I was asked by a participant during a staff development session we had. The question was, "how do you ensure students' learning?" After a brief pause, I began by recollecting my first day at Abang Abdul Rahman Primary School, some 44 years ago! My class teacher, the late Cikgu Abang Busri was teaching teaching us almost everything on the time table. He began with the alphabate chart with Time Roman 150-200 font size. All went well with most of the syllables except for a few. A predominantly hard one was the consonant 'r' . He asked all the 32 of us to go outside the classroom and followed him looking for a grass that looked like 'r' (lower case). Some collected more than one. Everybody was excited with the 'finding(s)'. "Now class say after me 'r (rrrrrr)'' he said. And the whole class ran with the presumably distracting melody, loud and clear until he had to command an immediate halt. Exciting it was, Cikgu Abang Busri revealed his satiafcation with a broad smile, all of us felt the relief.
We were learning. I felt and recollected that I was learning. It was fun. It was filled with joy. Much more when we were asked to say all the syllables in pairs.
Back to the question asked, learning can be ensured if the students: (1) felt the fun of it, (2) enjoyed doing it (activity planned for it), and, (3) students are excited throughout the 'teaching' environment. (this includes teachers interactiveness, ensured collaboration and cooporation among the students as they love working together).
Pondering on how teaching is engaged among present teachers, some are quite administrative in nature, lacks the 'excitement' and seemingly stressful. How students respond to this environment is predictable. Observing some classroom teachings engaged by some young trained teachers, the craft is no longer well-liked by students compared to my days as student. Some good young teachers are of course putting all the lively effort together and produced conducive classroom learning environment often filled with 'emotions' because they managed to 'touch' the hearts of all of them in the class. This is very rare but not impossible as teaching is now becoming a profession of choice among other professional qualifications holders like those with law degree, engineering, accountancy and not forgetting MBBS! (At least I can prove one).
Teaching is now a facilitating role. Learning must take place among students given the conducive environment, proper classroom management style (both social and physical set-up). Students learning can be measured, as mentioned in the curriculum. But what exactly does that mean, especially to most teachers?
(moved from medang.blogspot.com)
We were learning. I felt and recollected that I was learning. It was fun. It was filled with joy. Much more when we were asked to say all the syllables in pairs.
Back to the question asked, learning can be ensured if the students: (1) felt the fun of it, (2) enjoyed doing it (activity planned for it), and, (3) students are excited throughout the 'teaching' environment. (this includes teachers interactiveness, ensured collaboration and cooporation among the students as they love working together).
Pondering on how teaching is engaged among present teachers, some are quite administrative in nature, lacks the 'excitement' and seemingly stressful. How students respond to this environment is predictable. Observing some classroom teachings engaged by some young trained teachers, the craft is no longer well-liked by students compared to my days as student. Some good young teachers are of course putting all the lively effort together and produced conducive classroom learning environment often filled with 'emotions' because they managed to 'touch' the hearts of all of them in the class. This is very rare but not impossible as teaching is now becoming a profession of choice among other professional qualifications holders like those with law degree, engineering, accountancy and not forgetting MBBS! (At least I can prove one).
Teaching is now a facilitating role. Learning must take place among students given the conducive environment, proper classroom management style (both social and physical set-up). Students learning can be measured, as mentioned in the curriculum. But what exactly does that mean, especially to most teachers?
(moved from medang.blogspot.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment