The most powerful lessons that I learnt from my learners during this activity about learning and teaching:
·
My
learners observe my behaviour and model what they see. As an educator, I need to be mindful that I
am not sending contradictory messages – I should not ask my students to read
during DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time but when they look at me, instead of reading they see
me marking books or doing other activities.
·
My students
pay attention to what I do and say in order to imitate me. Retention
is enhanced when I give clear and vivid demonstrations. Students store my actions
in their memory for future retrieval. To
ensure that attention and retention take place students need lots and lots of
feedback and practice for production of my action. Students need to be
motivated to produce the desired behaviour. Giving them praise or even praising a
classmate can reinforce the behaviour I want them to learn and at the same
time increase production of that behaviour.
|
(Optional) – Thoughts from
self-activities
If failure may be interpreted as not meeting particular
students with special needs then I may respond “yes” I have ever felt like a
failure as a teacher. For instance,
when I started teaching Kindergarten in the mid nineties I taught the
alphabet by rote – students looking at the letters and repeating after
me. I expected that by the middle of
October all the students would have learned the alphabet and know the sounds
since a letter was done each day. When I assessed the students, using paper
and pencil that was not the case especially for one student. I remember thinking, how can this
particular student not able to identify the letters and produce the sounds –
even those letters in his name? It did
not occur to me that students have various learning styles and I needed to
have gotten the interest and attention of my student. Today, that student is still struggling in
literacy because I did not give him the
solid foundation that he needed – I did not teach him the way he learned.
I remember that same kindergarten class (my first time teaching Kindergarten) of 44 students
packed into a classroom that was built to house 20 students. I think the needs of these learners were
too much responsibility for me to have understood or dealt with especially because
of inadequate space, lack of resources and because they were of a tender age,
just beginning school because they were so many in the class, they did not
get the attention that they needed. After
some years when I looked back at that experience I think I have shortchanged
the students.
When I was going to school, I had no care, I
did not look back to the past, neither did I look to the future. Instead I stayed in the present. When I look at the students on the playing field,
they are so happy – they don’t worry, they live for now.
|
(Optional) – Other comments
If
I want to have great readers I should ensure that my students frequently
encounter pleasant stimuli in Reading class such as a warm, friendly atmosphere,
books at their reading level and interest, questions that do not frustrate them
and varied strategies for learning, e.g
games.
While reading Joshua's I couldn't help thinking of an inspirational story I read sometime ago. Click here to read that story.
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