Monday, April 20, 2015

Constructivist Approach

The teacher is consistent with the constructivist approach in the video. Sarabinh emphasises the importance of group discussion in the classroom in order to develop students' interaction with each other and the teacher as part of either whole class activities, small group activities. They practice using language in a variety of context developing many different skills as they do so. One of the advantages of constructivist approach is that classroom bases on student-centered. In this way, classroom is more focus on students learning than on teacher teaching. Students' language use and language development are foster in constructivist based classroom environment.
I think that it is not necessary to any drawbacks this kind of teaching environment. With the help of constructivist approach, students have control over their thinking skills. What I liked the most is that in the video, teacher is like a conductor of a symphony. In the future, I think that I would be comfortable using constructivist approach.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Differentiated Instruction

     Each and every individual has unique features and different learning styles, strategies and intelligence. There are different kinds of multiple intelligences such as visual, kinesthetic, interpersonal etc. With regard to educational area, we should aware of this differences and take a step considering the different learner types. I think that personalizing tasks depending on students interest and learning styles can foster learning period and makes task more meaningful for them. when the tasks are meaningful and address students interest, they can learn naturally.
     From my previous experiences, I had never have teacher who considers our interests and learning styles, and encourages us to complete our tasks.  We had always same kinds of materials that we were responsible to them. Inevitably, learning was not meaningful for us and it was boring. We acted only grading focus in lessons and there were competition that "who gets the highest point". Actually, now, there are still this kind of competition among students and I don't think that teachers differentiate the task depending on the students profile, that's why sharing and collaborative working are not common among us.
    In the future, I am planning to differentiate tasks considering the learners' learning style because it is much more beneficial for students' learning processes. By doing so, I think that teachers more helpful for their cognitive developments

Collaborative Teaching and Learning

     I think that collaboration between colleagues has many advantages among teachers.Collaboration helps teachers to share their experiences, ideas and plans. teachers can improve teacher retention and and teacher satisfaction. With the help of the collaboration, especially novice teachers, can improve their awareness about teaching and they can get the opportunity to get smarter together. Collaboration can be done by doing brainstorming, reflection session before and after school, study groups and conversation about teaching. Also, teachers are better prepared to support one another's strengths and accommodate weaknesses. Working together, they reduce their individual planning time while greatly increasing the available pool of ideas and materials.
    Aside from teachers, students can cooperate improve social and interpersonal skills and help them each other to better understand the material. They can perform team learning effort. Collaborative learning helps them to increase their learning.