Saturday, February 25, 2012

Things You Should Not Forget to Write in Your Detailed Lesson Plans

1. Always start with a prayer.

This is especially important if you are working in a Catholic school. Well, if you aren't, then its still great to know that the Lord almighty is with you as you teach your students and as they learn from you.

2. Next step is always a heartfelt greeting. (Good morning!^^)

A great way to make students feel your presence is to give them a greeting with a big smile. It presents your enthusiasm and good will towards students.

3. Ask them to clean their Personal Area of Responsibility

Attention to small details is a part of having good classroom management. Remember that the learning environment also affects the attainment of your goals.

4. Recall

A review of the past lesson is a good way for students to test their retention of ideas. Confusing parts may also be cleared out in this step.

5. Processing of Activities

This is what I've learned in the recent seminar on Structured Learning Experience. We must always make the students know why we did an activity. They must know the purpose of the activities done in the classroom. Processing helps students know what they should've gained from doing the activity. Processing is also more focused on how they have learned, not on what they have learned.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Erasures are NEVER Wrong

How many of us have encountered this instruction in the test papers and have overlooked it. Or maybe it was just some clumsy mistake due to confusing numbering on the test papers and inconsistent with our answer sheets that we made an irrevocable mistake which we attribute to our being careless or sometimes even "palpak" way of doing things.

It hurts to see this instruction in test papers

ERASURES ARE WRONG.

First of all, what is the objective of this instruction? Some say that it is to lessen cheating in the classroom.

But wait, isn't that the responsibility of the teacher? Getting rid of cheating is part of classroom management. If the teacher is not lazy to watch over the students as they take test, then they won't have a chance to cheat right? No matter how creative students are, teachers should be more creative than them.

If you have a class which you know are used to the habit of cheating, then make two tests which fulfills the same objectives. Set A, Set B. You can even make Set C if you want.

Putting the instruction "ERASURES ARE WRONG" is a big big mistake.

How can you take the right of the student to change his answer, to change his mind, to correct the incorrect. Is this not part of life? It is human nature to want to correct mistakes we've done. Don't do this to your students.

Take action, strive to be heard.