Teaching Experience

I am teaching a class of 10 students of which 6 of them are girls and 4 are boys for a period of 45 minutes. Among the boys, one of them has language impairment in that he needs special attention when it comes to explaining so that he can be able to understand just like the other students.

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Evidence of learning

The lesson was as coherent as I had a well-structured lesson plan. First and foremost, I designed learning aims and learning objectives so that at the end of the lesson, the aim ad objectives were met by every learner. The aim was to ensure that every student is able to identify the parts of the digestive system and even to know their specific functions. The learning objective on the other hand was for the student to be able understand the function of the digestive system in the human body.

The aims and objectives are learner centered as they are to help the learner with understanding. The lesson plan that I had structured had a clear beginning, an informative body and even a thorough conclusion. By so doing, at the beginning of the lesson, I introduce the topic by making links with the knowledge that they already had, in the middle section the new learning of the digestive system is developed and consolidated and at the conclusion part I ensure that there is sufficient time for reviewing the progress of the students and even checking the learning aims and objectives that have been achieved. It is important for a lesson to have clear aims and objectives as it is a guideline for formative assessment of the learners.

Teaching

The starting activity of the teacher was well facilitated and engaged all the learners including the boy who had impairments. The teacher carried out a round of questions with the use of the digestive system chart. There was creation of a learning environment that was open and related it to the daily activities. The round of questions was recorded using formative assessment to be able to record the progress of the learners. The teacher facilitated collaborative learning that facilitated learning by constantly engaging the learners. The teacher also initiated scaffold learning which developed deeper level of learning. A mind map was used effectively for the summarization of the lesson which at the end brought about constructivism of the learner. (Word count: 119)

Learning

All the students were very attentive in class as they had enthusiasm. They demonstrated their learning by being able to answer the question that they were being asked. Even at times, they also asked questions where they needed further elaboration. They were all engaged and despite the differentiation in the questions, they were able to earn points. During the collaborative learning exercise, the teacher ensured that they were engaged and even used the construction papers, color pencils and even a magnetic flashcard to ensure that they are able to grasp and move towards a higher level of challenge. In their assigned groups, the learners were able to assess each other without rubrics where the assessment was more authentic. (Word count: 118)

The key strengths were that through the constant engagement with the students, they were able to learn and grasp very quickly. The key area of improvement was initiation of more practical learning to be engaged in order to ensure that all the students grasped the learning.

According to the lesson plan that I had earlier on structured it involved assessment for learning to capacitate the understanding of all the learners in the class. It is important that a lesson plan has an assessment for learning with major emphasis to formative assessment of each and every learner in the class. These factors are very important as they evaluate the strengths and weaknesses for each and every student at an individual level. It also creates a platform for where the learners are able to improve in their weaknesses and even maintain in their strengths. During the teaching process and the learning process, assessment is a very important factor.

Assessment is an aid for the teacher as it helps the teacher in knowing whether effective learning has taken place during the lesson and that the aims and objectives of the lesson have been met. On the other hand, as much as it is an aid for the teacher, it is also a greater aid for the learner as well. I was able to assess the learners basing on the first stages of assessment which were the knowledge they had before the lesson and which they had acquired after the lesson, the understanding they received and even how well they were able to apply the information they had learnt in class. I choose formative assessment which were self-assessment, peer assessment and teacher assessment. For the self-assessment, each of the ten learners had to mark questions for them. They had to come to the board and identify the parts of the directive system that I had already taught to ensure that all individuals in the class were aware of what was being taught and that they were personally able to identify the structure on their own.

Self-assessment is a very important and a very useful tool as each and every learner became responsible for their own learning n class. For the peer assessment, the learners used formative assessment to be able to assess the written work of each other in the classroom during the lesson.

Through peer assessment, a learner that has understood something is able to correct his or her peer on a mistake they made. This is very effective as peers learn much faster from each other as compared from the teacher. I used this method for this particular activity as it is able to help the learners to be able to see a wide range of each others work and their level of understanding and even it helped in the building of their critical awareness and encourages deep and even further learning. It also helps in the creation of competition among the learners as they would like to become better than their peers.

Lastly it is the teacher assessment. I was able to observe the learners as they worked in groups among each other as I had assigned them in accordance to their weaknesses and strengths. I ensured that I gave the learners feedback on their performance and engagement. I also used the basic question and answer technique in order to be able to evaluate the level of knowledge and understanding that each and every student had acquired in the lesson. I had much focus and much attention expressed to the boy with impairment as he needed much attention a s compared to the rest of them. For each and every lesson plan, it is important that there is an element of teacher assessment so as to allow for the teacher to be able to carry out a check on knowledge capacity on all the learners before the learning activities continues. (Word count: 603)

Practice which is reflective is very important in the assessment of a lesson. Through the thorough exploration of what has happened in class through a lesson in terms of what has been taught and the knowledge that has been delivered, it is a very effective plan in the making of improvement of every lesson taught in class. The basic processes of self-evaluation and self-observations can be given more support by a mentor who could be of great aid in improvement and development of the teaching techniques.

Basing on each observation that I had had with my mentor, I was able to gather and note that there were a few areas here and there that needed further development in my teaching practice. First and foremost, I was able to gather that while planning for any learning activity it is important that I ensure that the teaching environment that I choose will be able to give room and allow for the activity to be able to run successfully and even yield effective results in the long run. The second aspect is that from the discussions that I had had with my mentor I was able to realize that all the learners needed a clear formative assessment in order to be able to assess each other in their groups during the activity of peer assessment. This is very beneficial as even the peers are able to learn from each other.

The third aspect that I was able to reflect on was that the group of the ten students had never taken part in many collaborative learning activities before. For that matter there response on collaborative learning activities needed a little improvement. For that matter, they will therefore need more room for coaching in the collaborative learning skill in order to make it more successful and eventually effective according to the layout of the lesson plan. My mentor also advised me that the lessons as according to my lesson plan have to be more learner centered that just basically teaching them. In order to do this, I have to ensure that all my learning strategies that I implement together with the activities that accompany it are self-regulated and even automous. These key aspects I think are what made the lesson go well in accordance to the lesson plan,

On the other hand, there were also aspects of weakness that needed improvement in order to facilitate effective learning. My mentor was able to identify a few aspects that would help me in the improvement of the weaknesses that he was able to note. The first one was that during the think-pair-share activities, through pairing the stronger students and the weaker students, it effectively the weaker students as they were able to learn from their peers. On the other hand, however, it was not able to benefit the stronger students as they were simply reiterating the knowledge that they had previously acquired instead of gaining new knowledge.

The activities implemented were not effective in stretching their abilities. For that matter, in the future lessons I will pair up the stronger learners together so that I give them the opportunity to solve more challenging questions together and the weaker students together so that they would be able to receive more guidance form the teacher. In this case, the weaker students would be able to improve while the stronger students would be able to achieve a discussion that is very rich. I have been able to learn that I need to prepare a lesson plan with a more diverse range of activities which will enable the learners to mix among a broad range of abilities. This will be a better guide to initiate effective learning. (Word count: 617)

Unit Three

The learning group is the same as in unit two with ten students.

Evidence of learning

The learning aim of this lesson is to ensure that the learners are able to identify the respiratory system and its functions. The first objective of the lesson is to ensure that the weaker points and strengths of the students are identified. The second objective is to ensure that aim of the learning is achieved by the end of the lesson. The lesson plan had a coherent structure with a variety of teaching strategies and learning activities and also a broad range of resources were planned to be use d in order to support their learning. It is important to have a clear lesson plan just like in Unit two as it acts as a guideline for the teacher.

There is a need for approaches that are inclusive of knowing the needs and interest of the learners, knowing the capabilities of the learners and even ensuring that all the learners are given an equal opp...