Course: General Methods of Teaching (6400)
Semester: Autumn, 2022
Level: B.Ed (4 Years) / ADE
ASSIGNMENT No. 1
Q. 1 A teachers personality traits are important to create and maintain a classroom/learning environment. Why? (20)
Personality traits are a combination of characteristics that are innate to people as individuals as well as characteristics that develop from specific life experiences. The personality traits that make up a person go a long way in determining how successful he is.
There are certain personality traits that help teachers and students succeed. Success may mean different things for different people. Teachers and students who hold the majority of the following characteristics are almost always successful regardless of how success is defined.
Adaptability
This is the ability to handle a sudden change without making it a distraction.
Students who have this trait can handle sudden adversity without letting academics suffer.
Teachers who have this trait are quickly able to make adjustments that minimize distractions when things do not go according to plan.
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness involves the capacity to complete a task meticulously with efficiency and of the highest quality.
Conscientious students can produce high-quality work consistently.
Conscientious teachers are extremely organized and efficient, and they provide their students with quality lessons or activities daily.
Creativeness
This is the ability to use original thinking to solve a problem.
Students who have this trait can think critically and are adept problem solvers.
Teachers who have this trait are able to use their creativeness to build a classroom that is inviting to students, create lessons that are engaging, and incorporate strategies to individualize lessons for every student.
Determination
A person with determination can fight through adversity without giving up to accomplish a goal.
Students who have this trait are goal orientated, and they do not allow anything to get in the way of accomplishing those goals.
Teachers with determination figure out a way to get their job done. They do not make excuses. They find ways to reach even the most difficult students through trial and error without giving up.
Empathy
Empathy allows a person to relate to another individual even though she may not share similar life experiences or problems.
Q. 2 Describe the process of course design and planning. (20)
Designing a course can seem like a daunting task, so we break it down into a few easy steps to help you navigate creating a structure that’s engaging and fun for your students.
Begin the process early, giving yourself as much time as you can to plan a new course. Successful courses require careful planning and continual revision. Consult with colleagues who have taught the same or similar courses to learn from their strategies and their general impressions of the students who typically take the course. If you are team-teaching, you and your teaching partner(s) should begin meeting well in advance to discuss course goals, teaching philosophies, course content, teaching methods, and course policies, as well as specific responsibilities for each instructor.
Define course goals. Determining the goals for the course will clarify what you want the students to learn and accomplish. Having these course goals in mind will then help you make decisions about which content to include, which teaching methods to use, and what kinds of assignments and exams are appropriate. For a useful introduction to curriculum planning that begins with defining goals for student learning, rather than with course content, see Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design (1998).
When you define the course goals, focus on student learning. One way to formulate these goals is to determine what students should be learning in terms of content, cognitive development, and personal development. Be as specific as you can and make sure that the goals define learning in ways that can be measured. Consider the following questions:
What do you want your students to remember from your course in 5-10 years?
How should taking your course change students?
What skills should students gain in this course?
How does this course relate to other courses in the discipline? How, then, might you define the course goals accordingly (e.g., for an introductory, fundamental, or advanced course in the discipline)?
In addition, you should learn about the students who typically take the course (their level of preparation, their majors or academic interests, etc.) in order to think about how your course will help this group of students build their knowledge and understanding of the topic.
Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956) provides a helpful framework for identifying the observable and measurable skills you would like your students to learn. Bloom identified six types of cognitive processes and ordered these according to the increasing level of complexity involved: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This page provides resources for using Bloom’s Taxonomy to help write learning goals.
Below is an example of a list of course goals, as developed for a General Chemistry course. (At Washington University, General Chemistry is a foundational course for several scientific disciplines; it attracts mainly first-year students who were in the top one percent of their high-school classes and whose academic interests represent a variety of disciplines.)
Q. 3 What strategies a teacher can use in the classroom to motivate students? (20)
BEHAVIORAL, BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE
Children, those with and without special needs, often suffer from a lack of motivation when it comes to learning. This lack of motivation can impact the students in the classroom in many ways. Developing strategies to address the student’s lack of motivation is vital to school success. Motivation comes in two forms: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsically motivated students are naturally motivated to do their work. Extrinsically motivated students are motivated by external rewards.
classroom
The following are some ideas for motivating students:
Build relationships with your students. You will be able to better understand their learning needs and, therefore, tailor your instruction when you know more about your students. Showing a personal interest in your students will also inspire their trust in you and make it more likely that they will be open to learning new material without the fear of failure.
Use examples as often as possible. Many students want to see a finished product so that they fully understand what is expected of them. This will help them to be more confident as they learn new concepts thus increasing their motivation to learn.
When possible, hand over control to the student. If students have control they are much more likely to be committed to the lesson. Offer students choices of how the material will be presented and what type of activities they would like to engage in for reinforcement of the lessons. Ask the students for input regarding the methods by which they learn best. This will help you to offer differentiated instruction to the students that require different methodologies. It also helps the students to know that you care about them and are willing to do your part in their success.
Q. 5 (a) What is an activity? Discuss the importance of activity method. (10)
Activity based teaching and learning method is a technique adopted by teachers to emphasize their method of teaching through activity in which the students participate willingly and get efficient learning experiences. It is a child-centered approach. It is a method in which the child is actively involved in participating mentally and physically. Learning by doing is the main focus in this method. Learning by doing is important in successful learning since it is well proved that more the senses are stimulated, more a person learns and longer he/she retains.
Pine G (1989) mentions that in an activity based teaching, learners willingly with enthusiasm internalize and implement concepts relevant to their needs.
So our understanding on the activity based method by now should mean any learning that is carried out with a purpose in a social environment, involving physical and mental action, stimulating for creative action or expression
Activity based learning method
The information processing theory in psychology views learners as active investigators of their environment. This theory is grounded in the premise that people innately strive to make sense of the world around them.
In the process of learning, they experience, memorize and understand. Students need to be provided with data and materials necessary to focus their thinking and interaction in the lesson for the process of analyzing the information. Teachers need to be actively involved in directing and guiding the
(b) Summarize the main points bearing on the role of research project. (10)
A research summary is a type of paper designed to provide a brief overview of a given study – typically, an article from a peer-reviewed academic journal. It is a frequent type of task encountered in US colleges and universities, both in humanitarian and exact sciences, which is due to how important it is to teach students to properly interact with and interpret scientific literature and in particular, academic papers, which are the key way through which new ideas, theories, and evidence are presented to experts in many fields of knowledge. A research summary typically preserves the structure/sections of the article it focuses on.