My Teaching Experience and Feedback - How is it going for you?
satyam.jakkula
Greetings everyone!
I had apprehensions about my own ability to teach “Telugu Medium” students solely because of my low skills in text book Telugu. Venkat gave me initial encouragement, and then I plunged into it! In the process, I’m learning a lot and kids seem to be enjoying my classes. What more should I expect? More than teaching a particular subject, I consider it’s an opportunity to learn something for myself. And, more than teaching a particular subject, I consider, it is about "instilling inspiration" among students to do well in their life.
I teach 6thScience for Kishkindapalem, Guntur, A.P School Students. I learnt, students become attentive when I tell them some stories. So for lesson “Our Food”, we have discussed a related topic while discussing how some food items are made. The discussion topic I created was – How Honey is made? What is the Source of Honey, is it a Plant or an animal? How Bees collect Nectar from flowers? What does Bees do to produce Honey? Then what will happen....?
Next class was on “Materials and Things”. We discussed, certain Things made of different Materials and vice versa (Materials that goes into making of Things). In the process, the story was around, How Paper is made? What materials are needed? What quantity of trees makes certain quantity of Paper? How much water is needed? Story was also supported by a video and presentation slides.
One thing which matters me a lot is – To make the children open up and talk freely with me to clarify their doubts. I’m encouraging them to ask more questions. After couple of classes, students started asking questions. This is an indication of a needed Student & Teacher relationship development. When I look back my student days, I reflected upon my school teachers. What qualities in them made me feel, some of them as my favorite, role model teachers? I’m trying in my own way to be a minimum good teacher with an “underlining purpose” to inspire students. So story telling is a way I’m adopting while encouraging them to ask questions.
On the other side, technology challenges are persisting with connection interruptions, Screen sharing often stucks, etc. But when connection establishes, there are several smiling faces waiting to discuss and learn.
Please share your experiences so far.....
Happy Teaching! Happy Volunteering!!
Cheers!
Satyam
Pune
Kamala Ramesh
jayasree venkat
rupika.dhurjati
satyam.jakkula
I sincerely thank forum members for making it an ongoing discussions and sharing teaching feedback.
Hi Rupika,
Many thanks for sharing detailed teaching experience. There were wonderful thoughts you had shared. This is fantastic! I admire the way you said that, teaching opportunity is making you improve on Time Management and dealing with other conflicting priorities. Yes, it’s helping me too in multiple dimensions. Also, one of the important takeaways from your mail for me is about written assessments. I’m going to mimic the practice of written assessment on the topics covered. I have been revising orally but I think written assessment will be a good tool. YouTube links you shared are pretty helpful.
My two cents on the suggestions you asked from the forum:
1. how to ensure the participation of all the kids
After initial couple of classes, the common trend observed in any class will be, few active students who respond almost all the time, while many sit tight and some of them only talk hesitatingly when asked to respond.
We need to encourage two kinds of engagement – i) Student to Student engagement and ii) Student to Teacher engagement
Mixing the students into groups for “fun and learn” activities. Or, students asking questions to peers and evaluating if that is right. It makes kids to engage among their classmates.
I ask question and tell them to raise the hand if they know the answer and I keep the right to myself to select anyone in the class including those who do not raise the hand. (Raising hand method will avoid the noise, otherwise multiple students start talking and in the end you don’t know who said what). Interact with the ones who do not open up by asking some easy questions and help them with clues if they still don’t speak up. Ones we get an answer from them, appreciate and applaud to turn them into reasonably active students. It makes kids engage with teacher.
In general, Kids attention span will be less. So in between story telling relevant to their subject will bring back the attention.
2. how to make use of the diagnostic assessment in tailoring the learning methodologies according to the understanding level of kids.
It’s a good question, but I don’t have an appropriate response to provide for now. I wish others will share their view. We will have time constraint of only 2 classes per week. I’m also not sure how we can tailor assessments based on Kids level of understanding.
3.Time spent on clearing concepts as opposed to covering the topic.
I guess you are asking % of Time spent on clearing concepts Vs. Covering the topic.
We are expected to give significant importance to clearing the concepts rather than just covering the topic. Symbolically, each lesson otherwise can be covered in one class but we don’t do justice unless we elaborate the concepts. Both needs to be balanced and I’m still learning here.
Dear Kamala
I have attached the slides delivered for two lessons so far. It has links embedded in the slides. I should actually post these in Science Teachers Forum and Teachers of Andhra Pradesh Forum.
Hope this helps.
Dear All, Please keep the discussions interactive in this forum so that we learn and grow in our teaching approaches.
Happy Teaching! Happy Volunteering!!
Cheers
Satyam
Pune