Effective Strategies of Teaching

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STAFF DEVELOPMENT SERIES Dr. M.P.Chhaya

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Dear Reader, This CD – Staff Development Series – contains the following five books: 1. Book 1 - Effective Strategies 2. Book 2 - Curriculum Development and Classroom Management 3. Book 3 – Measurement and Evaluation 4. Book 4 – Fundamentals of Guidance and Counselling 5. Book 5 – Innovative School For the comforts of the reader, light classical instrumental music is introduced while you are reading (of course, it is optional). By clicking on the “Music” folder and then clicking twice on the music file, you can start the music and adjust the volume as you desire. This CD can be read on Microsoft Word 98 / 2000 on Normal view and for getting / retrieving the figures, it may be read on Print view. There are many advantages of these electronic books such as: • Your hands remain free while reading and can take notes • You can copy the pages / passages as per your requirements • Material from this book can be displayed on a large screen using a projector • Very handy and useful for staff-development and in-service programmes • You can mix and match the topics from any of these books • You can view these books according to your personal preferences (e.g. font, text size, colour, full screen mode, etc.) • The use of a Compact Disc allows for easy portability, accessibility and storage in comparison to five printed books

REQUEST You are morally obliged not to copy this CD for any other institution but for the use of your own staff development.

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Book 1

EFFECTIVE TEACHER EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM (Effective Strategies of Teaching)

Dr. M.P.CHHAYA

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This book is dedicated to

Teachers who act as real “Gurus”

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Preface This book is introduced for use by students learning to be teachers, beginning teachers, and more experienced teachers all of whom may wish to improve their techniques through professional institutes, work-shops, and in-service and on the job training programmes. It is predicated on the belief that teaching is an art involving certain learned skills and that, with the knowledge of these skills, creative imagination, and talent, an individual can motivate others to learn. The major thrusts of the book, then, are the identification and illustration of the techniques and procedures that a teacher can use to increase his/her effectiveness and to help make the learning experience dynamic, meaningful, and relevant to today’s student. The practical “how to” approach is always used; real, workable methods are provided for actual classroom situations. Because each learning experience – based, as it is, on the interactions of individuals – is unique, teaching techniques must be modified to fit each situation. When a teacher is concerned with the improvement of his own institution, he organises his time, thoughts and efforts very differently from the conventional teacher. Instead of spending great blocks of time organising lesson plans, lectures, and similar significant aspects of teaching, he concentrates on his own instructional behaviours. He thinks about himself as a person, how he will relate to the children, which instructional design he should follow, and the strategies he should use to facilitate learning. It is for certain that for schools to change, the teacher must change. This book does not deal with every possible instructional skill and sub-skill, which should be in the repertoire of a teacher. No single book could possibly accomplish such a task. A number of important skills have been treated, suggesting the range of competencies to be sought by the reader. This book will serve well as the base for a continuing progress of professional improvement. It can help in getting knowledge, but for it to be of any value it must be practised in the classroom until maximum utilisation of different strategies in different situations becomes second nature. The effective teaching practices have been described in a friendly manner. The language of classrooms is informal and there is no reason why a book about teachers in classrooms should not use the same language. Therefore, this book talks straight; avoiding complicated phrases, rambling discussions, or pseudo scholarly language. The idea is to get the point across quickly in a friendly and readable style. This book describes what real teachers can do in real classrooms and which teaching practices are and are not effective in those classrooms. The research-based effective teaching practices, presented in a simple style, are practical and realistic. Many individuals and professionals, whose studies of classroom life have contributed to the effective teaching, have been described in this book. The work of these professionals has made possible integration and synthesis of effective teaching practices. I also wish to acknowledge those teachers of Rajkumar College Rajkot, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan New Delhi, Schools of Chinmaya Mission and Navodaya Vidyalayas, who, over the years, have shared their insights about the teaching process with me. M.P.Chhaya

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Table of Contents Preface ………………………………………………………………………………………………………iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................VI ..........................................................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1....................................................................................................................................................1 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................................1 What is method?.......................................................................................................................................2 What factors determine one’s methods in teaching?...............................................................................3 Five Key Behaviours Contributing To Effective Teaching.......................................................................4 Some Helping Behaviours Related To Effective Teaching.......................................................................4 Some important teacher effectiveness indicators:....................................................................................5 ..........................................................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 2....................................................................................................................................................6 DESIGNING EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION..............................................................................................6 Consider the context of your teaching......................................................................................................6 Consider the content of your teaching.....................................................................................................7 Consider the learners to be taught...........................................................................................................7 Consider yourself.....................................................................................................................................7 Elements of instructional design..............................................................................................................8 ................................................................................................................................................................10 CHAPTER 3..................................................................................................................................................10 STRATEGIES FOR INDIVIDUALISATION...........................................................................................10 Individualised Learning.........................................................................................................................10 Behavioural modification.......................................................................................................................12 Contracting.............................................................................................................................................14 Independent study...................................................................................................................................15 Learning packets....................................................................................................................................16 Programmed learning (Instruction).......................................................................................................17 Student tutorial.......................................................................................................................................18 ........................................................................................................................................................................19 CHAPTER 4..................................................................................................................................................19 STRATEGIES FOR SMALL GROUPS....................................................................................................19 Case study..............................................................................................................................................19 Community resources.............................................................................................................................21 Field study (trip).....................................................................................................................................22 Interest centres (Subject learning centres).............................................................................................23 Project....................................................................................................................................................24 Problem solving......................................................................................................................................25 Student research.....................................................................................................................................26 ........................................................................................................................................................................27 CHAPTER 5..................................................................................................................................................27

vii STRATEGIES FOR LARGER GROUPS..................................................................................................27 Observation............................................................................................................................................27 Demonstration........................................................................................................................................29 Discussion..............................................................................................................................................30 Lecture....................................................................................................................................................32 Questioning............................................................................................................................................34 Role-playing...........................................................................................................................................37 Simulation gaming..................................................................................................................................39 Team teaching........................................................................................................................................41 CHAPTER 6 .................................................................................................................................................43 STRATEGIES FOR SPECIAL USE..........................................................................................................43 Discovery ...............................................................................................................................................43 Interview.................................................................................................................................................46 Laboratory..............................................................................................................................................47 Socratic...................................................................................................................................................49 CHAPTER 7..................................................................................................................................................50 SUB-STRATEGIES FOR GENERAL USE...............................................................................................50 Creative thinking....................................................................................................................................50 Co-operative learning............................................................................................................................53 Inquiry....................................................................................................................................................54 Modelling...............................................................................................................................................55 Decision-making ................................................................................................................56 Homework/Assignment...........................................................................................................................58 Brainstorming.........................................................................................................................................59 Summary.................................................................................................................................................60 Audio-visual aids...................................................................................................................................61 Overhead projector................................................................................................................................61 Slide projector........................................................................................................................................62 Television...............................................................................................................................................63 Records and audiotapes.........................................................................................................................64 Films and videotapes..............................................................................................................................65 Chalkboards...........................................................................................................................................66 Bulletin boards.......................................................................................................................................67 Computers..............................................................................................................................................68 CHAPTER 8..................................................................................................................................................70 STRATEGIES FOR SPECIAL LEARNERS............................................................................................70 The slow learner.....................................................................................................................................70 The gifted and/or talented learners........................................................................................................72 The bilingual learner..............................................................................................................................74 CHAPTER 9..................................................................................................................................................77 EFFECTIVE TEACHING IN A CLASSROOM.......................................................................................77 Effective teaching...................................................................................................................................77 Defects in teaching.................................................................................................................................78 Active participation of students: ...........................................................................................................79 The type of questions relate to effective teaching:.................................................................................80 CHAPTER 10................................................................................................................................................81 ROLE OF THE TEACHER........................................................................................................................81 REFERENCES.......................................................................................................................................87

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Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION Can you imagine a technician repairing a machine with only one tool? Obviously not, he needs and must utilise different tools in different situations. Similarly, teachers need to vary their teaching strategies in different classroom situations, but a vast majority competently utilise only a few and many times only one. As with the single-tool technician, this severely limits the teachers’ overall effectiveness. When a teacher relies upon a single approach (such as a drill or lecture) as a learning strategy, students’ boredom can easily create learning and/or discipline problems. A lack of methodological fluidity usually indicates a lack of knowledge of students’ needs, interests, and individual optimum learning conditions. Therefore, it is a near mandate that teachers be competent to the utilisation of a number of teaching strategies. There are at least four valid reasons for a teacher being proficiently prepared in a wide assortment of strategies. 1. Different pupils learn best in different ways at different times. 2. Some subject matter is best served by use of a particular strategy or combination of strategies. 3. Diverse objectives call for diverse approaches to meet those objectives. 4. Environmental factors (money, supplies, facilities, time, etc.) often dictate which strategies will be most effective. The mastery of instructional strategies is only one dimension of the skills, attitudes, and knowledge needed by the competent teacher. For examples, no amount of strategies can make up for lack of knowledge in subject matter. The converse is also true. The greater the teacher’s knowledge of the subject, the more freedom he has to apply a variety of instructional approaches. The teacher should also have a basic understanding of philosophies of education, learning theory, and human development to act as a guide in the proper application of each strategy. The teacher must answer such questions as: What is a student? What are his needs, wants, and interests? Any teaching strategy, which is inconsistent with the student’s desire for peer acceptance and approval, is likely to meet with strong resistance. Even the most careful planning cannot produce beneficial results

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unless the student personally feels the need for learning. This requires consideration of the associated problem of providing adequately for individual differences. It is a rare student who will create a disturbance (internally, if not externally) when class expectations are too high or too low for his capabilities. After practice with a given strategy has provided confidence in its utilisation in the classroom, a number of strategies should be combined and blended into new creative patterns by the teacher. The knowledge, accuracy, and rapidity with which a teacher can apply strategies to a particular learning situation are some of the differences between the teacher as a technician and the teacher as a professional. Both stages are necessary, but one is a rung on the ladder to becoming the other. Too often as teachers we tend to use that strategy which gives us a feeling of security. Consequently there is a hesitancy to employ more appropriate methods. By understanding how different strategies can best be utilised, we can better benefit the student and ourselves. If sub-strategies are properly used they can often enhance and extend the effectiveness of the strategy employed. For example: Interest centres/subject centres could include appropriate film strips, tape recordings, and films; drill is enhanced by charts of content or activities to be performed; and lectures are more meaningful if main points or key ideas are displayed by means of overhead projections or use of the chalkboard. Strategies and sub-strategies are not content in themselves, but are, rather, catalytic agents causing a reaction but not becoming a part of the result. A more graphic analogy is as follows: You can offer individuals raw potatoes (knowledge) for eating (learning) but many would not eat. A pressure cooker (strategy) prepares the potatoes more properly for consumption and increases the chances of them being eaten. Putting the potatoes on a table with a colourful table setting (sub-strategy) improves the chances for consumption even more.

What is method? Method refers to the formal structure of the sequence of acts commonly denoted by instruction. The term covers both the strategy and tactics of teaching and involves the choice of what is to be taught, and the order in which it is to be taught. Method is a systematic way of doing things under the guidance of certain previously established principles. The manner in which method in teaching is followed varies with the subjects presented, the teachers who teach, and the children who learn. In reality there seem to be only two generalised methods of teaching; namely, the inductive method and the deductive method. The specific methods by which these two schemes are carried out are also called techniques, strategies, procedures, devices and the like at times. The inductive method: The inductive method is the real method of discovery. It moves from objects or several keynote examples to the development of ideas. There are many decided merits of the inductive method of teaching, among which the following are of the most importance. 1) Children who gain knowledge in this way have been able to retain it for longer periods of time. 2) It increases the perspective powers of the pupil since he is encouraged to be more self-reliant upon his thinking. 3) The conclusions made for the most part are formed first in the mind of the pupil with the teacher becoming a checkpoint for inaccuracies and wrong perceptions. The main disadvantages of the inductive method stem from the fact that not all subjects can be taught inductively. For example, some of the abstract ideas in arithmetic cannot be effectively presented through inductive procedures. Moreover, induction is a slow process and requires many materials some of it may be most expensive. There are

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limitations but it is absolutely necessary that if clearness of thought is to be encouraged and real knowledge preserved, the inductive method should be used to introduce many new subjects and to give aid in the exposition of difficult ones. The deductive method: Generally one is teaching deductively when he gives the rules, principle or generalisation first and from them the descent is made to the specific factors or ideas making up such generalisations. When this method is used, pupils are asked to accept the reasoning of someone else, to profit from what others have concluded. With increasing age children become more highly skilled in deductive reasoning, therefore, the deductive method should simultaneously increase in importance. The best method of teaching comes about when the teacher combines the two in such ways that one method reinforces the other to assist the perceptions of the pupils in the learning situation.

What factors determine one’s methods in teaching? 1. The age and disposition of pupils must be considered by the teacher in the selection of a method to teach a given content. 2. The child’s likes and dislikes should be known by the classroom teacher. Often children quit school because their dislikes are not known. 3. Until a teacher meets and studies his group, he will not know the specific method that should be employed for their instruction. However, he will know several methods from which he might select the more appropriate for purposes of application. 4. Children are curious persons. Method and content should encourage such curiosity. 5. Children are collections of materials. They should also be collection of ideas. A good teacher uses the method that helps the child to collect additional materials and ideas. 6. The more freedom a method allows the pupil, the more he will follow his native tendencies to be free. If the child is not compressed into confirming ways, the longer may be his school life. 7. The method selected for the purposes of instruction should not inhibit the child’s natural instincts to imitate, construct, work and play particularly at the primary levels. Probably the child learns more during his first six years than during all of the next twelve years. The method of teaching at the primary levels should allow the child to enlarge upon certain natural instincts. 8. In society at large children are expected to grow up too quickly. The teacher should use methods that incorporate play into the education process. At the elementary school level, schoolwork should often be not far removed from play techniques. 9. Since children like to construct, all pupils at the elementary levels should do some constructive work as a part of their daily schedule. 10. At certain age levels, there is more rivalry than at others. The teacher should seek to guide rivalry into its many constructive channels. 11. The elder the child, the more likely he will be able to maintain a longer attention span and to retain the line of thought. The methods should be such that the child is discouraged from jumping too rapidly from one thought to another. 12. Teachers sometimes try to teach a pupil without knowing what the child knows. Such teachings would be guesswork. As the teacher studies the child’s thinking, he sees the problem as the child sees it. By putting himself in the pupil’s place, a more appropriate method of teaching him might be found. Teachers like the learners they serve, are unique personalities. It makes sense for them to take advantage of their own special interests, skills, and competencies as they

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plan for instruction. Individual strengths of teachers can be utilised most effectively when a logical framework is employed to organise the instructional skills selected for a specific programme. Such a framework can suggest how instructional skills might best be organised to promote a logical, systematic instructional programme for learners. As a framework to guide teacher’ instructional practices, a model of instruction is proposed here that relates actions of teachers to achievement of learners. According to this model, major emphases are placed not specifically on what teachers do, but on what learners derive from instruction. This model of instruction rests on a clear formulation of the teaching process. Teaching can be thought of as a series of events requiring decisions made by the teachers. Logically, these decisions can be organised into separate categories. These decision categories have been grouped under five general headings. Collectively, these five headings comprise all of the basic instructional skills. These skills are: • Skill one: specifying performance objective • Skill two: diagnosing learners • Skill three: selecting instructional strategies • Skill four: interacting with learners • Skill five: evaluating the effectiveness of instruction Each of these five instructional skills can be thought of as an element in a comprehensive model of instruction. This model provides a useful framework for teachers as they plan for classroom instruction. This model encourages the development of individual teaching styles. Individualised styles are encouraged because evaluation of instruction is based on learner’s achievement of the performance objectives. Given this criterion, teachers are free to choose procedures from their own repertoires that they believe will result in high levels of learner achievement. Teacher responsibility is well served by this model. This responsibility comes not in teachers’ rigid adherence to a set of “ideal role behaviours” but rather in adapting instructional practices, as necessary, to help learners achieve performance objectives that have been selected.

Five Key Behaviours Contributing To Effective Teaching Approximately 10 teacher behaviours show promising relationships to desirable student performance, primarily as measured by achievement on classroom and standardised tests. Five of these behaviours have been consistently supported by research studies over the past two decades. Another five have had some support and appear logically related to effective teaching. The first five we will call key behaviours, because they are considered essential for effective teaching. The second five we will call helping behaviours that can be used in combinations to implement the key behaviours. The five key behaviours, referred, are: • Lesson clarity • Instructional variety • Task orientation • Engagement in the learning process • Student success

Some Helping Behaviours Related To Effective Teaching To fill out our picture of an effective teacher, more than five general keys to effective teaching are needed. You also need behaviours to help you implement the five

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key behaviours in your classroom. Let’s consider some additional behaviours that can be thought of as catalytic or helping behaviours for performing the five key behaviours. Research findings for helping behaviours, although promising, are not as strong and consistent as those that identified the five key behaviours. There is general agreement on the importance of these helping behaviours, but the research has not been so accommodating as to identify explicitly how these behaviours should be used. Nor has it linked these behaviours to student achievement as strongly as the key five. This is why it is suspected that helping behaviours need to be employed in the context of other behaviours to be effective, making them catalysts rather than agents unto themselves. These catalytic behaviours include: 1. Using student ideas and contributions 2. Structuring 3. Questioning 4. Probing 5. Teacher affect

Some important teacher effectiveness indicators: The effective teacher • Takes personal responsibility for students’ learning and has positive expectations for every learner, • Matches the difficult of the lesson with the ability level of the students and varies the difficulty when necessary to attain moderate-to-higher success rates, • Gives students the opportunity to practice newly learned concepts and to receive timely feedback on their performance, • Maximises instructional time to increase content coverage and to give students the greatest opportunity to learn, • Provides direction and control of student learning through questioning, structuring and probing, • Uses a variety instructional materials and verbal and visual aids to foster use of student ideas and engagement in the learning process, • Elicits responses from students each time a question is asked before moving to the next student or question. • Present material in small steps with opportunities for practice. • Encourages students to reason out and elaborate upon the correct answer. • Encourages students in verbal questions and answers. • Uses naturally occurring classroom dialogue to get students elaborate, extend, and comment on the content being learned. • Gradually shifts some of the responsibility for learning to the students – encouraging independent thinking, problem solving, and decision making. • Provides learners with mental strategies for organising and learning the content being taught.

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Chapter 2 Designing Effective Instruction Planning and designing instruction are opposite sides of the same coin. Planning is a mental process--the visualising that takes place before teaching. During the planning process, we may try to match the needs of the learner with specific content for our particular context. Designing is the process of putting our mental plans into a blue print. When we design instruction, we note specific elements of our planning. Developing a blueprint for teaching provides a focus for instruction and promotes systematic and efficient planning. When you plan for instruction, you must consider the context of your teaching, the content you intend to teach, and the learners who will be taught. You must also consider yourself. You must modify your design as you gain teaching experience.

Consider the context of your teaching To help you decide on a format for your design, ask yourself questions about the context in which you will be teaching: • Is the setting formal or informal (rows of desks or clusters of tables and chairs)? • Is it the beginning, middle, or end of the school year? The school day? The class period? • Is this a group of 8, 12, 20, 30 or bigger? • What kind of management routines is established? Your context concerns must include elements within and outside your classroom. Consider noise levels, potential behaviour problems, and movement that affect your teaching and teaching of those near by. Note other schedules such as library period, lunch break, and recess, which may follow or precede your instruction. Remember, too, that there are often administrative pressures imposed on your design process. You may be required to submit teaching plans to administrators, to use a particular format, or to follow a particular schedule.

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Consider the content of your teaching Again, to help you decide on a format for your design, ask yourself questions about the content you will teach. • Is there a textbook? • Is the curriculum unstructured and open-ended (e.g. curriculum for creative writing)? • Is there a big idea or concept to be understood (e.g. relationship between societal discontent and politics)? • Are there skills to be practised (e.g. map reading)? • Are there attitudes to be experienced (appreciation of masterpieces of art)? • Are there school district objectives to be met? Content is a major focus for most teachers when designing instruction. In addition to curriculum guides, textbooks, and teacher manuals, teachers’ individual interests and areas of expertise become important sources of content.

Consider the learners to be taught These questions will guide your discussion about a format for your instructional design. Ask yourself questions about your learners. • What kind of learning activities have they experienced? What kind of life experiences? Travel experience? Activities outside of school? • Do these learners work well in-groups? Do they know how to work ingroups? • What strategies/activities are developmentally appropriate for these learners (e.g. young children require need manipulative for understanding math concepts)? • Can these learners work independently? • Have the learners shown interest in the topics? What is their motivation level? • Is the content relevant to their lives? • What are the needs of the learners? Teachers describe the ability level of their students as the most important consideration when designing instruction. You will need to be sensitive to the social interactions of your learners and the pattern of the class participation, which could affect many of the teaching strategies and learning activities you might plan.

Consider yourself In a research study, teachers reported that planning relieved anxiety and uncertainty for them, and that they felt mentally and physically better prepared for teaching. You need to ask yourself; “How can my planning help my readiness for teaching?” Or may you need a detailed instructional design to build confidence. If you are a person who plans in great detail for a trip, and is most comfortable with details written down, you will probably use a similar format to design your teaching. If you are a person who plans with a major item and who processes details in your head, you will probably design your teaching with a similar focus. Stop and consider how you plan for the other things you do, so that you consider yourself before designing instruction.

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Once you have considered the context and content of your teaching, the learners to be taught, and yourself, think about the basic parts or elements of design that you will need for your teaching.

Elements of instructional design There are some universal elements you will find in most lesson designs, whether they are written in a detailed format or in mental form. They are goals, objectives, teaching and learning strategies, materials, feedback and assessment. A description of each will assist your understanding of the design models. Goals Educational goals provide overall direction for teaching and learning in broad terms. On a universal level, a goal may be: All students will develop a love of learning. On a district level, a goal may be: Students will become problem solvers. On a class level, a goal may be: Students become successful in math computation or will become literary critics. Notice the broad, general quality of the outcomes, and the need for the long-range development. Objectives Educational objectives specify the learning outcomes in measurable or observable terms. To develop objectives, you must analyse your goals into behaviours that indicate that students are reaching the goal. You must also specify the minimum level of performance necessary for each student that would indicate that the objective and part of the goal are being reached. To be specific, an objective for the goal of math computation might be: Students will add 10 sets of 3-digit numbers and get 80 percent of them correct. Objectives for the goal of literary critics could be: Students identify the main characters, plot and setting of five literary selections, or students describe the literary strategies used by authors to build suspense, create a setting, and divert attention. Teaching and learning strategies Teaching and learning strategies provide the vehicle or means by which facts, ideas, concepts, skills, and attitudes transfer to the thinking and action of the learner. Depending on the strategy in use, this transfer may occur through a variety of media, including the teacher, other students, textbooks, videos, or computers. The question of how to transfer learning may be answered with teacher-directed strategies of lecture, questioning, and demonstration, or with student-directed strategies of co-operative grouping, discovery and role-play. They are the “how” of your instructional design. Materials This is a broad category of tools, equipment, and resources, including anything used by you or your learner in the teaching and the learning process. Materials can be simply pencils and pens, paper and textbooks, or more involved audio-visual stimuli such as films and transparencies. Including materials in your design for teaching contributes to your preparedness. Feedback All of us need feedback that recognises our work, our efforts, our progress and so on. You may provide feedback to students through individual comments on their papers or through verbal responses to their discussions. Students may provide feedback to each other through peer critiques, checking each other’s work, and reading to each other.

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Students may also provide feedback to themselves by checking an answer sheet, or critiquing work with a set of criteria, or through journal writing. Assessment This is the means of determining whether students have met the objectives. You can assess as an ongoing process all through the lesson, as well as at the end of the lesson. You may also use assessment at the beginning of the lesson to see what students already know, before you teach. Short-term assessment includes questions, quizzes, and observations of student work. Long-term assessment includes exams, projects, and research papers. Assessment provides information that will be useful for your next lesson design. Goals, objectives, teaching and learning strategies, materials, feedback, and assessment are threads that run through the most widely used design models. Other models of instruction elaborate from the universal framework. Finally, it is encouraging to personalise whatever design format you use to meet your needs and priorities, to incorporate your beliefs, and to be efficient. You might begin with a model, and as you gain experience personalise it.

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Chapter 3 STRATEGIES FOR INDIVIDUALISATION Individualised Learning Individualised learning is a broad, almost philosophical approach to the teachinglearning process. It involves an assessment of student needs and interests, a tailoring of subject matter and teaching strategies to those needs and interests, and a constant monitoring and guidance of student progress. A teacher using this approach would employ a number of strategies, as the concept of individualised learning is too universal to be applicable as a specific strategy. The universality is one of the reasons why the approach is not as wide spread as everyone agrees it should be. In this amorphous state it is as difficult to understand as the concepts of patriotism, truth, and brotherly love. As with these concepts, individualised learning is understandable only through its displayed components – individualised learning resources such as learning packets, independent study, contracting, student research, programmed instruction, interest centres, interview, projects, Socratic, case study and student tutorial strategies. The processes used in individualised learning are not new. The good teacher has been aware of and utilised them on a regular basis. The differences being that they have been directed at the entire class. Thus, the strategy has not been exploited in its fullest potential. Although time consuming at the outset, the rewards tend to far exceed the energy expended. Students involved in individualised programme are encouraged to exceed minimal standards. They are further prompted to expand on lessons assigned to areas of their personal and intellectual interests. Consequently, learning becomes an exciting adventure and not a necessary obligation to complete the same daily activities that are performed to the typical classroom. It is truly a challenge to the intellectually inclined

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student without penalising those students who need to maintain a slower pace accomplishes the minimal requirements. When coupled with other strategies such as interest centres, student research, and independent laboratory experiences, a programme in individualised learning is a challenge to the student and boon to the busy teacher. Advantages • Each student moves at his own pace through a level of subject matter utilising a teaching/learning strategy that is selected to promote optimal progress. • Students are not penalised for being out of school for illness or family matters. Upon return each student returns to the point where he was temporarily halted. • Students are not in false competition with peers. They are only in competition with themselves. • Retention of learning is improved over non-individualised instruction. • The teacher has more opportunity to pinpoint and assist individual student problems. • Students learn to take more responsibility for their own instructional activities. • Students have the opportunity to see their personal progress as it occurs and tend to extend their knowledge rather than stopping at minimal accomplishment. Disadvantages • Time and effort must be expended in developing materials and matching strategies to a given student. • Pre-assessment of student academic status takes time and special skill. • Students must be trained to handle individualised learning strategies—a time consuming activity. • Record keeping can be lengthy and involved. • In the beginning, individualised learning takes more teacher-monitoring time.

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Behavioural modification Behavioural modification is the term assigned to the application of the laboratoryderived principles of learning to behaviour problem, which may be academic, social or emotional in nature. Behaviour modification may also be known as behaviour therapy or behaviour management. It has been researched mostly with atypical children. Essentially certain behaviours are established as desirable for students. Students who exhibit such behaviours, or who move to the direction of the prescribed behaviours, are rewarded, hopefully increasing the likelihood that the behaviour will continue. The reward may be of a verbal nature, such as the teacher saying, “Good job, well done”, material rewards, or an increase in student privileges. A programme in behavioural modification should not be used as a panacea for all ills. It is a tool to be used selectively by the teacher. Indiscriminate use may bring about undesirable characteristics and/or neutralise the benefits later when the technique would have a role in changing the pupil’s behaviour. The use of this strategy in conjunction with observation skills, behavioural objectives, individualised instruction; case study and programmed learning can stimulate the students toward the desired behaviour changes. It has also been used with a large degree of success in role-playing and simulation activities. Behaviour modification will not accomplish psychologically or academically impossible tasks. The behaviour must be observable, measurable and controllable. This strategy must be understood and accepted by peers and parents. The teacher must understand both the limitations and potential of the strategy. After the child learns a new behaviour, reinforcement should be tapered off and provided less frequently but occasional reward is necessary to maintain the behaviour. Continue to practice this strategy in numerous settings. Introduce the changes slowly. Teach the child to manage his own behaviour. A learning environment must be created that will cause the child to engage in the desired behaviours. The objectives for each child must be realistic. The teacher should demonstrate those behaviours that are desired and not to assume that the child knows what to do. Advantages • The effects of behaviour modification have been scientifically demonstrated in classroom situations. • It is based upon tested principles of learning rather than theory. • Since behaviour modification is concerned with observable, measurable behaviour, both the student and teacher are aware of the amount of progress being made. • It is applicable to cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning. • This approach leads to co-operation between the teacher, school and the mental health professional. • Since the emphasis is upon success, a positive atmosphere prevails. • The academic behaviours specified can be individualised very easily. Disadvantages • Not all behaviours to be learned can be measured. • Behaviour modification tends to limitation where long term retention is desirable. • A change in the student may not be based on desired learning but upon the rewards attached. • Care must be taken not to reward undesirable behaviours.

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Some techniques within the behaviour modification strategy are extremely timed consuming.

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Contracting Contracting is a device in which a student and teacher write together exactly what is to be accomplished, in what period of time, and for what grade. The objectives are clearly specified, the work objectives outlined, and both teacher and student sign the written agreement (contract). Two copies are prepared so that the teacher and pupil can keep each one for reference and records. The contract itself is a written set of varied learning situations. Some are common to the entire class while others are individualised to meet the needs of the individual student. The contracting strategy is a stepping-stone into the individualised learning processes. The level of acceptable achievement must be based on more than the general expectation of the class. Consideration must include the maturity of the students’ previous experiences in contracting; the ability to carryout tasks on an individual bases and yet be challenging to both the teacher and the student. Contracting is not a strategy that once assigned; the teacher is free from all daily planning and teaching. Quite the contrary, it requires the teacher to constantly monitor progress through individual conferences, assist students in finding the needed resources and regular record keeping of attendance, progress and testing. The contract can be an elaborate document or a simple written statement of agreement between the student and the teacher. The important part of the strategy is in giving the opportunity to students to learn while doing a project that the students have selected with teacher approval. It is a chance for the student to experience success and failure, yet have the opportunity to try again without the feeling of complete failure. Advantages • The emphasis is on learning and success rather than testing and failure. • Students have a self-controlled opportunity for independence in their learning activities. • Cheating and duty shirking are reduced. • Communication is optimised as student and teacher must meet in regular individual conferences. • The learning objectives are clear to everyone. • Students have choices, exercise decision making abilities, and learn to organise and manage time. Disadvantages • It is more work for the teacher than the straight “lecture method”. • More record monitoring is necessary to insure the students are keeping up with their schedules and are not having difficulties. • The contract requires both in-school and out-of-school resources, which may be difficult to locate. • Not all students are mature enough to fulfil the contract responsibilities and selfmotivation required for this strategy. • ‘Quantity’ may tend to replace ‘Quality’ as criteria.

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Independent study Independent study is an arrangement whereby the school explores in depth an area of interest not normally studied by the entire class. The topic to be explored can be assigned by the teacher or selected by the student with approval from the teacher. The aim is to provide a unique learning experience for the student. Independent study requires the teacher to allow the student to become the teacher. The teacher becomes a ‘guide on the side’ as opposed to a ‘sage on the stage’. It is a job of equal importance, but of a different angle requiring different functions. The teacher is an explainer of direction rather than a lecturer, an encourager rather than a demander, and a clarifier rather than a seeing-eye dog. It is not a time for rest and relaxation. If anything, the teacher must be more vigilant and more available for help than ever. Constant assessment of progress by conferring with the learner and by viewing his work is extremely important. Do not permit too many students to work on the same type of project. Clearly specified objectives should be stated at the outset of the project. Determine the availability of resources before beginning this strategy. Allow sufficient time to complete the project, but do not allow the project to continue on endlessly. Do not permit students to embark on studies, which are not appropriate to class instruction. Permitting the students to share the results of their study with the rest of the class can add a dimension to the activity. Advantages • Individual students can work in an area of need, for example, brighter students can extend their learning while slower students can focus on an area of deficiency. • Students are more motivated when they are studying something they have selected and in which they have a special interest. • Individual students assume more responsibility for learning and the presenting of their projects or reports assist the slower students to gain new insights into the study topic. • Students gain insights into ‘how’ to learn. • Independent study fosters self-learning skills and attitudes. Disadvantages • There is usually a lack of flexible schedules necessary to permit students and teachers to do true independent study. • A shortage of related materials or other resources necessary to carry out the study may restrict independent work. • The lack of research skills on the part of student and the teacher may hinder completion of the project strategy. • The teacher must maintain a constant check of student progress where independent study programmes are in operation. • Large amounts of time may be needed by the teacher to help each student to individualise a programme. • Evaluation is more difficult.

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Learning packets Learning packets are sets of self-contained learning materials assembled for the purpose of teaching a single concept or idea. They are generally structured for individual use and are most effectively used in schools with flexible curricula, although they are not limited to these settings. The unit packet consists of a series of sequential learning activities leading to the achievement of desired outcomes by the learners. Components of the learning packets may include teacher directions, student instructions, pre-test, major and sub-concepts, behavioural objectives, assorted strategies and content, student self-assessment, post-test, research activities, independent resources and study materials. The learning packet is designed to help students achieve at their own best learning rate. The teacher is a resource person available to offer assistance as the student pursues the learning content of the instructional package. Because the unit is designed for individual use, a series of units may be developed on a single topic area. Each may be of increasing difficulty requiring the learner to device new skills, techniques and greater knowledge. Encouragement and positive reinforcement are important to the success of this strategy. Take the time to work through the unit prior to classroom use to be sure it is complete and accurate. Plan well in advance to see that all necessary materials and resources are available. Follow the directions for teachers within the learning packets. Establish a definite time period for the completion of the unit of learning. Relate the learning packet to the curriculum. Do not allow it to become isolated from learning goals. Advantages • Students are able to pursue special interest areas yet work within the confines of the total curriculum. • Learning takes place in a sequential order. • Materials in learning packets can be developed for all levels of learning. • Any discipline can be the subject of learning packet. • Learning packets may be exchanged both within the school and with other schools. • The learning packet is well planned from start to finish. • Using the pre-test and post-test, the teacher is able to immediately evaluate the amount of learning that has taken place. • Teachers are placed in the role of facilitators of learning rather than directors of learning. Disadvantages • Unit packets are time consuming to develop. • The learning packet requires an abundance of resource materials in order to complete the total project. • Students may tend get bored with lengthy learning units. • Students may not have the maturity to work independently.

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Programmed learning (Instruction) Auto-instruction and automated teaching are synonyms for programmed instruction. Machine teaching is one type of programmed instruction. One method of programming I variously termed linear, fixed sequence, straight line or extrinsic. In such an approach, the units of content are designed in small sequential steps, which must be completed in the pre-arranged order. The other basic method of programming is called non-linear, branching, or intrinsic. In this approach, the student responds to a presented step, or frame. The next frame the student faces depends upon his response. If correct, the student goes on to a new exercise. If incorrect, the student may be referred to remedial exercises. A course with programmed instruction as the sole method of learning can be boring and tedious, but properly used on a once in a while basis it can be fun and provides variety. It is especially useful in science and mathematics and materials can be found or constructed for all learner levels whether slow, average, or gifted. Materials can be bought, teacher-made, student-made, borrowed or copied. They can be reused (if separate answer sheets are dittoed) year after year and rarely need updating as they usually cover basic concepts. Begin utilising programme for a unit of content, then evaluate the experience to decide upon further use. Programmed instruction is usually most effective when used ‘some of the time’ rather than ‘all of the time’. Advantages • Programmed learning saves the teacher a considerable amount of time. • The time saved can be applied to individuals or groups as either remedial or higher intellectual learning. • It is effective for remedial teaching, drill and practice, as well as enrichment. • The learner is actively responding at all times to the programme. • The student progresses at his own rate and level of achievement. • The success and reinforcement provides motivation to the learner. • Students can study on their own and that too effectively. • The student, through immediate feedback, is aware of the degree of progress being made. Disadvantage • Good programmes are hard to identify. • Writing programmes is a very difficult process which causes teachers generally rely on commercial programmes. • Programmed instruction is very applicable to affective or psychomotor learning. • The cost of the materials can be prohibitive.

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Student tutorial The student tutorial approach utilises pupils as monitors (tutors) who first learn from a teacher and then teach small groups or individual fellow students (tutees). Traditionally the approach has been concerned only with the learning of the tutees. However, the approach also offers a unique learning experience for the student tutors and should be considered as a vital portion of the approach. The use of students tutoring other students has proven to be a valuable tool for teachers in a countless number of situations. It enables the teacher to provide additional instruction to those pupils having difficulty while continuing to maintain an ongoing programme with other students in the classroom. It may be considered a form of behavioural modification due to the selection process used to designate tutors and tutees. The good student is rewarded by being assigned or appointed as a tutor. The tutee is rewarded by being selected for additional assistance on the basis of need, acceptable behaviour, and a proven desire to additional help. Other sub-strategies can play an important part in the student tutorial programme. They may have only a minor role when used by the tutors but nevertheless are valid points to consider. Discussion, demonstration, drill, questioning and problem solving are a few of the strategies that enter into the student tutorial method. The mere fact that a peer is aiding the slow student may make the difference to the success or failure of the tutee in gaining knowledge and assurance that he can do acceptable schoolwork, which will enable him to be a part of the total classroom activities. Advantages • The tutor learns more since teaching is an excellent learning situation. • Since the tutor is nearer the age, skill and achievement level of the tutee than is the teacher, the tutor can better understand the tutee’s problems. • The student tutorial system spreads the talents and knowledge of the teacher. • The use of tutors assures all students of individual attention. • The student tutorial approach provides an economic use of time. • The tutor can develop responsible behaviour as well as gain leadership experience. • The student tutorial provides a challenging learning experience for the faster students in class. • Advanced students can many times be paired up with remedial students and aid in eliminating troublesome ‘learning gaps’. Disadvantages • Since tutors and tutees are classmates, tutees often resent being taught by their peers. • The tutor is not a teacher and is very limited in instructional skills. • Since the tutor usually lacks the teacher’s depth of knowledge, the use of tutors may lead to memorisation transmission only. • The use of student tutors removes the teacher from the actual instruction of most of the students. • The only feedback the teacher receives is through the tutor and may be distorted. • Since the teacher is not present in all the tutorial sessions, behaviour problems are apt to arise.

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Chapter 4 STRATEGIES FOR SMALL GROUPS

Case study The case study strategy (or case method) is a teaching approach, which requires the student to participate actively in problem situations, which may be hypothetical or real. He receives a case, a report containing pertinent data, analyses the data, evaluates the nature of the problem, decides upon applicable principles, and finally recommends a solution or a course of action. The case study method is another approach to individualising the learning situation. Through the use of hypothetical or real situations, the student has the opportunity to use problem-solving approaches that are meaningful and understandable. It requires the student to collect the data, analyse it and make suggestions or recommendations for decision-making. The project may be simple in the beginning and lead to the more complex as the student gains experiences to these learning processes. Using the case study strategy can, if properly directed, assist in the solving of school or community problems. The community sees the student working on topics that are of wide interest in the community and thus have greater respect for the educational programmes at the local school. It further provides an opportunity to narrow the generous gap. It is not a strategy to be used indiscriminately. It requires careful planning, specific objectives, clearly specified guidelines and a precise means of evaluation. The teacher can and must expect to be available for individual assistance and ensure that materials, equipment and resources are readily available to the students. Cases should be explicitly and unambiguously written. They should fit the level of the students in terms of maturity and problem solving skills. Students should be presented with similar cases prior to permitting the students to select their own cases. A check must be made to insure that materials and resources dealing with the case are available. Periodically check on students to insure they are progressing in a desirable

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direction. Attempt to include other strategies such as role-playing, simulation, interview and questioning within the structure of the case study. Advantages • The case study approach can provide for individual differences among students. • Because the student is involved in a problem situation, interest and motivation are generally high. • Active student involvement insures better retention of content. • The case study approach develops responsibility on the part of the learner. • Students are invited to develop problem-solving skills in order to arrive at a conclusion to the case. • Students deal with content on a high cognitive level. • Materials and resources other than the textbook are used in considering the case. Disadvantages • The case study approach can be time consuming. • Good case studies are difficult fir the teacher to develop in a manageable procedure for the normal size class. • Resources and materials needed to successfully pursue the case study are often not available. • The teacher must be well prepared for the topic of the study. • Cases developed by the students are often controversial and difficult for the teacher to manage.

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Community resources Basically, community resources include any activity outside the school, which has educational use. The teacher can use people, places and things found in the community to facilitate learning. The resource, although located outside the school building, may be brought to the school or the class may go to the site to carry out a planned activity. Often an elder citizen of the community can enhance the study of history or biology, art, folk dancing and literature. Normally a community resource is considered to be to be something away from the school to visit, but in many instances it means bringing a person or exhibit to the school. It is a tool that can provide new learning experiences to the class and assist the teacher in making lessons more meaningful with lasting effects. Community resources, like all other teaching strategies, require advance consideration, study and preparation before it can become a meaningful tool. Begin early to note places of interest that will enhance the lesson. Make notes regarding the cost, time to tour or complete the activity. Note down the names of key individuals for contacts and scheduling. Be knowledgeable of the procedures and requirements within the school for making use of community resources. Have the objectives for using the resource firmly in mind to make the lesson meaningful. Advantages • The use of community resources can bring the school and community closer together. • It facilitates more practical learning and better retention of learning. • Interaction between the school and community enables the student to develop a broader understanding of the community. • The use of the community resources adds excitement to the subject, thus increasing motivation for learning. • Community resources are applicable to all types of learning: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. • Students can develop social skills. • Students can assist in the selection of community resources as a decision making experience. • These activities are inexpensive and within the budget of most schools. Disadvantages • Specific community resources, which are available, are sometime difficult to locate and schedule. • Teachers have to obtain prior administrative and parental approval. • People used as community resources often do not know how to transfer their knowledge and information to students. • Field trips are often over looked due to factors such as student safety, control, expense and teacher liability. • Since the teacher is dependent on agents of the community, last minute cancellations often occur leaving the teacher stranded.

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Field study (trip) Your regular classroom may not be the best area available to you for a particular activity on study. You and the class must move outside the confines of that room to the school grounds, the immediate community, or some other reachable place, and do your investigations at this site. This extra-class session is known as a field trip, and is a most valuable activity to consider for your programme. The field study is a trip arranged by the school and undertaken for educational purposes, in which students go to places where the materials of instruction may be observed and studied directly to their functional settings. A sub-strategy of the community resources strategy, field studies are generally made to points of instructional interest such as factories, public utilities, museums, libraries, art galleries, or government institutions. One of the longstanding major criticisms of education has been its sponsorship of cloistered, unrealistic learning of irrelevant facts. Field study is a means of overcoming this criticism in part. It provides opportunity for students to see the ‘real world’ in action, and, thereby, widens their attitudinal, social, and academic horizons. Careful planning and pre-visitation to the site by the teacher is essential if the experience is to be useful and valuable to students. Students should receive some definite ‘coaching’ in observation skills and an outline of objectives and purposes prior to the field trip. Follow up activities including discussion, writing short essays, drawing pictures, or model making will ensure that retention of the objectives is accomplished. Field study, properly carried out, is a major source of enrichment for learners. Make sure the field trip is of educational value in that it relates directly to what is being taught in the classroom. Plan the trip by visiting the site and talking with the people. Prepare the by relating the trip to what is being studied and what they might observe. At the site provide for adequate supervision. Upon return to the classroom, review and summarise what was learned at the field trip. Develop a means of evaluation for pupils as well as the place visited in order to assist in planning future trips. Advantages • Field studies provide the student with interesting, first hand experiences. • A common experience is provided for students, which can serve as a basis for other learning activities. • Students become more aware of their environment. • Field studies can add greatly to school-community relationships. • What is learned should have great impact due to the multi-sensory nature of the experience. • Field studies extend classroom learning through reality. Disadvantages • Discipline can easily become a problem. • Administrative procedures to organise field trips are often so complicated that they discourage taking them. • Transportation arrangements are often difficulty or costly. • When a teacher has students for only one period a day, it is difficult to make arrangements in order to prevent conflicts with other classes.

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Interest centres (Subject learning centres) Establishing an interest centred classroom involves actual separation of the physical space into stations of various academic areas. In an elementary and middle school classroom, one might have a science centre, a language centre, a math centre, a social science centre, an art centre, etc. Each centre has abundant materials and equipment pertaining to that particular subject. Interest centre teaching can be a good blessing. It individualising learning, makes students more responsible for their own time, encourages communication and eliminates many motivational problems. It also makes progress reporting easier and meaningful. With proper introduction and monitoring the teacher will find interest centre teaching may be the panacea for which she has been searching. The teacher must secure an abundance of materials and some equipment pertinent to each centre well in advance of the beginning of the year. The type and quantity of materials depends on the objectives for each centre. On request, you may acquire from business houses, factories, government institutions, museums, zoos, art galleries, hospitals and individuals. Resource people are a valuable asset to an interest centred classroom. Just as with materials, it is amazing how many experts are eager to donate their time and energy to work with students. Do not fail to utilise some students’ parents and acquaintances as valuable resources. Administration and parents should be kept aware and consulted during the planning and programme operation. Each student should have a folder kept in a central file where he logs his activities and achievements. Care should be taken that accurate and detailed records are kept, otherwise evaluation becomes impossible. Another possibility for evaluation is to require each student to exhibit some level of individual proficiency on small quizzes or written exercises prepared over the material. Many other strategies and sub-strategies can operate effectively within the interest centred classroom – projects, independent study, research, student tutorial, fieldtrips, learning packets, etc. Advantages • Interest centres provide for individualised learning within constraints of subject matter requirements. • Interest centres allow students to devote more time to the subjects, which are personally interesting. • The teacher is free to move about from centre to centre assisting students, • Students have the opportunity to bring their own materials with which to work. • Resource people in each interest area can be brought in easily to work with a small group of students. • Students are more responsible for their own learning activities. Disadvantages • The need for varied materials to each centre may be a constraint. • A great deal of preparation of environment, materials, and students is required. • Record keeping of student achievement is difficult. • Students may be lacking in self-motivation, especially if they have not had prior independent work. • The teacher needs a good command of all subject matter.

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Project The project method is a teaching in which students individually or in-groups accept an assignment to gather and integrate data relative to some problem and are then free to fulfil the requirements independently of the teacher, who furnishes help only when necessary. The project approach may be referred to as self-directed study. This method requires teaching by units rather than by pages. The decision as to the nature of the project can be assigned by the teacher, or it can evolve from class discussions. Projects are usually done by individuals and many times take the form of a model or presentation as the final product. If the project involves in-depth work, it becomes research. Well-known examples of projects are seen at science fairs. Sometimes projects are creative, and, many times, are a duplicate of something already done. Projects give students the opportunity to work independently and to gain in-depth knowledge of a specific area. Some projects sometimes take the form of a large-scale city map, play production, jury trial, large model construction, etc. The advantages of the group projects are that students must agree on division of labour, learn to lead or follow, and give and take criticism among themselves, as well as learn together about specific subject matter. Great care must be taken to the selection of the project. Students should be helped in finding projects, which have meaning for them but which are also meaningful in terms of the goals of the subject. Be sure the subject is specifically defined and understood by the students involved. Provide enough supervision to ensure maximum progress, but not so much as to rob students of meaningful learning experiences. Provide an opportunity to utilise community resources. Advantages • The project approach covers all levels of the cognitive and affective domains. • Pupils can be involved in planning the project that increases interest and motivation. • Emphasis is placed upon doing by the student. • The project method develops student responsibility and initiative. • The student develops greater understanding of ‘how’ to learn. Disadvantages • Projects are very time consuming. • Students, due to academic immaturity, often make many errors. • Often the materials and resources needed to do an effective project are not available. • Students often get sidetracked or go off on a tangent. • Helpful teacher feedback usually is not possible until it is too late.

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Problem solving The name problem solving is assigned to learning approaches built upon the scientific method of inquiry. These approaches are built upon John Dewey’s five steps of general problem solving. These steps are: (1) defining the problem, (2) formulating tentative hypotheses, (3) collecting, evaluating, organising and interpreting data, (4) reaching conclusions, and (5) testing these conclusions. For example, a social studies class might become concerned about what will happen to the dictatorship when a dictator dies? The class members discuss various alternatives and then finally state their hypothesis: When a dictator dies, the dictatorship ends. Next, they would select, evaluate, organise and interpret data. They would study dictators throughout history and what happened to the dictatorship upon the death of the dictator. The data could either support or deny the hypothesis. Next a conclusion would be reached regarding what happens to the dictatorship when the dictator dies. The degree to which the hypothesis is supported or denied by the evidence determines the conclusion. Expose the student to a number of similar problems. The problems presented must fit the maturation and skill levels of the student. Assist pupils in defining and delimiting the problem to be studied. Check for sufficient resources and materials to be available for student use. Provide direction and guidance when necessary, taking care not to overdo it. Problem solving moves the mind to some of its highest cognitive functions: analysing, generalising, and synthesising. This alone justifies it as one of the most valuable of all strategies. An added benefit in utilising this strategy is that students become adept at digging up information and cross checking its validity with other resources. Advantages • Because the student has been actively involved, comprehension and retention should be of longer duration. • Problem solving provides the student with a model to apply to problem that may be faced in the future. • Problem solving involves cognitive and affective learning. • Problem solving develops responsibility in the learner. • Interest in learning and motivation are increased with the use of problem solving. • Students learn how to think independently in reaching conclusions. • Problem solving provides the opportunity for students to learn from failure without severe hardships. Disadvantages • Materials and resources needed for problem solving often are not available to the students. • Problem solving is time consuming. • Students are often too immature to really recognise problem of social significance. • Evaluation of learning is difficult.

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Student research The research approach in teaching is defined as ‘an instructional procedure, the desired outcomes of which are achieved by setting up situations in such a form that the student gathers and organises information, draws his own conclusions on the basis of data, and compares his results with those obtained by other investigators’. The student may conduct this research in a laboratory situation or a nonlaboratory situation or a combination of both. The non-laboratory research is usually some type of library resource. The classroom focus of student research can be either upon the knowledge gained, upon the research skills and processes involved, or both. Research is highly interesting to some students, and a total bore for others. Certain students thrive on the independence, the logicality and definity of this type of individual study. But it is not for everyone. A teacher must spend adequate preparatory time with the student in the foundations of research: (1) defining the problem, (2) gathering and compiling data, and (3) posing tentative solutions, etc. A student doing research needs input, and the flexibility to make contacts necessary for such input. This might be library time or first-hand gathering of information from local and state agencies. The rewards of properly supervised and earnest carrying out of student research can be great: thought organisation, investment, increased motivation, activism, in-depth knowledge of a specific area, and feeling of accomplishment. Decide beforehand whether the purpose of the research is the knowledge learned or the research process or both, and so informed the students. Base the type of research upon the students’ level of research sophistication. Be sure the necessary materials, facilities and equipment for research are available. Make certain the topics to be researched are well defined and understood by the student. Build in checks or student progress reports to ensure the direction of the research. Spend time preparing students by helping them develop research skills before embarking upon a research project. Provide students with opportunities to share their findings with peers. Advantages • Student research lets the student understand how a researcher in a particular field works. • Research by students prepares the students to direct their own learning in the future when faced with a new problem. • Research can provide motivation as the student actively seeks answers. • In using research, students must make judgements, reach conclusions, and report the findings. • By conducting research, student not only learns content but also develops various research skills, and a sense of responsibility. Disadvantages • Research can be very time consuming. • Research may require more materials and equipment than are available. • Students, although initially motivated, may lose interest if the research leads up blind alleys (topic too difficult, boring, or the lengthy). • Due to immaturity or limited subject matter comprehension, students may often have difficulty judging the importance of data acquired through research.

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Chapter 5 STRATEGIES FOR LARGER GROUPS Observation Observation is probably more of a teacher skill than a strategy. However, its importance is so crucial to effective utilisation of other strategies and it is so intricately intertwined with all of them, that it becomes almost imperative to treat it as a ‘pure form’ strategy. An ‘observer’ is usually thought of as an unobtrusive person sitting in the corner passively watching students. It is a rare teacher who has the luxurious opportunity to observe his own students performed. Therefore, we shall define observation as ‘astute perception by the teacher of the multiply–faceted student behaviour, attitudes, and learning problems while in the midst of a dynamic classroom situation.’ In other words, the teacher should be aware of ‘what is happening ‘. To be constantly cognisant of what is transpiring through out the class is not an easy task. It is especially difficult for those teachers who are in the habit of seeing ‘the group’ rather than individual that composes the group. It is of utmost importance to be ‘omnisciently observant’, as it is the major and only immediate way to learn of student reactions to the general environment and particular learning segments. Observation is perception. Accurate perception is invaluable to the proficient teacher. It might be the fundamental strategy underlying effective utilisation of all other strategies. How else is a teacher to judge when and how to plug indifferent strategies if he is not gaining accurate input on student needs and desires? Most of us are fairly poor observers. The teacher is supposed to reinforce students towards progress, which motivates the teacher to improve. Usually not principals or pay checks. It is purely on the teacher’s shoulders to be mature and professional enough to take a step and enjoy the feeling of ‘doing better’. Observation, if practised can be one of the most rewarding steps ever taken.

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The teacher should plan on the necessary self-training in observation skills. A daily skill goal should be established and carried out in all contacts with students. Practice at looking for particular traits or behaviours eventually sharpen the teacher’s observation powers beyond belief. The teacher’s eye becomes so discerning that a mountain of information can be compiled with a few glances around the classroom. Observations should be as objective as possible. Until we have the ability to enter other peoples’ minds to see actually why they do the things they do, we must restrict our descriptions to observable behaviour. Never neglect your built-in ‘environmental thermostat’. Despite looking for particular behaviours, you must constantly attune art of your observation powers to the classroom atmosphere. Advantages • Through observation much can be learned concerning student physiological problems (hearing, vision, speech, co-ordination, bodily defects, etc.) and needs (diet supplements, hygiene care, clothing, etc.). • Observation yields a great deal of information about the learner’s socio-emotional development. • Observation provides immediate information and feedback; where as, testing or diagnostics lesson the effect of problem-attention due to the time-delay. Many potential learning problems can be eliminated by prompt action ultimately saving a great deal of energy and discomfort on the part of both teacher and student. • Keen observations eliminate many discipline problems before they occur. • As the teacher becomes increasingly aware of the effects of various strategies in different situations (and alters teaching approaches on the basis of that information) he becomes a constantly self-improving professional always seeking a better way. Disadvantages • It is difficult to become a sharp observer. It requires determined practise of separating oneself into two people—a person ‘teaching’ (demonstrating, lecturing, utilising AV material, passing out papers, etc.) and a person ‘observing’ (alert to physiological, socio-emotional, learning, and behavioural aspects). • There is a tendency to ‘play favourites’, and observe only children who are pleasing to watch. • There is a tendency to watch for only negative occurrences, there by falling to notice accentuate positive traits being exhibited. • The inclination is to be solely on the alert for particular and thus fail to sense the total classroom atmosphere.

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Demonstration Demonstration is the process wherein one person does something in the presence of others in order to show them how to do it or to illustrate a principle. Demonstration utilises both auditory and visual means of communication. One of the greatest benefits of demonstration is showing how something is accomplished properly or expertly. Naturally, then, the demonstration should be properly prepared to ensure that this goal is achieved. A good demonstration inspires, poor one defeats. Demonstration is especially useful in the arts, music, science, mathematics, and athletics. It is commonly used in conjunction with a short explanatory lecture. Spend the necessary time to plan and develop the needed materials for the demonstration. Practice or rehearse the demonstration in its entirety with an eye on time limitations. When it is time to put on the demonstration make sure all materials are at hand. Make sure seating arrangements are such that the audience can see and hear. Utilise questions during the demonstration to provide feedback. At the conclusion of the demonstration, conduct a brief review of the steps involved or a short summary of what has happened. If feasible, have a student or two to replicate the demonstration. Advantages • Demonstration adds to learning by giving students the opportunity to see and hear what is actually happening. • Demonstration can be used to illustrate ideas, principles and concepts for which words are inadequate. • Good demonstrations hold the learner’s attention. • Demonstrations can be financially economical since only the demonstrator needs materials. • Good demonstrations set performance standards. • Demonstration is especially beneficial in the areas of skills. • Demonstration is an excellent technique for utilising community resource persons, which in tern is good for public relations. Disadvantages • Demonstration requires much planning and preparation by the demonstrator. • A demonstration can be ineffective if the demonstrator only ‘shows and tells’ without feedback. • If the audio portion of the demonstration does not fit the visual portion it can confuse the student. • Demonstration can lead to imitation without understanding. • Demonstration is difficult to use with affective and higher level cognitive learning.

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Discussion Discussion is an activity in which people talk together in order to share information about a topic or problem or to seek a possible solution. It is an organised talk and not purposeless conversation. It is not casual but skilfully structured. Discussion to develop and share ideas is a dynamic, universal activity. It is a means for increasing student involvement. During discussion the active listener is also a truly participant. Discussion may be implemented in a variety of ways. The types of discussion available to the teacher include whole-class discussions, debates, panels, buzz-sessions, and forums. Each type has its own characteristics. The whole class discussion is the type generally referred to when teachers employ the discussion method. The teacher simply leads an informal discussion involving the class as a whole. The teacher, as the director of the discussion, asks questions, clarifies Students’ comments, and makes tentative summaries to help students achieve understanding of the topic. Debate is generally used in the classroom as a small-group technique with a small number of students teamed on either side of an issue; each side is given a specific amount of time to present its side of the issue. Upon conclusion of the debate, the teacher can enter into a whole-class discussion on the issue. In utilising panels, the teacher can divide the class into groups of three to six students. The students comprising the panel then organise themselves, research the topic, discuss their data, and present their findings that lead into a whole-class discussion. In buzz sessions, students are placed in small groups for a specific amount of time to discuss a given issue or topic. Reports of the results of the various buzz groups are then presented to the entire class, which should stimulate whole-class discussion. The forum is a specific discussion type in which a small number of students present information to the large group. Upon the conclusion of the presentation, the presenters then solicit questions on the topic from the audience. Each of the types presented can be utilised in either a modified form or in combination with each other. Whatever the case, teachers should properly use the approach in terms of its inherent characteristics. Discussion is a most important strategy on a number of levels. It does involve the coverage of academics. It involves a sharing of ideas between students, rather than an osmotic process from teacher to student. It is schooling in social interaction, courtesy, leadership/fellowship, thought organisation, and conversation. This is the preparation for students to become proficient speakers/listeners and worthwhile contributing citizens – a goal found in every school philosophy. Discussion does demand erstwhile supervision and guidance by the teacher. The teacher must be prepared and must be familiar with the content to be considered the characteristics of group activity, and the materials and resources available to the students. The student must be prepared. In order to insure that the discussion reaches a level higher than a ‘sharing of ignorance’, the teacher must plan sufficient learning activities prior to the discussion. The topics of discussion should be properly stated. Primarily, the topic should be stated as an issue to polarise viewpoints. Secondly, the words used to phrase the issue should be terms familiar to the students. Finally the topic itself should be one which has some degree of personal relevance for the students.

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In introducing the subject matter to be discussed, the question or issue should be presented in very specific, well defined terms to the students. In fact, writing the topic on the board or in handout material is well worth the effort. The teacher serves as a moderator of the discussion while in progress. The moderator clarifies the concepts, makes tentative summaries, states conclusions, and keeps the discussion on track. The discussion has been in vain if the students are unaware of the conclusions reached, position taken on the issue, or processes undergone. Look for follow up activities. Successful discussions will lead naturally into follow up activities, which will enhance the student learning. Student discussion should not be evaluated for grading purposes. This is the only way to encourage students to freely and honestly contribute to the discussion. Advantages • Discussion techniques get at attitude development. By engaging in meaningful discussion with fellow students, a given student finds his own values and beliefs challenged. Such a finding can lead to a significant attitudinal change on the part of the student. • It develops ‘discussion’ skills. • It aids the student in the development of a positive self-concept. • Discussion has a positive effect upon the mental activity of the student. • Careful observation of the behaviour of students in-group activities provide the teacher with much information related to the social, psychological, emotional, and skill development of the student. Disadvantages • Discussion activities are usually more time consuming than more direct approaches. • Discussion often break down, lag, or become a rambling, and meaningless. • In discussion, some students may never participate while a few may tend to dominate. • It is possible that a topic will be such that the students get carried away. • Teachers often become frustrated because discussion may fail to lead to a conclusion. • There is a problem of evaluating the student.

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Lecture The lecture is the traditional method of teaching wherein lecturer transmits information in an autocratic fashion to passive student listeners. In the pure form, students have no opportunity to ask questions or offer comments during the lecture. It is the oldest form of teaching, and one of the most ineffective because it is overused, abused and misused. Lectures should be short, sweet, and to the point when they are necessary. Generally speaking, lectures are ineffective because they place a learner in a very passive posture. This lack of activity is extremely conducive to boredom, daydreaming and sometimes create discipline problems. Lecture assumes that the lecturer knows all and the student is ignorant, and this automatically turns off some listeners. The degree to which this happens is determined to some extent by the attitude of the lecturer while making the presentation. The lecture is most effective in clarifying or demonstrating a procedure or skill. Know the overall goals and specific objectives while planning the lecture. Know the audience. What are their specifics needs and interests? Goals should mesh with these needs and interests to eliminate the boredom and to help the students grow. The lecture should be well organised so that the logic is as perceivable as possible. This includes planning of methodology, utilisation of equipment, demonstration materials, handouts, etc. Vary the lecture by utilising interest arousing aids such as pictures, models and other visuals. The chalkboard serves as a useful tool for outlining or emphasising important points. Avoid monotonous type of lecturing by varying voice stress and intensity. Try to stir students’ imagination by painting with vivid word pictures. Avoid pure lecture by utilising questions during the lecture. Two kinds of questions may be used: (1) the kinds you ask – poise – and answer yourself (rhetorical) and (2) the kind you expect student to answer. Both are attention getters and one has added benefit of requiring mental answer-search on the part of the students as well as feedback mechanism to enable the lecturer to measure audience absorption. Always allow ample opportunity for questions to come from the students. Watch the audience. Their actions (attentions) will reveal the effectiveness of the lecture. Revise lecture approach on the basis of the feedback. Advantages • The lecture is most useful in introducing a new topic of study or presenting certain back ground material that students need for preparation of further study. • Lecture permits a large audience to receive quick and useful information. • Lecture provides students with an organised perspective of the content to be considered. • Lecture provides practice for the students in learning to develop note-taking skills. Disadvantages • Lengthy or overly frequent lectures can easily lead to boredom. • The lecture has difficulty in assessing impact on the audience and whether needs and interests are being met. • Individuals in the group are not permitted to ask questions, thus eliminating the feedback leading to miscommunication.

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• • •

Detailed and factual information is difficult to ‘communicate’ or ‘relate’ in such a setting. Affective (attitudes) learning seldom occurs due to a lecture. Students seldom achieve higher level cognitive learning since they do not actively work with the information being considered.

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Questioning Questioning, sometimes referred to as the question – and – answer method, is defined as a method both of instruction and of oral testing based on the use of questions to be answered by the pupils. ` An effective question-asked is as beautiful to watch (listen to) as a fencer. He knows when and what to ask. His questions demand thinking, not just factual recall. It takes a certain measure ego-elimination on the part of the teacher to relinquish the desire to furnish all the answers and allow the students to use their own cognitive abilities. Good questioning techniques aid and stimulate the listener to reason, evaluate and even create. Inspiration is given by the teacher for the student to move beyond memorising thought function to higher levels of thinking. Whatever may the purpose of the questions to be asked by the teacher, the responsibility of the teacher is to first plan properly and then to execute effectively. In planning, the teacher should: 1. Decide upon the purposes of the questions to be used. 2. Structure in advance, the more difficult types of questions to be used. It is desirable to take the time to write out such questions on note cards or the margin of the text. 3. If questions are to be used for either review or pre-assessment purposes, be sure to randomly sample class responses. 4. Use ’who’. ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘where’ questions to check information possessed by students. For higher thought levels, use ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions. 5. Push student’s responses to ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions to higher levels of thought by asking for more explanation. 6. When using questions with individuals, state the question, pause, then call on a student to answer. This leads all students to listen to the question. The pause provides time to think – respect that period of silence. 7. Summarise complicated or ambiguous answers to questions. 8. Be reasonably lavish in the use of ‘good’ or other words of praise to students who give correct answers. Avoid asking any negative comments after an incorrect answer, as it is the surest way to insure low response on future questioning. What types of questions are to be asked? Although you might not be able to pre-plan all your questions, all the questions you ask should reflect your awareness of the basics of question construction. 1. Questions should be concise. 2. Some questions should be used that require thought and an extended answer. 3. A question should not suggest its own answer. 4. Questions should not suggest a ‘right’ answer. 5. Questions should not be worded so as to call for a yes or no answer. 6. Students should not be required to participate in a guessing game to find out what your answer is. 7. The vocabulary you use should be clear to the students. 8. The contrast between your experience background and that of your students must be considered.

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9. Every question should carry the lesson forward. 10. Design questions that differ in their order of difficulty. How can questions be presented effectively? 1. Ask the question first, and then select the person to answer it. 2. If you ask a question requiring some thought then provide the time for students to formulate and phrase an adequate response. 3. If several partial answers are given, a student might be asked to summarise those responses. 4. Try to involve as many of your students in a lesson as possible. 5. A student who gives good answer should be complimented. 6. Bring non-volunteers (non-participants) into the lesson by learning about their hobbies, interests, school activities, athletic interests. 7. Do not discourage volunteering. 8. Maintain a balance between calling on volunteers and non-volunteers. 9. There should be no predictable system for calling on students. 10. Avoid repeating answers or questions. 11. Students should always be expected to evaluate the responses made in class. 12. Constantly listen to your own questions with the same critical listening ability you wish to instil in your students. Classification of questions There are six levels of questions. The following table shows the lower to higher levels of students’ thinking skills. Questions must be adjusted to suit the needs of the students. It is found that different levels of questions are effective, depending upon the learner and the content of the lesson. Certain lessons require more recall, whereas other lessons require more thought.

LOWERLEVEL THINKING

HIGHER-

QUESTION TYPE

STUDENT BEHAVIOUR

EXAMPLE QUESTIONS

Knowledge

Recall Recite

What (Who, When, Where, Why) are the southern states? Define photosynthesis

Comprehension

Describe Summarise

What is the main idea? How is the major character portrayed?

Application

Solve Show

What is the latitude of New Delhi? Sarla has one rupee, how many 15 paise stamps can she buy?

Analysis

Infer Compare

What does this paragraph tell us about the author’s life? How are plants and animals alike/different?

Synthesis

Create

What is a good title for this

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Predict Evaluation

Judge Choose

painting? How can we help the poor? Do you believe in capital punishment? Which soft drink is best?

The classification of questions to a higher level is useful for promoting various kinds of thinking. Questions do not always fit easily into these designated levels. Within each lesson, teachers need to plan a sequence for the types of questions they ask. This sequence illuminates questions that are used to initiate, extend, and close interaction. Advantages • Correctly asked questions serves the following purposes: a) Stimulate analytical thought. b) Diagnose student difficulties. c) Determine progress toward specific goals. d) Motivate students. e) Clarify and expand concepts. f) Encourage new appreciation and attitudes. g) Give specific direction to thinking. h) Relate cause to effect. i) Encourage student self-evaluation. j) Encourage the application of concepts. • Questions may be organised to serve the purpose of measuring learning on the levels of information, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis or evaluation. • Questions can serve as a means of feedback for the teacher in understanding an individual student and/or the whole class. • Questions are sometimes used as a control device and students are more apt to pay attention to what is going on in class. Disadvantages • Questioning is a slower process in dealing with information than the lecture. • It is difficult to design certain types of questions to measure analysis, synthesis, and evaluation rather than to measure factual learning. • Students feel encouraged memorising, neglecting higher levels of learning. • Several incorrectly answered questions often prompt teachers to feel more time should be spent lecturing than questioning.

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Role-playing Role-playing is an instructional technique involving a portrayal (acting out) of a situation, condition, or circumstances by selected members of learning group. The situation to which the person responds may be either structured or unstructured. A roleplay has a unique value in that it is the only strategy that gets the student into another ‘identity’, thus allowing him an opportunity to perceive how others might feel, think and act. This is especially useful in helping students understand the circumstances of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Another valid use of role-playing is in a problem-solving situation where different roles are placed in conflict with each other. This is utilised well in teacher education preparation classes where scenes such as problem child – parent – teacher, or principal – teacher – angry parent, can be experienced. It is highly recommended that the roleplayers thoroughly understand their role and its limits and the situation of the scene prior to enactment. This eliminates straying or turning a learning situation into a comedy. Role-playing provides learners with opportunities to become acquainted with the perceptions of people other than themselves. This process involves both cognitive and attitudinal learning. Role-playing promotes tolerance and acceptance of diverse viewpoints likely to differ from their own. Because of the active participation demanded of learners in role-playing, the strategy frequently is highly motivating for learners. The role-playing strategy develops according to the following sequence of events: 1. Develop the scenario. 2. Learn role descriptions. 3. Assign roles and assure internalisation. 4. Conduct activity phase. 5. Conduct debriefing session. Design the situations and roles in sufficient detail in advance. Define roles in terms of the situation. The actors should be given a short time to get their thoughts together. The class members who are to observe should take notes and be instructed to what to look for. Upon completion of the activity evaluation of the students’ performance should take place. Certain portions of the activity may be improved with re-enactment. An atmosphere of freedom and security must exist in the classroom. Advantages • In role-playing the student expressing feelings and attitudes. • This method provides the student with the opportunity to ‘feel’ the situation rather than merely intellectualise about it. • The student is activated. • Students are being prepared for actual situations to be faced. • How students fit into their role gives an indication of their knowledge of the situation. • Role-playing can develop social skills. • Affective learning can be taught and/or effectively evaluated. • A system of communication based on action rather than words is used. Disadvantages • Students sometimes emphasise performance over the intended lesson. • Role-playing is time consuming.

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• • • •

Some students are unable to identify with the characters or situation. Those students with talent often monopolise the situation. Students often ‘carried away’ in their roles. Playing roles demands some imagination on the part of the group.

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Simulation gaming Simulation is an elaborate type of role-playing, gaming, and socio-drama in which students stimulate models of real-life situations. It invites participants to develop decision-making competencies while striving for established objectives, usually using competition between two teams. Simulation games are produced by commercial enterprises, but these can be designed by the classroom teacher. Generally, the teacher devises rules and objectives to the game and provides roles for various students. The greatest thing going for the stimulation gaming strategy is its intrinsic motivation. All kids love games, competition, and ‘winning’. Whether you feel this aspect is the major emphasis of stimulation or not, the children do. Failure to capitalise on this enthusiastically will undermine all the preparation and time you invested to get across the lesson. The most frequent problem is getting started, and secondly, rule interpretation as the game progresses. The teacher is crucial to both of these. She must act as explainer of the game’s objective and methods prior to play and as a referee during the game. A great deal of the success of the experience rests upon how well this is done. If commercially made simulation game is used then you need to be completely familiar with the game and prepare your class by a) allowing sufficient time for the play; and b) carefully explaining the rules of the game. All simulation games include directions for play, summarising the activity, and relating it to ‘realty’. These should be strictly adhered to. If you desire to construct your own simulation situation, the following suggestions should be considered: 1. In order to produce transferable results, the model must possess fidelity in its representation of reality. 2. Purpose and major focus must be clearly understood. 3. Rules for simulation games must be established. 4. The sophistication of the game usually increases its instructional potential. 5. Game design must result from rigorous experimentation. 6. Simulation of all types should be evaluated in terms of the established objectives. 7. Learners in games must be free to carry out their own decisions, even when making mistakes; and the feedback of the consequences should be rapid and clear. 8. Opportunity and space must be provided for free, uninhibited movement and for flexibility of grouping. 9. An open climate should be maintained, free from leader domination. 10. The scope of the simulation should be limited to selected critical aspects of actions or processes. 11. Creativity on the part of leaders and students is required. 12. Accurate information and facts are essential. 13. Reasonable assurance for intelligent use can be increased by setting significant goals and by previous testing. 14. Simulation should provide for teaching both the cognitive and the affective areas. 15. In the main, decisions must be sufficiently satisfying and rewarding to provide adequate motivation. 16. Provision must be made for developing generalisation.

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17. The situation should be repeatable in its original form so that follow-up can be provided. Advantages • Simulation is appealing, motivates intense effort, and increasing learning. • Success or failure is rapidly and readily recognisable. • Vividness, meaning, and potential for greater retention are added. • Simulation has demonstrated its power to generate deep emotional involvement. • Learning to act by acting, learning to make decision by making decisions, and learning to solve problem by solving problems are developed. • Simulation is particularly effective with under-motivated children. • Simulation allows for manipulation by simplifying the complexity of what the game represents. • Simulation can be used for the acquisition of information, improvement of new processes, and identification of alternatives is decision making. • Games lengthen the attention span and develop persistent application to work. • Pupils learn to cope with unpredictable circumstances. • Games illustrate vividly the relationship between decision making and its consequences. • The need for constant communication between players teaches social integration. • Games are effective in teaching values and attitudes. • The cost and time necessary for involvement in the real world are reduced. Disadvantages • At best, simulation is very artificial and over simplified. • Games place too much emphasis on competition. • Models are too rigid and narrow in their applicability. • Simulation takes too long to get to the heart of a lesson. • Teachers employing simulation may be looked upon as allowing too much freedom and disorder. • Games cannot be readily adapted to the peculiar needs of an individual or a particular class. • Simulation cannot be a substitute for real, direct experience. • Students who have minor role lose interest. • A complex model confuses; if it is simple, it bores.

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Team teaching Team teaching is an arrangement in which two or more teachers co-operatively plan, teach, and evaluate a group of students. Teaching team may include student teachers and/or paraprofessional personnel. Teams may be organised on a departmental basis, an interdepartmental or inter disciplinary pattern, or on a grade-level basis. Most team teaching arrangements include instruction to large groups, small groups and individual study. As such, the various strategies discussed earlier are applicable to the team teaching arrangement. However, the peculiarities of the arrangement itself offer certain dimensions or parameters to be considered. Besides scheduling and material arrangement the most important facet of team teaching is the personalities of the teachers involved. It is paramount to the success of this strategy that the teachers involved like each other, co-operate and communicate openly and honestly. All the finest materials, plans and facilities will not make team teaching work if the teachers cannot work together. In the area of communication, it is vitally important to student progress for teachers to conference daily on learner problems and achievements and to plan assistance for or promotion of these areas. Team members selected should be those who possess needed personal qualities for co-operation as well as instructional competence. State the objectives of the experiment and design the evaluation procedure in advance of its use. In the planning session define the roles to be played by each team member. Provide time and resources for the team members to prepare thoroughly. Large group activity is most appropriate to introduce a new topic or unit, to summarise or conclude a unit, and to provide information beneficial for the entire class. Small groups may be best to discuss large group presentations and topic of student interest. Individual study may help students pursue areas of individual need and interest and develop the skills associated with individual inquiry. Advantages • Team teaching capitalises upon the special competencies, talents and interests of each teacher. • Joint planning, teaching and evaluation by the team members stimulate the professional growth of the teachers involved. • Students may be grouped on an educational basis rather than on administrative basis. • Students will be exposed to several teachers with different background and approaches, thus providing an enrichment experience, • The use of small group and individualised study provides for individual student needs. • Large group presentations make possible more efficient use of time and resources. • The use of large groups, small groups, and individual study conducted by various team members provides more interesting and less monotonous routines in the area of traditional strategies. • Teachers have more time for planning, preparation and follow up. • Team teaching may be used for all or a part of the students’ day. Disadvantages • Team teaching calls for special physical facilities to provide for large group-small group arrangements, which many buildings do not have.

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• • • • •

The cost per student of team teaching is often higher than more traditional approaches. Team teaching is attractive and seems simple, but its actual application is more complex for administrators as well as teachers. Specialisation on the part of the teachers may be carried to the point that the student loses sight of the whole subject or teaching/learning goals. Team-teaching may in actually be meetings the needs of the teachers rather than those of the students. The scheduling of the large groups, small groups, and individual study is often extremely complicated and difficult to communicate without misunderstanding.

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Chapter 6 STRATEGIES FOR SPECIAL USE Discovery Discovery is a teaching strategy, which enables students to find the answers themselves. In discovery students are involved in learning how to learn. In practice, directed discovery is utilised more than pure discovery as the teacher generally creates the conditions under which the ‘discovery’ is to occur. Discovery is really a rediscovery. The intent is that the student will discover for himself, which has been previously discovered. In implementing discovery, the teacher creates a situation in which the student is faced with a problem. In solving the problem, the student uses raw data and behaves in the manner required by the nature of the discipline and the problem. Thus, the student studies history the same way that a historian does or the way in which a biologist studies biology. Discovery is frequently used in science and mathematics. The teacher provides the materials and the students provide the discovering. This is more of a process approach as opposed to the usual emphases in education on production. As with any instructional approach, the degree to which discovery learning is successful is determined by the ability of the teacher to plan and execute effectively, that is, manage and supervise the lesson. The problem situations as a dilemma deliberately created by the teacher, which force students to think, analyse, draw conclusions, and make generalisations. In other words, the teacher’s role is to provide a situation that allows students to see a contradiction between what they already know and newly discovered knowledge. The following guidelines may be used: 1. Make use of contemporary materials. 2. Use topics from the subject. 3. Introduce applications of the subject. 4. Provide opportunity for guessing. 5. Provide for laboratory experiences. 6. Introduce new topics with innovative teaching strategy. 7. Make frequent use of visual aids.

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8. Set the stage for student discovery. 9. Use motivation. 10. Teach with enthusiasm. 11. Have more trusts in students. 12. Refrain from interfering with students’ work. Discovery should be used only when you have enough subject matter mastery to handle unexpected ‘discoveries’. The depth of information to be handled and the time needed for the discovery must be gauged in terms of the student’s skill level and maturation. Setting up the problem and the conditions for the discovery requires detailed and thorough planning. Be certain that proper materials and raw data are available. Be open to problem as they arise and be willing to learn along with the students. Advantages • Since the student actively discovered the information and knowledge, retention will be increased. • Discovery helps the student learn how to learn, thus equipping the student to handle new problematic situations. • The rewards inherent in discovering something provide the student with intrinsic motivation. • The student develops interest in what is being studied. • Students develop the skills and attitudes essential for self-directed learning. • Discovery operates at the higher levels of the cognitive domain. • The pupil is provided with numerous opportunities to draw inferences from data by logical thinking, either inductive or deductive. Disadvantages • Permitting students to discover their own knowledge is very time consuming. • Most of the present textbooks and materials available to the teacher are written for exposition rather than discovery. • The student often gets bogged down or loses direction before the problem is solved. • Some students just seem unable to make intended discovery.

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Drill Although there are many sub-types, drill is a teaching technique intended to bring about automatic accuracy and speed of performance in any subject. The aim of drill is the fixation of correct information or skill through repetition. Some use the term drill only for the mental ideas and practice for motor activity. However, since both are built on repetition – doing it over and over – drill and practice are used synonymously. The function of drill is solely to create automatic response to specific stimuli. If you were effectively drilled in multiplication and some one came up behind you and said quickly, ‘what’s 9x9?’ Your response should be ‘81’ instantly without thinking about it. Football drills in throwing an effective block are designed to teach the player to do it automatically. It is a practice closely paralleled by programming a computer. The teacher should remember that this is the only purpose of drill. It has nothing to do with elevating mental functioning or making better citizens. Overused drill is a sure-fire method of dulling cognitive abilities and prompting discipline problems. It means the percentage of class time spent on drill exercises should be minimal. Use drill only when automatic speed and accuracy, or performance learning is the objective. Make sure students see the purpose of the drill or practice. Use games and contests to add interest to drill. Make sure students are practising with correct information or processes. Over-practice produces boredom and fatigue. Provide the opportunity for students to apply that which is mastered through drill. Advantages • Drill is especially applicable to psychomotor and low level cognitive learning. • In skill development, repetitious practice is essential to build competence and technique mastery. • Students can build their own association of information through drill. • It can be a means of creating motivation in student tutorial situation. Disadvantage • Drill can become boring and monotonous. • Information acquired through drill will not be retained long without use. • Overuse of drill can lead students to believe in memorisation as an end. • Drill can reduce learning to a purely mechanical act.

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Interview The interview is basically a data-gathering technique using pre-planned questions to determine the feelings and attitudes of an individual, a specific group, the school, or the community on an issue of high interest. It is closely related to the survey in that both seek to develop data – one by oral questioning and the other through written response. The interview is especially helpful in practising a one-on-one situation such as a guidance counsellor-student interview or a student-citizen interview on a pre-established question or problem. It may be used in random sampling of a few people to establish a trend, or seeking opinions from high public officials and other select individuals. Crucial to the success of the interview strategy is presentation in: (1) knowing the background of the interviewee; (2) knowing the information desired from the interview; and (3) knowing what questions need to be asked to accumulate that information. An important facet of interviewing is the attitude of the person conducting the interview. A successful interviewer rivets his attention to the person being interviewed as if the rest of the world has disappeared. The interviewer, in effect, creates a vacuum, which draws out information from the subject. Interview is a good strategy. It teaches students to gather information in a logical and respectful fashion from a most valuable temporary resource – another human being. An interview is performed in a systematic fashion within a few simple guidelines: 1. Outline the general plan. 2. Establish rapport with the respondent. 3. State the issue, question or problem. 4. Elicit a response to the issue, question or problem. 5. Record the data. 6. Close the interview. Evaluate and report the findings. Advantage • Interviews encourage students to plan and think in a systematic fashion. • This is an excellent method for collecting data from individuals and groups. • It is especially useful in collection of information related to community attitudes regarding their personal opinion. • Through the use of this strategy, information can be collected quickly regarding an issue or a problem. • Interviewing helps develop rapport between the school and the community. • It can be used as an individual or total class project. • It helps bring the pupil face-to-face with community realities. Disadvantages • The teacher must spend a substantial amount of time helping students develop questioning techniques. • Interviewing requires a co-ordinated effort of all involved, which often disrupts school or administrative routines. • Students tend to take sides as an issue rather than remain neutral. • The data is often difficult to interpret and report. • The class may not be of sufficient maturity to face the obligations required in performing interviews. • Interviews tend to elicit personal opinions and may not be factual.

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Laboratory Laboratory is a supervised learning activity carried out by the student studying a particular subject involving practical application of theory through observation, experimentation and research. If laboratory experiences are not always limited to cookbook experiments they can give students the opportunity to do learning as opposed to reading about other persons’ learning. Retention and interest increase with greater frequency and even creative thought is exercised. Success is determined mostly by teacher preparation and direction appropriate to the learner’s ability. Some structure is definitely necessary if predictable results are desired. It is important to remember that laboratory learning teaches process as well as production. The use of this strategy requires close planning and co-ordination between the teacher and the learner. The approval of the projects must be within the capability of the student. It requires facilities with flexibility. Care must be taken to see that appropriate materials and supplies are available. Relate the results to previously studied material. Establish time limit for completion of laboratory work. Advantages • Students can capitalise on their own interests. • The teacher is free to offer individual assistance and instruction to those students needing special attention. • The activity may be carried out by individual students or in small groups. • Laboratory is basically a problem-solving technique of short duration. • This strategy helps students to learn, to generalise and to apply generalisation in new situations. • As a learning activity, it reinforces the discovery and inquiry approaches to learning. • Laboratory simulates actual scientific experiments including the formation of hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, recording and reporting the findings. • It is an excellent motivational strategy. Disadvantages • The approved projects must fit the abilities of the student. • The maturity of the students may be insufficient to pursue long range goals established. • Individual student may lack the motivation to work alone. • Some students may develop a poor estimate of self-esteem if they experience slow progress or failure. • The laboratory strategy may cause the teacher to supervise individuals at the exclusion of the group. • Costs may exceed the benefits. • Unless well organised, it can become wasted time and effort on the part of all concerned. • Learning may become mechanical and passive. • This method is difficult to apply to all curricula. • It is difficult to develop projects so that all students have equally challenging activities and experiences.

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Socratic The Socratic Method is a process of discussion led by the teacher to induce the learner to question the validity of his reasoning or to reach a sound conclusion. The strategy derives its name from the approach used by Socrates as he assumed the role of intellectual midwife. The Socratic approach was built upon the assumption that the knowledge was within the student and proper questioning and commentary could cause this knowledge to surface. Socrates, as teacher, attempted to follow the student’s argument wherever it led. The key to Socratic approach is that the teacher’s comments and questions must unable the students to discover meaning for themselves. In a typical classroom situation, the teacher would use the Socratic approach when the situation arises. It would be necessary for a student to make a statement, which could be further pursued. The teacher would then enter into a dialogue with the student, following the argument until the student had thoroughly questioned the answer and gained some insight into the logic used or the attitudes and beliefs held. The Socratic strategy enables the teacher to aid the student in examining his own beliefs, values, attitudes and their logic or inconsistency. It is a difficult strategy to master and requires a friendly ‘let’s-look-at-this’ relationship. If this atmosphere is not present, the teacher’s questioning will be viewed as picky and critical by the students, that negating the purpose of the strategy. Begin by using the Socratic approach on a limited basis, preferably on attitudinal statements of students. Assure students that you are attempting only to get them to re-think their ideas and that you are not criticising them. Be ready to shift gears if the attempt to use the Socratic approach bogs down. However, do continue to develop skill in using the approach, which can only be done by attempting to use it. When evaluating learning, give students the opportunity to show the logic of their viewpoints, and give credit accordingly. Start with simple logic and gradually build to the complex. Advantages • The Socratic approach can be used in dealing with higher level cognitive and effective learning. • This method gets the student to think about what is said so he can really examine an issue in depth. • The degree of involvement on the part of the teacher can motivate the student. • Students are challenged in utilising this technique properly. Disadvantages • It is extremely difficult to formulate the kind of question used in the Socratic approach. • Due to the spontaneous nature of the Socratic approach, it is threatening to the traditional role. • Students often feel threatened when a teacher challenges their ideas. • While the teacher is in dialogue with one student, the other students in the class may lose interest. • It is difficult to evaluate a student’s learning.

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Chapter 7 SUB-STRATEGIES FOR GENERAL USE Creative thinking Creative thinking abilities can be developed to varying degrees among different individuals through a systematically organised programme of instruction. It is true that we cannot turn each child into a highly creative person, but it is also true that each child during the period of his growth and development can be trained to think in a creative manner so that, in one field or another, he may be able to make use of this ability and have the satisfaction of having realised his creative talents, at least to some extent. It may be noticed that all the stages of education from primary through secondary right unto the college stage, we lay emphasis on giving the child ready made knowledge, systematically and neatly organised as lessons, units and text books. The entire syllabus is prescribed and the child as well as the teacher is required to follow it rigidly. The whole system is under rigid control of administration and there is no freedom at any stage. In the whole system, there is hardly any opportunity for the child to develop thinking skill. Developing creativity among children: The environmental conditions that are related to creativity are those which encourage and facilitate openness in thought and action and provide for discovery of new ideas. Social interaction has been considered as an important condition for the development of creativity. For the development of creative thinking abilities non-authorised ways of learning have to be encouraged. The practical suggestions are as follows: • Develop curiosity and wide interest in intellectual matters at an early age. • Include a variety of learning tasks in the day to day activities, as some children prefer to learn by discovering rather than by authority. • Bring more stimuli into the learning experiences.

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• • • • • • •

Ask questions that elicit unique or original responses. Accept and value unique responses when initiated by children. Develop progressive warm up for creative activities from simple to complex. Avoid giving examples when seeking creative efforts. Break the usual set and make it possible for the new ideas to be developed. Provide opportunities for imaginative activities. Provide time for the full development of an idea, as some students are slow starters.

Methods for teaching creativity: One of the methods used is Brain storming. An essential element in this method is to have a group focus on a particular problem and then invite the members to give as many ideas as they can think up for possible solutions of that problem. There is a rather freewheeling of ideas and no criticism is allowed. Evaluation is made after all ideas have been presented. There are two types of thinking – convergent and divergent. The convergent thinking abilities are those which are mainly responsible for dealing with the given information in a logical manner to arrive at a single right answer for any problem. On the other hand, the divergent thinking abilities enable the individual to go off in many different directions, generating new information from given data and arrived at varied and unusual solutions to problems. Teacher may ask more of divergent thinking questions to encourage creativity. Research findings suggest the following guidelines for teachers to follow: • Pose open-ended divergent questions in the classroom wherever possible. These provide scope for many possible answers. These questions stimulate freethinking and also more participation of many children. • All children to challenge the assumptions underline the ideas presented by the teacher. • Develop sensitiveness to children to the environment. Let them list out as many problems as possible. Each will turn out as an activity for further exploration. • Provide as many stimuli and opportunities as possible for expression of ideas that should be continuous and in the areas of interest of children. • Encourage children to pursue their hobbies. They are found to be popular among creative children. • Use teaching aids judiciously. Let there be learning, which stimulates exploration and creative thinking. Let not the aid hamper or curb imagination, curiosity, and inquisitiveness of children that are some of the essential components of creative thinking. • Creative learning involves skills of inquiry, research and problem solving. Here the learner raises questions, makes guesses, tests the guesses, corrects errors and arrives at conclusions. • Appreciate openly whenever a child expresses creative behaviour like unusual questions, giving unusual ideas, taking self-initiated actions, etc. It is not always necessary to reward only the expected answers. • Do not always insist on correct answers. Allow the child to rethink or explore the correctness of his answer. Let not the children feel the necessity for always giving correct answers. • Take care that a child is not ridiculed by his classmates for his answers to questions posed by you.

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• • • • • • •

Discourage self-criticism. Avoid telling everything. Allow children to think and express freely and find facts for themselves wherever possible. Do not encourage rote learning or memorisation of facts by children. You may explore your creativity through the following activities (these are only suggestive): Try new ways of teaching the same unit. Give various types of challenging assignments to your students. Try different ways of evaluating students. Suggest and involve yourself in various improvement programmes.

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Co-operative learning Students in co-operative learning, groups work together to perform tasks, learn information, or solve problems. Co-operative learning promotes higher achievement compared to individual learning. It provides teachers and students with a strategy to learn information in a collaborative and interesting way. This strategy involves more than simply assigning students to a group. The following information suggests ways to establish and implement co-operative learning in your classroom. • Decide if co-operative learning groups are appropriate. Co-operative learning should be used regularly, but not necessarily every day. When deciding to use co-operative learning, think about students; learning content from each other, working with social and academic outcomes, verbalising and discussing problems and solutions. Be certain this strategy is best suited for the content and information to be learned. • Teach students how to function in a group. Take time to model group behaviour and expectations by having one group in front of the class demonstrate how to maximise learning, on-task behaviour, and group dynamics. • Assign students with varying abilities in-groups. The size and make up of the learning group will vary according to the activity. A common arrangement is to use five students in a group. Usually a group consists of a high achiever, a low achiever, and three middle achievers. Seek a balance between gender, ethnicity, and economic background. • Provide necessary materials. It is important to make sure each group has the references and resources necessary to complete the assignment. Gather the materials and collect the resources necessary, prior to beginning the group activity. Summarise and evaluate students’ progress. Sometimes co-operative learning groups can deal with activities that take place over a day or week. Make sure you provide shortterm summarisation to check each group’s progress and understanding. Also indicate a level of evaluation and be sure students understand the criteria to be used in evaluating the group’s performance.

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Inquiry Inquiry relies on activities and resources to encourage finding solutions to questions investigated by students. The teacher provides structure, questions and problems to stimulate student thinking and interests. Students should formulate their own questions for investigation. Initially, teachers should guide students through inquiry process rather than allowing pure discovery. • Probe students’ thinking. Use thought provoking questions to encourage students to hypothesise, reflect, and inquire. Pose initial questions to organise students’ interests and investigation into a topic or a question. • Define the inquiry task. Explain to students that inquiry is a way they can independently seek information to identify solutions to their problems. • Begin with a question. Initiate inquiry with a question to help students focus on the topic. The question helps students seek solutions and formulate plans for seeking answers to the question. • Assist students in gathering information. Students must have sufficient materials to select, analyse, and evaluate. Help individual students gather, organise, and analyse the information needed for their inquiry. Set time limits. Plan and communicate the approximate amount of time needed to complete an inquiry. Allow time for students to share their findings with others. The inquiry process involves time to form, infer, generalise, and conclude results.

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Modelling Students learn a great deal through observing and modelling others. Modelling is a showing technique where you present or demonstrate information. Your students can help you, too, since many times peers can be very effective in helping other students to learn. In modelling, you do not just tell students information, as in a lecture, you also show them. • Use posters, transparencies, chalkboard, illustrations and real objects. These objects will help to make the information visual and tactile to appeal to a variety of senses and learning modalities. • Provide several examples and tell how to arrive at the solutions. Point out the important steps and elements necessary to complete an assignment. Label and describe each aspect of an assignment and what components make an exceptional example. • Show expectations by doing them. Model group projects and individual tasks with some of your students. Let class observe while you and selected students show what is expected and what is needed to complete instructional tasks.

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Decision-making Decision-making, like problem solving, is a real life skill and students must be taught the techniques involved in the decision making process. Students in the learning process need to have the opportunity to make good choices from several alternatives. Approaches should incorporate strategies for students to make decisions related to their learning. Whenever possible, teachers should allow students to be involved in making decisions. Students must be taught how to make a decision before we expect them to become proficient in this particular skill. • Define the decision making process. In order for students to make a decision, they must identify the choices, identify alternatives, think about the consequences, and make a decision based on reasons. • Identify possible alternatives. Without alternatives, there is no need of a decision. Help students think of possible alternatives involved in decisions. • Identify problems for each alternative. When analysing and thinking about the alternatives, students need to think about the possible outcome of each particular alternative.

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Make the decision. After alternatives and thoughtful analysis of outcomes has been discussed, students should make decisions. These decisions are based on the likelihood of the outcomes of the choice that meets their needs and desires. Implement a plan of action. Allow students the opportunity to organise ways to develop an action plan that will support their decision.

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Homework/Assignment Homework means work that you do at home. Homework is intended to extend teaching and learning outside the classroom. When students are asked, they feel that homework helps them get good marks/grades. Research has demonstrated a positive relationship between homework and achievement. Both educators and parents attribute to homework the development of personal responsibilities, work and study habits, and selfreliance. To use this strategy effectively, you have to make two important decisions: 1. To determine how much homework; 2. To determine what kind of homework. Students should have the knowledge and skills to do the assignment and should understand clearly how to do it. Remember your direction giving, checking for understanding, and providing a purpose. These are important for student homework assignments. The following categories support appropriate homework assignments: 1. Rehearsal activities. Practice through repetition; for example, spelling words or arithmetic tables. 2. Preparation activities. Practice that gets students ready for new subject matter; for example, reading about a country to be studied and making a list of questions or unfamiliar terms. 3. Review activities. Practice that promotes transfer of what was learned to a new situation or application to other situations; for example, using measuring skills used in class to measure items at home. 4. Integration activities. Practice that reviews many skills and concepts and requires students to put them together; for example, making a poster about nutrition showing the concepts and skills learned during a two week unit. Use this strategy in moderation as one way to provide practice and indicate the level of understanding. • Assign homework/class work that is related to the information being taught. Relate homework/class work to the interest and maturity level of the students. Allow for differences and special needs of students by assigning more time when needed. Modify the amount of information to meet needs. • Give clear instructions. Tell students and write on the chalkboard exactly what they used to do. Provide examples and work several problems together. Establish a procedure for students to ask questions while they are completing class work. • Check difficult level. Gauge the reading level and the difficulty level of the material used. Be sure that materials selected create an opportunity for success. Change and alter the content to match student’s level.

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Brainstorming The strategy of brainstorming, originally developed as an aid to creative problem solving among management teams in corporations, attempts to unleash learners’ untapped reservoirs of thinking talents by encouraging them to pour forth as many ideas as possible that relate to a defined situations. An important emphasis in brainstorming is the encouragement of quantity rather than quality of participants’ responses. Brainstorming evolved because of a realisation that people many times fail to tap their creative resources to make public a truly creative response to a problem situation. Brainstorming attempts to break through inhibitions by encouraging public comment of all ideas. This is accomplished by establishing a rigidly enforced ground rule of no public comment or reaction to any idea put forward. The brainstorming strategy moves forward after the teacher has made each of the following points: 1. Learners are asked to focus only on the problem situation. 2. Once the session begins, each learner has to call out his suggestion. 3. The activity must be fast paced, like ‘a storm of the brain.’ 4. No verbal or facial reactions to any suggestion are permitted. 5. Every suggestion, no matter how ‘wild’, will be written down by the teacher for the group to see. The specific nature of the product of a given brainstorming session is not nearly as important as the process learners go through in generating that product. The strategy promotes creative thinking by calling forth innovative responses at no psychological cost to the participant. Brainstorming, unlike many other instructional strategies, provides learners with a ‘pay off’ for the sorts of creative, divergent thinking.

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Summary Each lesson or a discrete part of a lesson should end with an activity, which leaves the student in possession of a clear, well-phrased statement of exactly what was learned during that time segment. Summaries will generally include a recapitulation of the aim of the lesson in terms of the extent to which it has been achieved. Effective summaries help develop an awareness of the essential unity and purpose of what was done; they tie up the package in order to maximise the impact of each learning experience. The creative dynamic summary can make cosmos out of chaos. The purpose of any particular summary depends upon the learning activity that it is intended to complete. Another function of the summary is to help students synthesise these ideas and formulate some statements or generalisation about them. It may also help to set the stage for further investigations, research or discussion. A summary is in order at any point in the lesson where a phase of a learning interaction comes to a logical end. All summaries, medial or final, require careful planning to insure effective integration of the different aspects of that teaching-learning interaction. The part of your planning for the summary segment of a lesson should be devoted to the preparation of a working chalkboard outline – a valuable summary instrument. Use the summary as a springboard for the next work.

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Audio-visual aids All learning is multi-sensory in nature and each of your senses – hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste – plays a role in formulating your reactions to any stimulus. Each adds another dimension and makes a unique contribution to the learning process. There are times, when such direct experiences are not feasible. Then you must turn to one or more of a variety of materials, equipment, and techniques designed to act as worthwhile but vicarious experiences for your students. Most of these substitutes involve sight and hearing more than the other senses; thus the term, audio-visual aids. Audio-visual aids are devices, which permit a more effective use of a multisensory approach to learning than just words can provide. There are many different types of materials.

Overhead projector The overhead projector projects a written or graphic image on a screen or wall. You can use it to display a study outline for your classroom or to list student ideas. Its uses are not limited to any specific area and it is easily transportable. It uses a sheet or a roll of transparent film. You can prepare a sheet ahead of time by using a copy machine or writing with a transparency pen, or used commercially prepared materials. You may also write on the transparency while teaching but it takes time and skill. An advantage of using the overhead projector is that it allows you to face the students while teaching and still you can display your writing. Using it effectively Some guidelines are: • Keep your image simple and readable; too much information is distracting. • Turn the projector off when not in use; the noise and light are distracting. • Use a good quality pen for making sheets, black for most writing and colour for interest only. • Check the seating of students for clear vision of the image. • Use a piece of white cardboard to cover all the points or items except the one you are discussing. Unusual uses Teachers can make use of this stimulus for numerous activities: • Children take turns making shadow figures on the screen and the rest of the class guesses the figure. • You can create suspense or a surprise. For example, to begin a unit of profit in an economics class, a large rupee is drawn to fill the transparency and flashed on the screen. • You can provide memory practice by projecting a list of words for a short time and then students write all the words they can remember. • You can share a small number of materials or materials too small to be seen by many students, by projecting it to the whole class.

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The overhead projector with transparencies offers stimuli to use with lecturing, discussion, questioning, and with other stimuli, useful for previewing, recording, posing questions, demonstrating and organising.

Slide projector This machine projects pictures with intense images and you can keep the room lights on. An additional advantage comes with your use of pictures of real people, places, and happenings. Slides can be taken by you, your students, parents, or purchased from commercial producers. Using it effectively • Check the placement ahead of time; images are more effective when they are right side up. • Accompany the images with description and questions. • Check the vision of students seated in different locations around the classroom. Simple projectors are lightweight, accessible, and fairly simple to use. You can have students handle the projection task and free yourself to lead a discussion to accompany the visual. Using in unusual way • Develop sequence skills. Show a small number of slides (3 to 6) in order and out of order. • Develop student ability to product. Show a slide and ask, “What is happening here?” or “What may happen next?” • Prompt creative writing. Show a beautiful or provocative or inspiring picture as a stimulus for writing or drawing. • Review a class project or trip. Show slides of students to review information and perceptions. Another advantage of using this stimulus comes with taking the slides. You and your students will gain insights and appreciation while you photograph your subjects.

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Television There are two compelling reasons for consideration of the use of this stimulus. The first is that television is available in most schools and with a wide selection of quality educational programming. The second is that your classroom use of television can model some good viewing habits for students. Using effectively • Discuss with students before and after viewing a television programme (information, impressions, bias, hidden messages, and so on). • Check volume and image for students in different locations. • Eliminate distractions. • Watch the programme with students (rather than work at your desk on some task). • Co-ordinate other learning activities with the programme. Using television to vary your instruction requires that you have a schedule and become familiar with various networks. Many programmes are simply more lectures so look for a demonstration or a drama. Using in unusual way • Use regular network ads to teach advertising, listening, decision-making, and so on. • Use only parts of a programme (the beginning or ending of a story) and have students write or develop the missing section. • Have students plan and produce their own television programme. • Assign a television programme as homework. We can best use our energy to make it work for our teaching.

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Records and audiotapes Many of us limit our thinking for those stimuli to music, but there are excellent tapes and records for every curriculum area. Both record players and tape recorders are inexpensive and simple to operate. Using effectively • Check volume for different location of the room. • Keep electrical cords flush with floor or wall so that you and your students do not trip. • Have the intended starting point positioned on the tape or record ahead of time. Using in unusual way • Co-ordinate musical or sound backgrounds with book reports, historical narratives, plays or science demonstrations. • Provide background music for a particular learning centre. • Have students record their own tapes as journals, correspondence with you or other students, self-evaluation, or progress reports. • Have student groups record problem-solving or decision-making sessions, and play back for analysis.

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Films and videotapes Both of these have appeal for students and can support learner motivation. Technology has simplified the use of equipment and has advanced the quality of programmes. Using effectively • Check volume and image for students in different location. • Eliminate distractions. • Use them interactively. It means that your students must do more than listen and watch. They must respond to the tape or film, and you can make that happen with questions, advance organisers, and discussions. Using in unusual way • Use the film or tape without sound and ask students to supply the dialogue, predict what is happening, or act as an observer on the scene. • Stop the film or tape midway and have students dramatise or role-play the ending, and compare it with the film or tape ending. • Have students watch different tapes or films on the same topic and compare information. • Have students make films or tapes to teach other students, present research, describe a group project, record class history, or advertise a class programme. Notice that with these unusual uses, you can not sit at your desk and catch up on your work. Your involvement with questions and suggestions will be needed.

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Chalkboards Chalkboards are everywhere and they come in all sizes, shapes, and several colours. They do not need a bulb or an electrical outlet, and they say what you want them to say. You can prepare them ahead of time, or use them as you teach. Using effectively • Keep your words large enough, dark or white enough, and clear enough to be seen in location around the classroom. • Avoid filling the board with so much writing that students get confused. • Protect the writing surface with proper cleaning and the appropriate writing materials. Chalkboards offer generous amounts of space on which to write and are often located in several sides of the classroom. You can move around as you teach. Using in unusual way • Use coloured chalk occasionally to highlight or underline main ideas, or to border information. • With tape or other devices, attach pictures and diagrams to the chalkboard with written descriptions, labels, or questions. • Reserve space for student messages. • On an infrequent basis, write your message backwards, in a circle, or vertically. We have also seen teachers use a block of chalkboard space for a Thought for the day, a riddle, news, a coded message, etc. A daily or class schedule on the chalkboard is useful to you and your students. Reminders, directions, assignments and due dates, and announcements are all appropriate for chalkboard display. When you combine chalkboards with other stimuli, your teaching will be varied and will capture student attention.

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Bulletin boards Bulletin boards come in different sizes and shapes. You hear teachers complain if they do not have one, and you hear teachers complain if they do. Like chalkboards, bulletin boards offer ease of use and accessibility. Using effectively • Concern yourself with what your bulletin board says and does, rather than just how it looks. • Keep the display up to date that is, connected to the theme of study, times of year, and so on. • Involve students in planning and producing displays. We want to emphasise the first guide line with a reminder that we are talking about varying the stimuli in teaching. We experience aesthetically arranged displays that are just the part of the wall, never referred to in teaching, never discussed by students, and not connected to curriculum. The intent of these stimuli is to contribute to teaching. The second guideline won’t be a worry if your bulletin board is connected to your curriculum, and following the third guideline will help you keep your bulletin boards up to date. Using in unusual way • Students construct a bulletin board display of what they learned from a unit or course. • Each student is assigned a portion of a bulletin board to display what happening in his or her life. • You construct a bulletin board related to future curriculum of unknown objects, places, and people for student guesses or predictions. • You and your students construct a bulletin board to communicate appreciation or honour to a student, parent, teacher, volunteer, or administrator. With student involvement, bulletin boards can change from being a responsibility for you to an exciting way to vary the stimuli.

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Computers The popularity of microcomputers in education has had an irreversible impact on schools. Today’s teachers must be prepared to use computers in the classroom. Teachers and schools have another important need for computers, a need relates to the computer’s increasing potential. Computers have become less expensive and more versatile. The range of computer use in all fields, including education, is limited only by the creative limitation of the mind. Teachers can use computers to manage instruction, or they can use computers as tutors. For example, the computer can be used for drill and practice, simulation, problem solving, and creating. The computer can be used to expand the types of instruction students receive, and they can be used to improve a teacher’s current mode of instruction. A less recognised advantage is the computer’s ability to free the teacher to give more personal attention to students. Computer assisted instruction (CAI) Computer assisted instruction (CAI) links the student directly to the material to be learned via the computer. The student is actively involved in the learning process. The involvement itself has a motivating effect. There are various levels of involvement, depending upon the type of CAI programme used. Drill and Practice At the lowest level, the computer behaves much like the early teacher, who lectured and then had students recite the material in the same form. In all secondary and middle-level subjects in all class levels there seems to be some information that is basic to the mastery of each discipline. Drill and practice is an effective approach for learning at this level of knowledge. The computer can give questions, score the answers, and give immediate feedback. Tutorial One of the first applications of computers to education was a tutorial programme that used simulations. Tutorial programmes can involve drill and practice or simulation, making what is really combination programmes – tutorial-drill-and-practice or tutorialsimulation combinations. Simulation This is also true for simulation programmes. While simulations can be used simply to provide examples to reinforce memorisation, most simulations involve the learner in problem solving. Students have the opportunity to live out roles and find solutions to often-complex problems. Expectations from computers as stimuli As stimuli, you can expect computers to provide: • Opportunity for practice. • Opportunity for collaboration on problems, practices, and challenges. • Simulated experiences for application of knowledge and skill. • Individual assessment of student knowledge, skill or attitude. • Record keeping of student work, assessments, and progress.

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Guidelines for using computers as stimuli: • Assure each student equitable access to equipment. • Plan for social interaction in computer use with pair assignments and tutor teams. • Connect computer use to whole class or small group instruction. • Preview and critique software your self, and encourage student evaluation.

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Chapter 8 STRATEGIES FOR SPECIAL LEARNERS The slow learner Contrary to common belief, slow learners in the regular classroom are neither rare nor unique. The student commonly called a slow learner is one who cannot learn at an average rate from the instructional resources, texts, workbooks, and learning materials that are designed for the majority of students in the classroom. These students need special instructional pacing, frequent feedback, corrective instruction, and/or modified materials, all administered under conditions sufficiently flexible for learning to occur. Slow learners are usually taught in one of two possible instructional arrangements: 1) a class composed mostly of average students, in which case up to 20% may be slow learners, or 2) a class specially designed for slow learners. Whether you meet slow learners in a regular class or special class, you will immediately feel the challenge of meeting their learning needs. Their most obvious characteristic is a limited attention span compared to more able students. To keep these students actively engaged in the learning process requires more than the usual variation in presentation methods (direct, indirect), classroom climate (co-operative, competitive), and instructional materials (films, workbooks, co-operative games, simulations). If this variation is not part of your lesson, these students may well create their own variety in ways that disrupt your teaching. Other immediately noticeable characteristics of slow learners are their deficiencies in basic skills (reading, writing, and mathematics), their difficulty in comprehending abstract ideas, and most disconcerting, their sometimes unsystematic and careless work habits. Compensatory teaching Compensatory teaching is an instructional approach that alters the presentation of content to circumvent a student’s fundamental weakness or deficiency. Compensatory teaching recognises content, transmits through alternate modalities (pictures versus

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words), and supplements it with additional learning resources and activities (learning centres and simulations, group discussions and co-operative learning). This may involve modifying an instructional technique by including a visual representation of content, by using more flexible instructional presentations (films, pictures, illustrations), or by shifting to alternate instructional formats (self-paced texts, simulations, experienceoriented workbooks). Remedial teaching This is an alternate approach for the regular classroom teacher in instructing the slow learner. Remedial teaching is the use of activities, techniques and practices to eliminate weaknesses or deficiencies that the slow learner is known to have. For example deficiencies in basic math skills are reduced or eliminated by re-teaching the content that was not learned earlier. The instructional environment does not change, as in the compensatory approach. Conventional instructional techniques such as drill and practice might be employed. Instructional strategies for slow learners While no single technique or set of techniques is sufficient teaching the slow learner, the suggestions that follow are a starting point for developing instructional strategies that specifically address the learning needs of the slow learner. Develop lessons around students’ interests, needs, and experiences. This helps address the short attention spans of slow learners. Also, these students should be made to feel that some of the instruction has been designed with their specific interests or experiences in mind. Oral or written autobiographies at the beginning of the year, or simple inventories in which students indicate their hobbies, jobs, and unusual trips or experiences can provide the structure for the lesson plans, special projects, or extra-credit assignments in the year. Frequently vary your instructional technique. Switching from lecture to discussion and then to seatwork provides the variety that slow learners need to stay engaged in the learning process. In addition to keeping their attention, variety in instructional technique offers them the opportunity to see the same content presented in different ways. This increases opportunities to accommodate the different learning styles that may exist among slow learners and provides some of the remediation that may be necessary. Incorporate individualised learning materials. Slow learners respond favourably to frequent reinforcement of small segments of learning. Therefore, programmed texts and interactive computer instruction often are effective in remediation of basic skills of slow learners. In addition, an emphasis on frequent diagnostic assessment of the student progress, paired with immediate corrective instruction, often is particularly effective. Incorporate audio and visual materials. One common characteristic among slow learners is that they often learn better by seeing and hearing than by reading. This should be no surprise, because performance in basic skill areas, including reading usually is below grade level among slow learners. Incorporating films, videotapes, and audio into lessons helps accommodate the instruction to the strategies learning modalities among

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slow learners. Emphasising concrete and visual forms of content also helps compensate for the general difficulty slow learners have in grasping abstract ideas and concepts. Develop your own worksheets and exercises. Textbooks and workbooks, when written for the average student often exceed the functioning level of the slow learner and sometimes become more of a hindrance than an aid. When textbook materials are too difficult, or are too different from topics that capture your students’ interests, develop your own. Sometimes only some changes in worksheets and exercises are needed to adapt the vocabulary or difficulty level to the ability of your slow learners. Also, using textbooks and exercises intended for a lower grade could ease the burden of creating materials that are unavailable at your grade level. Provide peer tutors for students needing remediation. Peer tutoring can be an effective ally to your teaching objectives, especially when tutors are assigned so that everyone being tutored also has responsibility for being a tutor. The learner needing help is not singled out and has a stake in making the idea work, because his or her pride is on the line, both as a learner and as a tutor. Encourage oral expression instead of written reports. For slow learners, many writing assignments go un-attempted or are begun only half-heartedly because these learners recognise that their written product will not meet even minimal writing standards. A carefully organised taped response to an assignment might be considered. This has the advantage of avoiding spelling, syntax, and writing errors. When testing provide study aids. Study aids are advances organisers that alert students to the most important problems, content, or issues. They also eliminate irrelevant details that slow learners often laboriously study in the belief that they are important. The slow learner usually is unable to weigh the relative importance of competing instructional stimuli unless explicitly told or shown what is important and what is not. Example: test questions or a list of topics from which questions may be chosen help focus student effort. Innovative learning skills. You can increase learning skills by teaching notetaking, outlining, and listening. These skills are acquired through observation by higher ability students, but they must be specifically taught to slow learners. Unless your slow learners are actively engaged in the learning process through interesting concrete visual stimuli, there will be little contact emotionally and intellectually with the content you are presenting. This contact can be attained most easily when you vary your instructional material often and organise it into bits small enough to ensure moderate-to-high rates of success.

The gifted and/or talented learners A student who reads rapidly, comprehends quickly, has an exceptional memory, is imaginative and creative, ha s along attention spans, and is comfortable with abstract ideas is described as bright, exceptional, gifted and talented. Awareness is growing that gifted and talented students are an important natural resource that must be encouraged, activated, directed and fully developed. Teaching the

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gifted remains an important objective of virtually of every school and, therefore, you should be aware of the learning needs of this special learner. The following are some of the most important behavioural ingredients from which a definition of gifted is likely to be composed: •

Intelligence. Foremost among the characteristics of giftedness is general intelligence. An IQ score of about 130 or higher generally makes one eligible for gifted instruction. However, in practice, because giftedness almost always is defined in conjunction with at least several other behaviours, admission to gifted programmes and classes usually far less restrictive. It is not uncommon to accept scores below 130 as eligible for gifted instruction. Sometimes IQ is not considered at all in determining giftedness, in which case the learner must exhibit unusual ability on one or more other areas.

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Achievement. Among other behaviours frequently used to determine giftedness is the learner’s achievement, usually in the areas for which gifted instruction is being considered. Achievement is measured by yearly-standardised test, which cover areas such as math, social sciences, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and science. A cut off percentile of 90 means that a learner is eligible for gifted instruction if his or her score on the appropriate sub-scale of a standardised achievement test is higher than the score of 90% of all those who took the test.

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Creativity. In addition to intelligence and achievement, indices of creativity often are considered in selecting gifted learners. Inclusion of this behavioural dimension has broadened the definition of this type of learner to include both the gifted and the talented. The significance of this addition is that not all gifted learners are talented, nor are all talented learners are gifted. The phrase gifted and talented, which is widely used, can mean talented but not gifted, gifted but not talented, mostly talented with some giftedness, mostly gifted with some talent, or both gifted and talented. Because creative behaviours generally are considered in selecting gifted students, this type of learner more appropriately might be called gifted and/or talented. Some observable signs of creativity in a learner include:  Applying abstract principles of the solution of the problems  Being curious and inquisitive  Giving uncommon or unusual responses  Showing imagination  Posing original solutions to problems  Discriminating between major and minor events  Seeing relationships among dissimilar objects.

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Task persistence Behaviours teachers look for in determining task persistence include:  Ability to devise organised approaches to learning  Ability to concentrate on detail  Self-imposed high standards  Persistence in achieving personal goals  Willing to evaluate own performance, and capable of doing so

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Sense of responsibilities High level of energy, particularly in academic tasks.

Instructional strategies for gifted and talented learners There are several methods for teaching the gifted that must be taught among regular students. The following suggestions are starting points for managing and teaching the gifted and talented learner. Choose learning activities to allow freedom and include interests. This encourages independent thinking, while at the same time giving the student extra motivation often required to pursue a topic in much greater depth than would be expected of an average student. Because gifted students tend to take greater responsibility for their own learning than do average students, self-directed learning methods often predominate among teachers of the gifted. By letting them pursue and investigate some topics of their own choosing and construct their own meanings and interpretations, you will be making them participants in the design of their own learning. Occasionally plan instruction involving group activities. Gifted students are among those most capable of picking up ideas from others and creating from them new and unusual variations. Brain storming sessions, group discussion, panels, peer interviews, teams and debates are among the ways you can start interactions among students. When carefully organised, this can create a ‘snowballing’ of ideas that can turn initially rough ideas about a problem into polished and elegant solutions. Include real-life problems that require problem solving. Let your gifted students become actual investigators in solving world-dilemmas in your content area. This will force them to place newly acquired knowledge and understandings in a practical perspective and to increase the problem solving challenge. Ask them pointed questions that do not have really available answers. Pose challenging problems. Perhaps more than any other learners, the gifted both are capable of and enjoy the freedom to independently explore issues and ideas that concern them. Give them this opportunity by posing a challenging problem and organising data (e.g. references, materials, and documents) that they must screen for relevance. Focus the problem so the learner must make key decisions about what is important for a solution. In testing, draw out knowledge and understanding. Use tests and questions that make the student go beyond knowing and remembering facts. Asking your gifted students to explain, analyse, compare, contrast, hypothesise, infer, adopt, justify, judge, prove, criticise, and dispute are means of indicating that more than a verbally fluent response is required. Asking your students to explain the reason behind their answers, to put together the known facts into something new, and to judge the outcome of their own inquiry are useful means of separating ‘slick’ responses from meaningful answers.

The bilingual learner Bilingual education refers to a mix of introduction in two languages. This means teaching skills and words in English as well as in another language, which may be any regional language. The primary goal of bilingual education is not to teach English as a second language, but to teach concepts, knowledge, and skills, through the regional language the

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learners knows the best and then to reinforce this information through the second language (English), in which the learner is less proficient. Four approaches to bilingual education Transition approach. The transition approach uses learners’ regional language and culture only to the extent necessary for them to learn English. Learners are taught reading or writing in their regional language. In the transition approach, the regular classroom teacher should encourage and sometimes expect these learners to respond, read, and write in English. The teacher using the transition approach first discerns the level of English proficiency of the learner and then expects the learner to function in English at or slightly above this level. Maintenance approach. The maintenance approach, in addition to encouraging English language proficiency, endorses the idea that learners also should become proficient in their regional language. The goal is to help learners truly bilingual – to become fluent in both languages. Such learners have come to be called balanced bilinguals to emphasise that their proficiency is limited neither in English nor in regional language. Restoration approach. The restoration approach attempts to restore the regional language and culture of the bilingual student to its purest and most original form. The classroom teacher should discourage mixing regional language and English phrases when they occur in the context of expressing the same idea or thought. In other words, expressions that are expressed alternatively and fully in both English and regional language may be encouraged, but expressions that are half English and half-regional language are to be discouraged. Enrichment approach. Like the transmission approach, the goal of enrichment is movement from regional language to English competence in the shortest time possible. However in addition to this goal, regional culture and heritage also are emphasised. Instructional strategies for bilingual learners If you do not speak regional language, emphasise other communication. Other forms of communication include the visual, kinaesthetic, and tactile modalities. You have seen the importance of the visual mode in teaching the slow learner, and it is no less important with bilingual learner. Use pictures, graphs, and illustrations to supplement teaching objectives wherever possible. Pictures can not take place of auditory cues, but they can place these cues in context, making them easier to recognise in relation an illustration or picture. Use direct instruction. Most bilingual learners learn best from, and are most accustomed to, the direct presentation of instructional material. For example, the “look and say” approach to reading is more effective than the phonetic approach during the initial stages of reading instruction. Especially for those lacking almost any proficiency in English, repetition of material (particularly drill and practice) generally is superior to more conceptual presentations that emphasise perspective, justification, and rationale. Be alert to cultural differences. Your awareness of cultural differences can be extremely important to successful communication. There is no substitute for

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understanding the culture of students you are teaching, even if you have little understanding of their language. They appreciate the co-operation of group achievement more than the competitive aspects of individual achievement. The merits that group work, sharing of assignments, and working as a team potentially are useful instructional strategies for these students. This in turn suggests the value of co-operative classroom climate. Carefully evaluate reading level and format of materials. While selecting or adapting materials, you may find a regional language version of comparable content, but the reading level and format may not benefit your learners. If you are not fluent in that language, have someone who is fluent evaluate the difficulty level of the material. It is not unusual to initially select verbal material several grades below the level you are teaching. After a suitable trial, evaluate the materials again and adjust the reading level accordingly. Material with illustrations and pictures is better than concentrated prose. Notice whether the objects pictured will be familiar to the learners or whether they are specific to the Anglo audience for whom the materials may have been written. Know your learners’ language ability and achievement levels. From school records, find out for each learner:  Dominant language in the receptive mode (i.e. listening, reading).  Dominant language in the expressive mode (i.e. talking, writing).  Proficiency level in the dominant language.  Past achievement levels in the area relevant to your instruction. The information is invaluable in selecting special materials and determining the best level and manner to begin the instruction. Knowing your learners ability and achievement levels makes your initial instructional contact far more effective, potentially avoiding weeks and even months of failing to communicate – not knowing it.

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Chapter 9 EFFECTIVE TEACHING IN A CLASSROOM

Effective teaching Teaching is an effective task a teacher does in the classroom. How efficiently one teaches, determines, to a great extent, the success of students at schooling and to some extent their success in life. Teaching constitutes activities deliberately planned and performed. The effective teacher employs five key behaviours: lesson clarity, instructional variety, task orientation, engagement in learning, and student success. 1. To be clear in the classroom, the effective teacher:  Informs learners of the objective.  Provides learners with advance organisers.  Checks for task-relevant prior learning and re-teaches if necessary.  Gives directions slowly and distinctly.  Knows the ability level of learners and teaches to those levels.  Uses examples, illustrations, and demonstrations to explain and clarify text and workbook content.  Provides a review or summary at the end of each lesson. 2. To have instructional variety in the classroom, the effective teacher:  Uses attention-gaining devices.

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    

Shows enthusiasm. Varies mode of presentation. Mixes rewards and reinforces. Uses student ideas. Varies types of questions and probes.

3. To be task-oriented in the classroom, the effective teacher:  Develops unit and lesson plans that reflect the curriculum.  Handles administrative and clerical interruptions efficiently.  Stops or prevents misbehaviour with a minimum of class disruption.  Selects the most appropriate instructional model for the objectives being taught.  Establishes cycles of review, feedback and testing. 4. To engage students in the learning process, the effective teacher:  Elicits the desired behaviour.  Provides opportunities for feedback in a non-evaluative atmosphere.  Uses group and individual activities as motivational aids when necessary.  Uses meaningful praise.  Monitors seatwork and checks for practice. 5. To establish moderate-to-high rates of success in the classroom, the effective teacher:  Establishes unit and lesson content that reflects prior learning.  Corrects partial-correct, correct-but-hesitant, and incorrect-answers.  Divides instructional stimuli into bite-sized pieces that are at the learners’ current level of functioning.  Changes instructional stimuli gradually.  Varies the instructional pace or tempo to create momentum.

Teaching constitutes activities deliberately planned and performed, involves achievement of learning objectives by students and involves transaction between teacher and student. Teaching is said to be effective ONLY if the intended objectives are achieved.

Defects in teaching • • • • • •

Most of the time, in the classroom, is devoted to teacher’s talk and students get very little opportunity to express themselves. Teachers spend more time in giving information and less on clarifying ideas and still less time on giving explanations. A very low percentage of teacher’s time in the classroom is used for making encouraging remarks. Most of the teachers are not systematic in planning and carrying out instruction. Less than 10% of time of teacher’s talk is devoted to teacher’s questioning. During classroom interaction teachers tend to promote mostly wrote learning requiring memory level thinking.

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How to make teaching more effective: • To use suitable teaching methods like conducting small group activities, peer tutoring and co-operative teaching, brain storming, active participation of students, etc. • To make use of library. • To develop your own instructional material, • To adjust your teaching to suit the classroom factors, • To make use of proper instructional materials like audio-visual aids, books, etc. • To create an open organisational climate. • To improve educational and professional qualifications, • To improve your study habits related to profession, • To involve in academic and professional discussions and programmes, • To understand student’s misconceptions of what you intend to teach, • To cultivate intellectual capabilities, • To experiment and explore new methods of teaching, • To observe students in different context, • To help them to resolve their problems, • To be democratic as well as assertive, • To avoid acting out your emotions, • To maintain good interpersonal relationship, • To be realistic in your ambitions and aspirations, • To develop healthy attitudes towards profession, • To develop liking for your students, • To be receptive to new ideas and practices, • To be dominated by sense of duty, • To practice what you preach to develop good values in students,

Active participation of students: Active participation of students stimulates the teaching--learning process. The following teaching behaviours are likely to enhance student participation: • Try to seek students’ responses and opinions from all the students. • Encourage each student to express freely without fear of being criticised by others. • Allow for mutual reactions to each other’s answers. • Reduce your talk in the class to allow for greater student participation. • Allow adequate time for student to think and answer. • You may ask each student to write their answers and share and compare it with neighbours. • Avoid dominance by some students and encourage non-participating students to talk. • Identify strength of different students and make use of them for designating different tasks in-group work. • Warm supportive, emotional climate promotes better student’s achievement. • Use of varying stimuli in the class stimulates student’s motivation.

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The type of questions relate to effective teaching: • • • • • • • • • •

Both simple and more complex questions can be formulated at each level depending on quantity and complexity of the information to be processed. Memory level questions are termed as factual or lower order questions. All other level questions are considered as of higher order. Ask both fact questions as well as higher cognitive questions to serve your objectives to best advantage. Plan higher cognitive questions, which are simple to the low ability students. Use of more of Why and How questions so that students respond by reasoning or thinking and not out of memory. Ensure all students attend to your question. Rephrase the question if it is not understood Encourage students to take some time to think and construct the answer. Give chances to all students to answer. Tell the students whether he is right or wrong and encourage to motivate them to give correct answer

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Chapter 10 ROLE OF THE TEACHER There are many changes occurring daily in our classroom and in the practice of teaching. Today’s classroom is a far cry from that of only ten years ago, and this rate of change is unlikely to subside soon. Microcomputers, competency testing, curriculum reforms, and heterogeneous classrooms are but few of the factors changing the face of our schools and creating special challenges for our teachers. The effective teacher is the one who sometimes sees himself in his students. Therefore, a teacher is just like an actor who has to play many roles. Some of the important roles are:  The modern teacher is a helping teacher. Basically teaching is a relationship. The teacher is either helping pupils or the pupils are helping him to do a worthwhile activity. Some of the time for teaching is dedicated toward instructing children in ways to better help each other. Ideally, the teacher is able to see his pupils as co-workers on some problems, as one who can maintain rapport with his students, who understands how a pupil feels, and who knows when it is time to be sympathetic with a pupil. The ideal helping relationship is one in which the pupil finds it difficult to determine whether he was directed or guided into a learning situation; he simply finds himself busily engaging in a situation and enjoying its offerings. In the classroom where there is much “share and tell”, “give and take”, “think and do”, --balanced off with an equitable amount of “work and play”, then there is more likely to be found the ideal, healthy environment for learning. 

The teacher’s emotional maturity. Adults gain emotional control by reconditioning, training, and by constant thinking of their emotional responses. The classroom teacher is well on the way to emotional maturity when he can make a reasonably sound inventory of what he is doing to safe guard his emotional health and what he should do plus what he can learn to do. The following questions are given to help the classroom teacher develop better judgement and emotional calmness in analysing his own personal emotional adjustment:

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 Do you feel resentful when a child catches you in a mistake?  When the class is difficult to manage, do you lose your temper and display it by shouting or showing things around?  Do you seek to find fault with children rather than to look for their good qualities?  Do you have periods of spirits and allow your teaching to suffer because of that?  Do you have strong feelings of inadequacy when a teacher across the class makes improvement with children in areas in which you would like to succeed?  Are you easily upset when the regular classroom scheduled has been changed because of unforeseen, necessary school activities?  Are you quite irritated when someone challenges your teaching techniques?  When children misquote or contradict you, do you “fly off the handle?”  Do you laugh unusually hard before the class when a ridiculous error in conversation is made by a child, but it is beyond his powers of realisation?  Can you laugh at jokes, which you have selected to fit the sense of humour of that particular class level?  Do you feel the urge to strike out at children by talking loudly when correcting the child who has not followed directions?  When someone is making fun of you, do you lose your temper and search out opportunity to make them look ridiculous?  Can you feel at ease when a visitor comes to the room to observe your work?  Are you able to control your actions and expressions when children become excited and can not sit still?  Can you hold your own with those members of your faculty who tend to “razz” you by inferring that you are always trying to be in the limelight when actually you are seeking to improve the status of the school? To effectively guide children, the teacher must first recognise and satisfy certain of her own needs in socially and psychologically acceptable ways most of the time. •

The teacher should be an actor. All educators must recognise that education is an internal process. If the children are shown the “sense” of subject matter, they usually will show interest in it. An interested pupil cares little about the time or effort that is needed to learn if the desire is there. To ensure interest and to literally captivate his pupils, the teacher should present the subject matter through such means as dramatisation, sensationalisation, or emotionalisation, and the like if ideas are to become mobile and challenging to the learner.

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The teacher should be a selector of methods. Far too often teachers teach as they have been taught. Though this can result in effective teaching procedures it seems more likely that such practice will propagate boring and repetitive classroom work. The teacher who consistently follows such a practice surrenders, in a sense, an important professional prerogative, that of studying the uniqueness of the class and making judgements as to how class members may best learn. The role of the teacher is obvious; in planning for every lesson or unit of work due thought should be given to selecting procedures, which seem most conducive to the sought learning.

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The teacher should be a researcher. Teachers in the present day are encouraged and supported in conducting classroom research. The study of the most effective procedures is one of the most fruitful areas for such research. In science, for example, the teacher of middle classes children might study the effectiveness of two approaches using two classes. If two classes are not available two major topics could be taught using different approaches but using only one class. The teacher who consistently uses and believes in the assign-study-recite-test procedure may be moved toward a variety of approaches if he carefully compares the results of this procedure with another combination such as lecture-demonstration-discussion-application procedure. An obvious professional task of the teacher, the selection of method is one that should be undertaken on the basis of a continuing study of the classroom situation. As a minimum, a consideration of the children in the class, and the evaluative results of previous teaching should enter into such study.

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The teacher as a producer of method. Teachers use a myriad of procedures, which can hardly be classified into the classic categories discussed earlier. These procedures can easily be related to a combination of the categorical labels. One fact is apparent that teachers improvise, innovate, and create; in short they make method. Unique procedures, which have no beneficial effect other than the fact that they are “fun” procedures or simply “different”, are not defensible. Innovative or unique procedures are justified if they contribute in a better way in the learning goals. Teachers, through their own ingenuity are encouraged to continue to devise new and better means of teaching for the important learning goals. Creativity in teaching, just as in other vocations and professions, is most promising as a means of improvement.

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The teacher as an evaluator of his own method. The effectiveness of method is evaluated when the learning progress of children is evaluated. How well children have learned contains an implicit assessment of the teacher’s choice of method. It is doubtful if most teachers carefully weigh the effect of method in examining the quality and extent of what children learned. If method is not evaluated, inefficiency in the use of time and imbalance in the value given to the various learning may result. It would seem wise not only for a teacher to examine the degree to which children have learned but to also evaluate by asking certain questions of an introspective nature, which deal with the choice of method. The major questions, which the teacher should ask herself, are:  On the bases of my evaluative instruments and means of measurement, have children met the lesson goals satisfactorily?  Do the children exhibit real insight as a result of the lesson in addition to the usual residual facts?  Did the teaching approach used arouse the response from the total range of the class rather than one ability level?  Were children brought to the point where they asked intelligent questions about the teaching topic?  Can most children in my class explain or demonstrate the major concepts of the lesson?  Just how important were this lesson and its goals to the child’s current needs and to his future needs?

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 Was the time spent on this work commensurate with the value of the sought learning?  Were the concepts of the lesson presented only in a verbal abstract setting?  Did any devices, aids, drawings, etc., used contribute to learning? Which one did and which one did not?  Did the children have ample opportunity to apply major concepts they learned?  If I taught this same lesson tomorrow for the first time how would I alter my procedures?  Were there parts of the lesson or uses of aids that were an obvious waste of time?  Is it possible to accomplish this same teaching with less time and effort?  Did I vary the procedure in this or other lessons significantly from the procedure I typically use? Teacher as a cognitive functionary. Thinking and cognitive task: The teacher lays the foundation for skill development. It provides a system into which data and information can be organised. It also affects the child’s processes of thinking, which will be called upon time and time again. He must become fully acquainted with the three dimensions of the teachinglearning process, which are concept formation, interpretation of data, and application of principles. If a teacher can form a mental image of the dimensions of the teaching process being utilised during an on-going lesson, he is in a good position to compare the progress of his youngsters to the rate at which information should be unfolded. Thus the teacher is tuned to where children are at a given moment in the learning act and he can predict where they should be in a few minutes if he keeps at the same goal and rate of instructing. Upon establishing where children are in learning as compared to the teaching act, it is conceivable that the act might need to be altered relative to the rapidity of presentation, difficulty of concepts or the setting into which it has now fallen. A wiser approach would be to plan a few “mental stops” along the path of the lesson not only to find out where children are having successes or failures, but to look at the techniques being applied by the teacher and/or pupils. If the techniques are planned under surveillance, quite likely some children will be enabled to use them to examine their own ideas and to test them against available data at a future date. Planning for classroom dialogue: The classroom discussion period is made up of short, simple verbal episodes. These episodes occur between teacher and pupils, or, a pupil and his peers. All verbalisation has some effect (good or bad) upon the learning act. By using the “open ended’ types of discussion and question-asking procedures, the learner is freer to try out all ideas to determine their power and value. The teacher’s primary role during the conduct of classroom dialogue is to create a free and open discussion that stimulates and sustain of thought on the part of all class members. The teacher and his non-verbal acts: Teachers must become more concerned with their non-verbal behaviours during the classroom episodes. What one says and what he actually does may be two entirely

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different things. The teacher should strive for greater congruency between what he personifies overtly and what he believes internally. To put it another way, what one wishes to “get across” during the learning episodes is often hindered by non-verbal expressions made by the teacher, -knowingly or unknowingly.

Role of the teacher in future The right for every child to learn is the goal set for the 21 st century. To meet this goal schools must offer a range of learning options commensurate with the unknown range of pupil talents. The learning environment, likewise, must nurture those talents. Media will become more important than ever in the curriculum of the future. Planetariums, fully equipped videotape machines, complete photographic studios, computers, and the like will increase curriculum change immensely. Therefore, the functions of the teacher in future will be: • A human relations expert—a facilitator of learning. On the basis of vast knowledge of child growth and development plus his professional expertise in using group processes and other psychological means as yet undeveloped, he will guide children in their interactions. The teacher of the future will more likely query, not of himself but of his pupils. “What do you want from school? What do you want to learn? What are you curious about? What problems in society concern you? How do you want to change yourself? How will you know when you have made your life better?” If a teacher can obtain answers to the questions he can then safely ask himself, “Now that I know what he is eager to learn, where can I best help him go to find the resources—the people, the experiences, the learning facilities, the textbooks as well as the wisdom and knowledge in myself—which will help him learn in ways that will provide relevant answers to the things that concern him? It means that they acquire the role of facilitator more than teacher does. •

A diagnostician. The teacher will be a new type of diagnostician, again using tools of measurement, which are now in their infancy. Obviously the teacher will be a director of learning—but in the setting of complete individualisation of a pupil’s personalised instructional programme. The implementation of a personalised programme of instruction will spring from selected findings derived from diagnostic information. With present diagnostic procedures it sometime takes months to find out the pupil’s problems and to plan accordingly. This will not be the case in future. What now takes months to accomplish will be completed in a matter of minutes. It will be a common thing to find children locating their own problems of academic origin by feeding information into computers to determine the progress made on a problem up to a given point. The machine being programmed to sort out common errors and to indicate the steps necessary to remedy one’s work. •

A master of a vast of complex of learning tools. It is he who will provide the initial stages of instruction in which the child will learn to use the coding and indexing systems, which be mastered, thereby enabling that child to direct much of his own study through computerised tools. Skilled designers and

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technicians can develop and co-ordinate the learning programmes, --films, lectures, demonstrations, television, etc., but it will be teachers who decide what the programmes should be. Of significance, too, the teacher will serve as the link between programmes and pupils, and he will guide the child to that sequence of programmes, which best meets his assessed needs. •

A master at developing programmes. The future teacher will be a master at developing programmes that build an enduring peace. He will be actively involved in reducing poverty-stricken areas, and, will rid the world of racial and regional discrimination. The community will become the living classroom.

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