Learning Teaching by Teaching

http://www.educationav.com.au/in-class-teacher-aids/

Yesterday, October 27, 2011, was the last day we did the school experience program. My team and I did teaching assistant in two days. It was on Friday we taught three classes and on Wednesday we taught one class. We mostly used game to make student interested to learn. On Friday we taught about derivation. We used jumble scramble letter game. On Wednesday we taught about adjectives. We used board game to teach it.

Our teaching strategy was different with our mentor teacher, Mrs. Laila. Based on our observation and interview, she used various strategies like using lecture-discussion and guided-discovery instructions. She often stood in the middle of the students or in front of them then asked them some questions. She always spoke English all the time, even she encouraged students to speak English when they want to answer the question or ask some questions. She said that speaking proper and good English all the time would encourage students to speak English too. Then it was good to practice their speaking and listening skills.

Mrs. Laila said that learning is systematic process. There are teacher and students and there are also systems to be achieved and tasks to be done. She often asked her students to create something related to the materials which had been delivered, because she thought that effective teaching was when the students were able to apply the material to their real life. That is why after lecture-discussion she continued with guided-discovery instruction in order to encourage students to apply the material and use it in their real life.

Another strategy was giving rewards. She often appreciated her students’ efforts by saying good. She said that reward was good to encourage and motivate them to do their best. She usually gave complement and good score but not a gift. She also often used formative assessment in the class. She gave feedback directly to student who made some mistakes.

Mrs. Laila’s teaching strategies and our strategies were quite different as I mentioned before. We prefer to use game to grab students’ attention because we were still beginner in teaching. We still learn how to teach effectively. Even we did team teaching but we still could not handle the whole class well. Sometimes the students did not want to listen to us or did not understand our instruction. Then we made agreement that we have to respect one another. When somebody was speaking, others had to listen. We just said “hi” when the students did not listen to us and they answer “hallo” then we continued teaching. We also used formative assessment in the class but we did not give score because Mrs. Laila did not allow us to do evaluation about the lesson. She said that she would do it.

Teaching was not easy when we did know how to handle the students and grab their attention. Most of all, we were happy because they got what we were trying to deliver and we could achieve our goals.