Teaching and Learning: It Is Important To Know What Students Know
Having taught as a mathematics major teacher in both elementary and intermediate schools for ten years, I strongly believe that prior to the teaching of any topic in mathematics, as is for all sciences, a teacher should enquire on the knowledge level of his students in that particular topic.
There are so many reasons prompting me to say so some of which include knowing how to organize the topic as well as handle the students’ attitude towards the same, and to create room for the teacher to know how the students understand the content and help them understand it themselves which will increase their interest greatly. In addition, sciences and mathematics are known not to be a girls’ thing and so the teacher knowing what they know will help determine the additional methods to incorporate like practical and media classes where the understanding of the all pupils will be enhanced.
Constructivism learning and Critical theories
According to Duncan, Jancar and Switky (2010) Constructivism learning theory like critical theory and almost all feminist theories question the ability of individuals to look objectively at the world hence adopting the logic that individuals are shaped by the culture and society they live in.. The three argue that the constructivism and the critical theory are keen to carry the this logic to the wrapping up that the individual experience of a given society’s prevailing culture decides that person’s perception of reality comparative to their place in the social structure.
Constructivism theory posits since human beings exist within the society, knowledge is subjective meaning that the way we all reason to try to form things is culturally dependent (Lambert, 2002) while critical theory posits technological development to have suppressed human freedom making them learn and adopt new technologies existent only in machines inner logic (Duncan, Jancar and Switky, 2010).
Why a teacher should know what the students know prior to the commencement of a subject
There are several reasons why a teacher should know what students know about a given topic prior to the commencement of real teaching of the topic. This is because students’ prior knowledge can assist or prevent proper learning (Ambrose, Bridges and Michele, 2010).
In order to assist in learning a teacher must understand what the student knows about a course to be able to understand how other courses and their daily lives have affected students’ advancement of knowledge. This knowledge from the students contains a combination of essentials, notion, models, discernment values, and attitudes and believes with some being exact, and sufficient while the other being inaccurate and insufficient for learning (Ambrose, Bridges and Michele, 2010).
As the teacher understands the students prior acquaintance it is brought to his attention that this influences how the students filter and construes arriving information. As a result, this will help teachers design their instructions more correctly to promote effective learning rather than influence the students’ precise knowledge but also be familiar with instances where students are applying prior knowledge inappropriately and work harder to correct the created misconceptions.
Ways of organizing teaching the teaching of a specific topic to improve learning
In discussing this paper, constructivism learning theory and critical theory will be used to show that with some adaptations in the learning environment, there can be improved learning as well as improved performance for the students. One of the main reasons why my school requires teachers to enquire on prior knowledge of any given topic from students is the fact that especially in the sciences; most schools have developed cultures that isolate some science topics to the top performers in the class as they are believed to be so hard.
This mostly goes to the girls’ who tend to believe that mathematics and all science topics that contain calculation are hard and only the boys’ students can handle. With this knowledge as a teacher, I was able to device a way to breakdown each concept to make it understood in bits and later combine the bits to make the whole instruction one. This implies that the organization of knowledge by students determines how they learn and apply what they know (Ambrose, Bridges and Michele, 2010).According to Hoene (2010), one of the first steps in organizing the teaching of a specific topic is the evaluation of oneself, the teacher.
This is done through several ways which Hoene (2010) discusses as use of a teaching log for daily teachings which include a lesson plan and reserved spaces for comments and reflection. In the reflections, the main inputs must come from the students’ responses about the teaching. Knowing what the students know will also help the teachers in a given faculty to schedule meetings, depending on the students’ responses, where they dialogue on the course logistics and strategies for teaching various parts of a given topic (Lewis and Lunde, 2001).
In addition, chat with fellow teachers of the same course will assist in exchanging ideas about a specific topic as well as in the exchange of materials, assets and suggestions on how to stimulate the classroom leaning environment (Hoene, 2010). As a teacher, Davis (2009) argues that sometimes it is important to watch oneself on a videotape. By this, Davis (2009) means that, hiring the services of consultants to conduct classroom observations and videotaping as well as preparatory and follow-up discussions is important in developing teaching strategies, reviewing feedbacks from students as well as finding ways to improve teaching and learning.
Having had enough experience in mathematics for years, I believe that embracing Kennedy, Johnson and Tipps (2007) recommendations for guiding students in learning mathematics will also apply in the science field. The three argue that the use of small groups of students to work on activities, problems, and assignments can lead to increase in student’s achievement in mathematics as well as other subjects.What happened in my case was that, student were divided into groups of twelve each and given a teacher to guide them. The students were allowed to compile a list of all topics that are problematic with each student stating the main two.
With this list a final list was compiled with all the students who had problems stated under each topic and given to the teacher. With this list, the teacher was now able to select tasks that were appropriate for group work as well as choose tasks that dealt with important mathematics concepts and ideas. At the end of each term, the groups were evaluated using symposium that tested few students from each group and then awarding of the winner. This means that goal directed learning together with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students learning. This means that with the right motivation, students can actually attain greater heights of learning.
In addition, Kennedy, Johnson and Tipps (2007), discovered that, teaching that included student’s intuitive elucidation methods can increase student learning, especially when combined with the opportunities for student interaction and discussion. According to their research, the teacher should allow the students to interact in problem affluent situations as well as encourage them to find their own solution methods and provide them with ample time to share and compare their solution methods and answers.In my case, the students in my group I would allow each individual first to take up a program we called “three sums per day”.
Here each student was to take up three sums randomly from the covered topics and in a topic they find problematic, do them and surrender them to fellows in the group for evaluation. If several more students in the group could not find the solution, the task was surrendered to the teacher who made it group work for the whole group to solve, later the idea was shared together with the solution to the whole class in a discussion.Furthermore, giving students an opportunity to both discover and invent new knowledge and an opportunity to practice what they have learned improves student performance Kennedy, Johnson and Tipps (2007),.
This is important in that it allows the students to stop relying only on the solution methods from the teacher and from the textbooks but to come up with their own solution methods that they can easily understand and that they can easily remember. Given such opportunities I remember, made students become competitive since every one wanted to be the source of the solution in each lesson. This resulted to increased research and study in the mathematic and the sciences problems a trend that lead to increased performance since each student solved the problems based on methods they well understood and methods that came from amongst them and hence were easy to remember.
This implies that, students must acquire skills, practice integrating them and know when to apply what they have leaned.A balance had to be stuck between the time the students spent in discovering new methods of solving the problems and the time spent in practicing routine procedures. In order to improve the performance, the non routine procedures had to be done away with by introducing lessons that involved new skills by posing them as problems to be solved and regularly allow students to build new knowledge based on their intuitive knowledge and informal procedures.
Another way to organize the teaching of a specific topic to improve learning is to ask students questions specifically designed to trigger recall can help them use prior knowledge to aid the integration and retention of new information (Ambrose, Bridges and Michele, 2010).for instance, I as a mathematics teacher discovered that, with the use of questions that contained some keywords in the topic triggered the students to recall the course concept as well as what was required in solving the problem. It was even made easier when I set questions for the students to answer after they told me the keywords that they used to enable them provide the solutions they did.
Conclusion
In conclusion, excellence in science and mathematics learning does not occur because of an individual or because of a group, neither does it occur overnight as a big miracle. In fact, it actually occurs when all students collaborate in bettering their best all the time each day throughout the year. To make excellent a standard, it is therefore important to redefine practices and processes continuously when individuals and their ideas are respected and valued and when all decisions are based on what is of best interest to the student. To prove that excellence is habit not an event, Aristotle said that people are what they do repeatedly and with lots of ease.
References
Ambrose S., Bridges W. M. and Michele D., (2010). How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. John Wiley and sons, Inc. United states of America: USA.
Davis B., (2009). Watching Yourself on Videotape: In Tools for Teaching. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Duncan R., Jancar B., and Switky B., (2009). World Politics in the 21st Century. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishers. United States of America. P. 56.
Hoene von L., (2010). Evaluating and Improving Your Teaching: Five Ways to Improve Your Teaching. University of California. Retrieved on 27-03-2011 from http://gsi.berkeley.edu/teachingguide/improve/five-ways.html
Lambert L., (2002). The Constructivism Leader. Teachers college, Colombia University.
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Lewis K., and Lunde, J. P. (Eds). (2001).Face-to-face: A Source Book of Individual Consultation Techniques for Faculty/Instructional Developers. (Rev. Ed.). Stillwater, OK: New Forums.
Kennedy M. L., Johnson A. and Tipps S., (2007). Guiding Children’s Learning of Mathematics. Thomson Wadsworth. Belmont: CA.
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