Reflective Teaching: Critical Thinking for Improved Outcomes - Essay Sample

Introduction

Reflection thinking is critical and is encouraged both to online teachers and face to face teachers. It's a process that enables a teacher to think of their practices, analyze how a lesson was taught, and suggest on how to improve the teaching practice for more pleasing outcomes (Jamil & Hamre, 2018). Reflective teaching encourages focus on problems and difficulties encountered, and solutions are formulated. It is done by visiting past actions and practices, which in turn are used as a guide to future better action. Reflection presents an opportunity for pre-service teachers to gather more expansive knowledge and understand how to tackle issues while in practice (Krutka & Carpenter, 2017). I shall reflect on my experience when teaching online, problems faced, and possible solutions.

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I have been an English teacher for grade 2 level and conducted online classes provided by the UAE ministry of education. I have several reflections on my experience of online teaching, which my mentor school teacher supported me. My first reflection was a lesson about objectives, how to use him, her, them, you, us, and me. Learning resources were picture dialogue where students were to construct sentences using objective pronouns. The assessment was oral questions. In the lesson, students began making jokes about means of transport, making the class challenging to control. The behavior of the students made me formulate a more serious mode of asking questions.

In a different class about opposites, it took long for students to understand how-to on constructing sentences on familiar animals. I had difficulties in explaining what the other student meant to the others as a result of cultural and origin differences. From experience, I learned that the heritage, culture, belief, and religion of each student should be appreciated. I had to use a tactic of suggesting commonly known animals by all to avoid misunderstanding. The use of a suggested list brought the class back to attention, and students could understand well.

Online teaching is a bit of a challenge when a problem is realized at the end of the session. I reflect a lesson on prepositions whereby the students did not understand the newly introduced topic. It was during an assessment session where I realized none could explain what I taught. The students were busy starring me and seemed to concentrate, but the concept didn't sink in their minds. The incident made me question what I did and what was unclear. However, I realized that my network connectivity has difficulties, and my audio could be heard appropriately. The reflections remind me always to confirm my tools and equipment before the class begins.

Disturbances, especially in my first month of online teaching, remain fresh in mind.it began on the first day when, at the course of a lesson, my phone rang and was attempted to pick in the presence of the camera unknowingly. The presence in class is crucial, especially mentally, with students in online courses. It was a dramatic lesson as my mind was not entirely to concentrate on students with diversions of the surrounding activities. It was challenging to adapt to the teaching mode and deliver the English lesson as required. In the reflection, I learned that before conducting online classes, a person should be prepared psychologically and choose a favoring environment.

Online teaching involves the use of technology. Grade 2 students are not well familiar with doing the assignments and uploading appropriately. I reflect a time when I gave out readings only to be done by five students out of thirty students. To me sounded like a mockery of poor teaching practice, which made me lose my teaching courage. However, the problem wasn't with me but with my students. After much thinking and equity of the problem, I had to take measures for the problem. I decided before continuing with the syllabus first to train students oh how to do and submit assignments for correction. The solution was intended to ensure easy and quick working of the works and submission by my students.

Another reflection was when I had difficulty in involving each student in the learning process. The class consisted of students from different settings and places, and to make each concentrate was hard. Some of the students were not participating or contributing to my lessons, maybe because they were shy or not engaged. After the study, the fact that a part of my class was dormant was bothering. I was forced to take measures to curb the solution. I divided the class into groups of five for group activities, discussions, and peer critiques to group members. The action made the shy students adapt, talking to their colleagues, and felt accommodated in the class. Eventually, in-class course work, they could answer questions and also ask.

Not all reflections are harmful, some thoughts are due to successful class handling. There was a class where I was teaching on numbers, which I thought to be difficult, but fortunately, it was terrific. The level well understood the content as they answered questions correctly and did well in their assignments. I think the class was such a success because I was more interactive and involved jokes in the course, making the students more attracted to what I was teaching. Due to the outcomes of the lesson, I learned that students understand well when involved to express their understanding and act as a teacher, too (Grover et al., 2017). Makes then valued and gets excited about the classwork and liking the teacher.

I was conducting online teaching while, as an English teacher-student, benefited both the students and myself (Grover et al., 2017). The students were able to experience new teaching strategies because of being fresh to the teaching practice. The student saw me as young and felts that I could well understand their needs and expectations for an easy understanding of the concepts. The emerging English teaching methods were applied to enhance the understanding capacity of grade 2 students. On my side, I benefited through learning from my mistakes, adapting to new means to handle online classes, and also gaining experience.

Most of the classes I taught online were video sessions. Video sessions were more interactive, engaging, and most effective (Jamil & Hamre, 2018). For successful studies, I used a camera, a microphone, and an online interface. The video was either real-time or recorded. Most of my writing was visuals, such as drawings, pictures, maps, gifs, charts, and images. Watching prerecorded videos bit by bit enables those who take long to understand watch according to their understanding phase. The live class video was conducted for questions and answers sessions.

For the preparation of classes, planning, and grading, I used Skype as it is easy to use service with free offerings of voice, video calls, group calls, quick messaging, and group instant messaging. Symbaloo enabled me to access my resource sites from one place without device considerations. Information online sources used were the American Library Association, Teachers Post It, Global school net, and Best website for teachers. Digital tools use included Animation Video Sites for making animated videos for the students. Direct access was also used.

Language Art Resources were used for the online English lesson. No Red Ink was mostly used as it is funny and helps students master and easily understand the grammar. Free Reading Net was crucial as it had free materials to be used by students and me. Ideas and activities to introduce in the class were fetched from reading Write Think resource. Book Adventure was the recommendation for students to use during their free time. It has motivational programs for the kids, mainly grade 2. Books, eBooks, and online textbooks were from time for kids, international children's digital library, and Book share.

My mentor teacher in school helped me with some materials for the user in the online classes. He trained me on applying internet resources and how to use them. Mentor teachers supported materials for shooting videos such as cameras, microphones, and conducive room for a clear picture, among other physical tools. Additional assistance from mentor teacher was guidance and canceling during problems and how to handle online teaching critical issues.

Online teaching has unique challenges, and I wasn't exceptional. One of the difficulties is the isolation of students as they learn from different places. The feeling of being alone in online teaching made some students lose attention to learning (Krutka & Carpenter, 2017). To handle the isolation problem of children, a coordinative group with virtual activities such as discussion board and cloud tools for interaction are used. Lack of concentration by online learners is another major problem. As the learning could be in a kitchen, bedroom, or sitting rooms, distractions are many making some to opt-out. A possible solution could be the setting of the achievable target for each student for them to focus on-for instance, assignments with a due date.

Internet accessing becomes a big challenge for online schooling. Technology is not assessable to some families. Some learning software appears complex to students, mostly modern developed software (Jamil & Hamre, 2018). It is essential to have strategies of accommodation such as students in place. Before the beginning of the classes, a special session should be done to students and even parents on how to handle specific resources. A clear hotline should I place for students to report the technical issue and recommend appropriate action.

Conclusion

In conclusion, reflective teaching is like a cycle. It is because after implementing a change, the process of reflection will begin again to improve the activity too. Through reflective teaching, teachers can evaluate themselves, increase their knowledge, identify weaknesses, and improve it themselves (Krutka & Carpenter, 2017). The process involves questions such as what is being done, why is it done, how effective, the response of students, and finally, how it can be made better. At the end of the cycle, a person can choose to change or maintain if one is perfect.

References

Grover, S. D., Cargile Cook, K., Skurat Harris, H., & DePew, K. E. (2017). Immersion, Reflection, Failure: Teaching Graduate Students to Teach Writing Online. Technical Communication Quarterly, 26(3), 242-255. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10572252.2017.1339524

Jamil, F. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2018). Teacher reflection in the context of an online professional development course: Applying principles of cognitive science to promote teacher learning. Action in Teacher Education, 40(2), 220-236. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01626620.2018.1424051

Krutka, D. G., & Carpenter, J. P. (2017). Enriching professional learning networks: A framework for identification, reflection, and intention. TechTrends, 61(3), 246-252. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-016-0141-5