Learning Objectives of a Lesson - Assignment Example

SLT Knowledge Questions_rework K1- The teaching assistant is totally concerned with conducting the activities as per the plan made by the teacher andthe teaching staff has to perform all the activities according to the instruction given by his/her teacher. Teacher is the sole person who decides what should be included in the activity and what has to be removed form it. The operational part is taken care by the teaching assistant. The teaching assistant cannot do anything as per their own wish, he/she has to follow the instructions of the teacher and provide necessary support to the teacher in order to successfully carry out the activity. After completion of the activity the feedback is provided by the TA to the teacher who is responsible to convey the report to higher authority and the parents. During each and every activity the teaching assistant should know very clearly that what he/she has to do and what the teacher is expecting from him as a result of the activity. Teacher has the responsibility of teaching assistants who are working under his/her guidance and the teaching assistants are concerned with proper execution of the task and to forward the feedback on a regular basis. K2- The role played by a teaching assistances (TA) in class differer on basis of the experience they posses and the requirement of school, but in nutshell it can be said TA works closely with the teachers for providing support in learning and teaching activities. TA access the teacher for preparation of detailed plans and if they have any idea that might benefit the teaching and learning activity, then such idea should be conveyed to teacher. Depending on the requirement, TA has to take care of the students who have special educational needs. The TA not only support the class teacher or the pupils, but TA becomes an intimate part of the whole school team. The class teacher can gather more detailed information regarding the pupils and this proves beneficial for the teacher because they can pay more attention toward children as per their requirement and can enhance their learning ability. The suggestion and idea given by TA for planning the teaching and learning schedule help the teachers to reduce down their labour in collecting basic information about children and the teacher can make their more plan in much better way. K 3- To ensure that every child should have access in all the area of curriculum of education, schools introduce inclusion and equality of opportunity policies. Such policies help the educational institutes to maintain “Every Child Matter” framework and to gain popularity. These policies can be summarised under three distinct heads- Human rights policies which take care that all the pupils can play and learn together and no discrimination should be made. Equal opportunity in education related policies insures that pupils should have access to inclusion facility as it is more efficient and effective way for providing education. The policies related to social opportunity says that pupils should get more involved with other peers and the policy remain same for children who have special educational needs. The teaching assistants play important role in supporting the school to implement these policies in their day to day activities. The TA can provide special assistance to a particulate student who requires spatial attention or the TA can give extra care to a group of pupils having special educational need. But when the TA handles pupils in group, care should be taken that every child receives equal and fair treatment and there should be equal opportunity given to everyone or expressing their view and opinion. TAs should follow plan provided by the teachers to gather a clear idea about learning activities which they have to assist. K 4- At present I am working in a school that follows National Curriculum guideline to carry out their teaching and learning plans. In the school I works as a TA and my task to to assist different teachers. Many a time due to my personnel problems I fail to sit with teachers for discussing their medium term and specially short term plan. My area of expertise is psychology, so this helps me to get friendly with pupils easily and then support them to identify their hidden potential which they can further enhance and can build their career in the field where they have expertise. I always believe that it is not possible to conduct work smoothly if one does not plan the work beforehand. The case is same for me, the week I miss discussion with the teachers about their teaching plan for coming week, it become quite difficult for me to set coordination that which teacher is teaching which topic. I always make a plan to identify my own weaknesses and strengths. For example I am not comfortable with maths but have no problem in handling Art or Science related subjects. This not only facilitates me only,but it also helps the teachers to select which stream should be given to me. K 5- Learning objective of a lesson refers what the pupils were suppose to learn during their learning session and on which basis they should be analysed. The TAs should have a clear idea regarding learning objective of pupils and such knowledge can be gathered by discussing future plans of different teachers to whom TA have to assist. Learning objective Activity To learn about different climatic conditions prevailing in the world Making a map on hard paper, marking the regions with different climatic condition, painting each region different colour so the one can identify different regions easily. On each region giving feature of that climate. To enhance communication skill Participating in debates taking classes of both written and oral communication. To enhance writing skill Actively participating in creative writing competitions, writing short stories and reading different articles written by different authors. To enhance mathematical calculation On regular basis practising mental maths, keeping a tag on time taken for solving each calculations, less use of calculators. K 6- Planning and evaluating are two vital component of learning activity. Altogether these three activities (planning, learning and evaluating) make a cycle. Planning is necessary for conducting any type of action and the case is same is for learning and teaching activities. The teacher should first make a broad plan for long term like an annual plan or semi annual plan which indicates that the teacher have to cover within the time span of 12 or 6 month. Such long term plans has to be further broken down to middle term plan that take care of weekly schedule. Finally the short term plan has to be made which takes into account what has to be taught on daily basis. Such planning brings transparency among teachers and TA. The best way is both teacher and the TA sit together for finalising their daily or at least weekly plan but many a time the TA dont get time, hence plans are to be made by teachers only and then TA discuss with teachers and they share their personal ideas and suggestions with teachers so that the plan can be further improved. Evaluation helps teacher to find out how well the pupils understood their teaching. Evaluation is conducted by the TA and then the results are submitted to the teacher. Evaluation provides feedback to the teacher whether the pupils successfully achieved learning objective. On the basis of such evaluations teachers decide that when to start next section of teaching. K 7- Basic principle of child development and learning is also known as cognitive development as this principal is based on the ability of the children to think, to learn and to develop themselves mentally. Such principle assists professional workers who are engaged in teaching profession to understand basic child behaviour. Effective learning is not only associated with effective teaching but certain other factors are also responsible for effective learning. Mainly the learning varies from person to person on the basis of surrounding environment, situations and aptitudes of the individual. Certain other associated influencing factors are the age and developmental stage of the individual. All of these influencing factors should be considered and properly taken care of for an effective learning of any individual. The considered factors can be broadly classified as follows - 1. learning environment should be positive for an effective learning. The place of learning should have an environment which reflects the childrens work irrespective of the quality of the work. It is not necessary to display and recognize only the best works. One should encourage others also to perform well and give their best. 2. children should be always encouraged and praised for their effort during their learning. It enables to boost up their confidence level. Adults can play a major role here by continuously praising and encouraging children to perform as better as they can. 3. The quality of teaching provided to children also influences the learning process. It should be noted that the quality of teaching has to be better for effective learning and good quality teaching motivates the children. So the quality of teaching should be improved and children should be involved in the learning process for effective learning. 4. Supporting nature of parents and care takers also plays a vital role in effective learning. Only the school teaching is not enough for a child to learn, there has to be a mutual understanding between the school and the parents to give their children best in order to achieve effective learning. 5. Pupils should be made aware of the purpose of any task which are given to them. The purpose and significance of task should be known to the children because any task which is done by them without a clear purpose does not adds motivational factor to their task. They perceive the task as a burden and pay less interest to the task. So the objective should be to get them involve into the process. 6. Motivation is yet another important part of effective learning. Pupils are required to be motivated in order to boost up their confidence level. They should be treated as the part of the activity rather than just a participant. In a learning process certain barriers are also present which hinders the process. These barriers includes factors such as absence of any of the above discussed support for the learning process, also there are physical barriers which could be inability of an individual to access the premises or any other required equipments for learning process. Another major barrier is the attitude of staffs, classmates and other children affected by the barriers. They may underestimate or criticize pupil which adversely effects the learning process. The expectation level should be always kept high and pupil should be motivated for a good learning experience. K 8- Strategies which help in the learning process of children can be developed with the experience which one has gathered by interacting and getting involved with the children. The general strategy includes three main steps as follows - 1. one should give proper instruction to the pupil before starting any task. If the pupil is unable to understand they should be provided with a starting point so that they get an idea of what is their role in the task. The understanding ability of the pupil should be checked. 2. As the task begins one should always raise questions to the pupil regarding their interpretation. The question should be of descriptive nature rather than of yes/no type. Continuous praising and motivation by the teacher helps the pupil to get involved into the task. If they found any difficulty the task should be modified but the focus should be on developing the self-help nature of the pupil by the work. 3. During the finalising part of the task the pupil should be asked to evaluate their task on themselves against them. They should be asked to judge that whether the task has been completed correctly or not. Before passing the completed task to the teacher first assessment of the task should be done by the student itself. If a single child is involved in the process then it becomes easy to develop the strategy after understanding their likes and dislikes. In the other case if a group has to be treated then first target should be to involve all the pupil of the group. All should be given equal importance and the teachers approach should not be biased towards a few students rather than the entire group. TA should take assistance form the teachers in order to develop new strategy to handle a group of pupil. K 9- The schools policies on praise, assistance, and rewards and sanctions are developed by the school authorities. These policies are either incorporated into the schools policy or verbally considered and understood by the members of the school or the institution. There are different policies and can be categorized as follows - 1. Praising policies – our schools has introduced the concept of House in the school. The pupils are grouped into different houses they have been allocated to. Other means of praising is though verbal means. This is the most effective way of praising a pupil. This enables the pupil to feel the recognition as soon as he/she is praised. Display boards are also used as an effective mean of praising. If any of the pupil preforms outstandingly then he/ she is recognized on the school level and praised. 2. Assistance policies – assistance is provided by the TA keeping in mind that they are responsible for the completion of the task through the pupil so they need to act like a facilitator and provide the pupils with encouragement for the completion of the task. They do not complete the task in place of the pupil. They try to make the pupil understand the task in best possible way but if still problem persists it is reported to the teacher. 3. Rewards and sanctions – Pupils who perform well are rewarded by honours and recognized as well at school level. Some are also provided with learning resources as reward for a good piece of work. K 10- Different types of problems which rises due to numerous reasons can be of following categories- Problem Suggestion Related to learning resources Resources required for the activity, e.g. notebook. Book, stationeries, apparatus and equipment. Decide the required materials and collect and check if they are in working condition or not. If found any malfunctioning ensure to replace or repair the materials. Related to the environment of learning Problems related to the availability of space for the learning activity. Decide the place of activity considering the group size. If the place is already decided then do a prior check of the place to ensure the space availability. Noisy environment can distract the pupil from their task so the environment should be peaceful for the learning process. Should be relocated to some other available space which is capable enough to accommodate the group. If no space is available then this should be reported to the teacher for a proper solution. Disturbance created by the members of the group. Pupils should be restricted from making noise but if this incident continues should be informed to the teacher. Ability of the pupil to learn Problems related to the behaviour of the pupil Behaviour of the pupil should be tried to change after analysing the behaviour Proper motivation and encouragement should be provided to the pupil to influence his/her behaviour Problems related to the self-esteem of the pupil Proper motivation and continuous encouragement and praise can boost the confidence of low esteemed pupil. Pupil facing the problem should be questioned carefully to know the exact problem. Problems related to the poor concentration of the pupil Concentration power of pupils are very low as compared to grown ups. They concentrate for a very short span of time. This is not in all the cases but if any such case is found then the pupil is stopped from doing the task immediately. Problem related to range of ability of pupil When working in a group some pupil takes less time than others to finish a task. They should not be left free until the remaining pupils complete their task. They should be provided with some other related task as the present task gets finished. Problem related to incomplete information Activities designed by the teacher is found inappropriate or confusing to the pupil then teachers should be consulted in order to clear the confusion and doubts related to the set of activities. K 11- Any teaching assistant has to start his/her work under the guidance of a teacher. So like all jobs here also there are certain roles and responsibilities associated with the job which has to be taken care of being within the boundaries of the role. Working as a teaching staff one can handle minor issues related to the learning activities of the pupils but he/ she should remember that they have to perform as per the teachers direction. Even if someone has experience in handling group of pupils in a learning process, he/she has to work according to the teachers direction rather than taking individual decision on their own. When some one working as a teaching assistant, he/she should be aware of the situations when they are supposed to consult the teacher. Certain situations are as follows - 1. when the situation is causing problem in the learning process and leads to disrupt the entire process. 2. A situation when the pupil is not able to understand the task to be done. In this case TA can try to explain the task in different ways but if that does not work then in that case he/ she should consult their teacher. 3. Sometimes in a group of pupil some of them have a deep understanding about the task and can perform very well compared to the remaining pupils. In this case the pupil might not be suited in the group so at this point TA should consult their teachers. 4. If a pupil has informed about certain thing which should be known to higher authorities too. The information could might be concerned to school or may be not. 5. Some situations are also there which requires consult from teachers when the situation can lead to an unpleasant event. K 12- Feedback plays a very crucial role in any learning activity. It ensure the two way communication in the process. As a teaching assistant one has to give a feedback to his/her respective teacher regarding th eperformanc eof the pupils and how they have been benefited by the activity. the feedback gives the knowledge regarding what the pupils have learned and what problems they faced during the activity. The role of a teaching assistant is very tough and they hardly get time to interact with their teachers about the activity. If somehow they get time for discussing the activitys feedback it might happen that the teacher does not have time at that instant. So it becomes tough to give the feedback in a constructive manner so that the required modifications and inputs can be provided for the standardization of the activity. Mainly the feedbacks are communicated to the teachers through telephonic conversations as both of them remain busy. So teaching assistant provides the feedback to the teacher over telephone after completion of each activity. Sometimes the teacher directly comes to visit the teaching assistant to get the feedback and provide necessary instruction for future changes. This is normally done during the early hours before the beginning of the class. This helps the TA to organize the work more convenient as he/she gets enough time before the class. One more way of providing feedback is through feedback forms which are planned and designed by the school most of the time. If the forms are designed considering all the vital factors then it wont be a problem to know whether the pupils have learned something from the activity and what extra efforts are required from the teachers side so that the result gets improved. Read More