structured courses. In contrast, Direct Instruction ensures no loss of time. However, Directional Learning does not present the students with the opportunity to analyse and evaluate. In Directional Learning only some students use their higher cognitive processes while others become passive learners. It falls into Bloom’s categories of ‘remembering’ ‘understanding’ and ‘applying’, but fails to reach the higher categories. However if DI is combined with other teaching strategies such as PBL it is possible to achieve the higher three levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation in the Bloom’s Taxonomy. In other words, if students are given clear instructions about what to do and how to go about solving problems by applying the knowledge they have gained, the students will be able to analyse and evaluate the knowledge and will be able to apply it to unfamiliar situations presented to them in Problem Based Learning.   

Also, what I feel is that every student should know how to work in a teambuilding skills are essential for the students’ practical lives. This is why I feel that teachers should try to incorporate Collaborative learning in their scheme of work as it nurtures the students social and communication skills.  

In teaching my courses of Religious Studies although I use Interactive lecturing as my main teaching strategy, I do incorporate Problem Based Learning from time to time as it allows me to assess whether my students can apply the knowledge gained to other situations. I also try to use Collaborative lecturing where possible and give the students projects to do as a team, for example to create a presentation together.

Aligning Goals with my Course

In my opinion, the thing of utmost importance is to state your goals and objectives lucidly before the commencement of the course and to assess all of these goals in the assessments. This not only becomes the basis of distinction between level 2 and a level 3 teacher but also increases student engagement as they know that what is being taught will be assessed.

For example, if I were to teach the students about the existence of God, a traditional approach would be to just tell the students that yes, God exists. According to Bloom’s taxonomy, this would fall under knowledge as the students just gained a piece of information without analysis or critical thinking.
Thus the methods I would adopt to make sure that not only are all students involved, but also that each one of them uses their higher cognitive power would be to tell the students about phenomena such as the creation of the universe. With the use of multimedia, this awe-inspiring phenomenon could be shown to the students. I would explain the scientific theories such as the big bang theory to the students and would ask them to critically analyse the creation of the universe and to think that there must have been a cause for the big bang. Such a huge thing could not have merely occurred by chance.

I would explain William Paley’s Design Argument which points to the existence of God. Then in order to assess their level of thinking in accordance with Bloom’s Taxonomy, I would ask assign them tasks such as observing anything such as the leave of a tree and to create their own theory about the existence of God. The leaves, ie plants are the only producers of food and have a complex mechanism despite their size. There must have been someone to store the mechanism in them….the way we have to program our computers. Theories like these written by the students would allow me to judge that which student has been evaluating and analyzing and not just remembering. It would tell me precisely where in the hierarchy of Bloom’s Taxonomy does each student fall. 

Moreover, simple quizzes and MCQs would also allow me to assess the understanding of students.

Lastly, I would base the final assessment paper on criteria such as knowledge, understanding and evaluation and not just on knowledge.  

100 Ideas for assessment Part 2

One of the ways of assessment is by verbal discussion also known as viva or oral exam. This is a very good way of assessment as it allows you to assess the depth of knowledge that a student has. For example oral assessment is used in schools or universities where students are studying a particular language, for example English or French. The purpose of learning a language is to be able to communicate verbally and the best way to assess this is via a speaking test.

This method of assessment is also used in medical colleges where verbal discussion proves useful in assessing medical students speaking skills as in the near future they will have to communicate with patients.

This method of assessment is often used along with some other method of assessment and is not suitable for subjects such as Mathematics.

Another way of assessment is through case studies. This is application based assessment and covers the applying, analysing and evaluating parts of the Bloom’s Taxonomy. It requires the students to apply the knowledge they have gained rather than the traditional approach of written assessment which only manages to assess the knowledge gained by the students. In subjects such as Physics it is the ability of the student to apply the knowledge gained to unfamiliar situations which pays off in the practical world and thus it is important to assess the students using this method. Engineering students are often given situations where they are to analyse the situation, evaluate the solution and then to create the required model.

Even in fields such as ICT, the system analysist needs to work on/ deal with a particular situation. Hence IT students are assessed using case studies where they are given a particular real life problem and they have to analyse and propose a solution.

Peer-to-peer assessment ensures that there is a two-way learning. In this method of assessment the students assess each other and so the student who is assessing and the student who is being assessed both get to learn.

The traditional written assessment is practised in many schools and colleges. This method of assessment is applicable in all subjects and if designed carefully it can assess not only knowledge but also understanding and evaluation. This method is especially useful in assessing creative writing skills of students.

Another method of assessment is through group activities. This method of assessment assesses the collaborative skills of students. It provides the students with an opportunity to work together as a team.

Role play is an excellent method for assessment as it allows the students to enact someone in a particular situation. For example a student learning French needs to know how to communicate with people in different situations, for example in a restaurant while ordering food or, in a grocery store or at the information office in an airport.

What about your student

What about your student

I am teaching high school students between the age group of 15-18. My students have multicultural back ground with average intellectual level. They belong to middle class with strong religious bond. They believe that information available on net is not always reliable.

Their parents consider the use of net as wastage of time and cause of diversion from their regular studies. They attribute sitting on net as unethical. So in this situation it is very difficult for a teacher to motivate the students and clear the doubts of students’ parents.

However, I constantly motivated them and gave them the advice that net itself is neither good nor bad and you have to be positively selective in gathering information from cyberspace. This made them make the effort to break cultural taboos.

After constant encouragement and introduction to the idea of group studies in the class, for a start students were assigned tasks and were asked to teach the class using multimedia. So the student learned the techniques of student centered learning such group studies and peer assessment.

Introduction of blogging technique among the students created great interest and enthusiasm, which not only removed shyness to use the net but also developed more and more interest in the conceptual understanding of the subject and made even non-active students to participate actively. In that way the whole class participated. Some links are given blew as students’ first work:

http://www.2wardsgood.blogspot.com/2012/09/gambling-lottery-introduction-before.html#comment-form

http://islamictopictcs.blogspot.com/2012/09/pork-and-other-haram-meats.html#comment-form

http://www.islamigirlsd.blogspot.com/

Some students were more enthusiastic and they developed web sites. One of the link is given below:

http://islamiccreeds.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=166725012

Some are on their way and trying to develop website.

Also, now in my class students are assessed by their peers. This further helps to keep my students involved and engaged.