Some take-home truths

One thing that stuck in my mind from Di Robert's presentation was the motto that I feel needs to be used in our class and also be taught to learners “comply before complaining”. This kind of motto will help individual's to first think about their views before they voice their view. As a teacher I need to learn to give the benefit of the doubt before exaggerating or over reacting  to situations which in turn build a good relationship between students and teachers. Again resilience is an essential tool for new teachers. 

"Di-Verse"

It was great to hear such a variety of stories from Di’s experience teaching. It was refreshing to hear about the new challenges she faced in different schools and different contexts. It’s a nice reminder that it’s “normal” to experience challenges in a new place. It was also nice to hear the humour in which she told her stories. I think if we can’t laugh at ourselves and at the funny scenarios we find ourselves in with kids, this would be an impossible job! It is always helpful to find the humour or the bright side to these challenging scenarios.

From Richard Sibeko : Thoughts on Di Roberts's presentation

• Diverse - different teaching environments.
• You're never too old to learn - take on new challenges.
• You're always a new teacher when you "walk" into a new environment. Use your senses to "sus out" your new space.

It was great listening to Di talk and learning how learners can teach their teachers a few things - resilience.

My bloggish thoughts...

This afternoon we had the fun of walking through a lesson with a Geography teacher who is new to Lebone.  After five years teaching  in a very different space she has been rising to new challenges, in particular of adapting her focus towards a child-centred approach to teaching and learning. In our NTC session, using a number of video clips, she wanted to present a kind of case-study in which she would demonstrate that her content, methodology, applicaton of educational theory and self-assessment were all intentional and carefully planned to achieve maximum learning  and understanding among all ten students in her Grade 10 class.

It has been a catalyst for some rich and candid discussion among all the teachers present, some using this lesson to reflect on our own preparation and facilitation of student learning while others used it to identify some techniques from the book Teach Like A Champion which they are working on themselves or are aware of and, until now, had not fully understood.

 For my part, it has been a great reminder of how addressing the needs and wants of all kinds of learners (auditory, visual, kinaesthetic) in delivery of material and formative assessment can make for a much more interactive and productive learning space where all students are engaged in the process of learning... and, in some cases, teaching!

Students must do the heavy lifting - teachers mediate learning

• The educator mediates learning between the students. She wants the students to learn for themselves; teachers are not supposed to learn for students.
• She involve the students in her lesson by giving them a chance to write their own notes from the previous lesson.
• Then she went through the notes with them adding / and correcting them where it was needed.

Setting goals [on the board] at the start of a lesson helps to focus the mind

What I learned is to have your objectives on the board so that the students understand what they are expected to learn from the lesson. Knowing their objective helps to focus the mind. So it is advisable to have an objective per lesson because if you have an objective according to the topic then each lesson won't be meaningful to the student.

So having an objective per lesson helps the learners understand what they should be able to learn at the end of the day. I also learned that using different learning styles help each learner benefit from the lesson -this accommodates all the students. I think I need to practise that technique especially when I present Setswana.