The Importance Of Interactive Activities In The Classroom

I believe that I am proficient in establishing a classroom setting that calls upon the students to learn in an individual and collaborative manner. I believe that I have sufficiently encouraged positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self motivation. I have shown this in learning activities that have been presented to the students. An example of this would be with the placard assignment, which had the students fill out a sheet that corresponded to four maps to help them figure out what artifacts certain cultural regions would use. During this learning segment, students would have to be self directed after the directions were given, the students would have to use collaborative skills, and they were all engaged during

Students have their own best way in effectively learning the lesson. With the diversity of students, the problem is each student has a preferred learning style. It becomes undeniably one of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve the best expected outcome out of teachers’ effort. However, teachers try to incorporate various teaching techniques to make every learning opportunity become productive, meaningful, and relevant for the learners.

My grade level team has already been involved in using data in decision-making and improving our instruction. However, our meetings lack protocols, clear objectives and goals. Dr.Ban (2016) defines protocols as “structured process that provide clear expectations in group work, allow everyone to feel that their input is valuable, build a sense of togetherness, and allow everyone a sense of control and input” (lecture 1, slide 1). With this new knowledge and skills, I could use it to collaborate with my colleagues to increase self-efficiency and guide our meetings. We will use protocols as building blocks in our work, then do force field analysis, defining goals and objectives, and after that we will identify supporting and restraining factors in the action plan. Following the protocols will help us focus on improving teachers’ instruction and increase students learning.

William Bennett John Hattie, and Bert Creemers all produced lists that identified research-based practices that were effective in the classroom. The writer has used strategies that work from their lists on a daily basis, including differentiating instruction and reinforcement with play or games. Cooperative learning has also been used frequently to give opportunities for students to collaborate in order to negotiate meaning, teach and learn from one another. Benjamin Bloom’s (76) unit of instruction “guides teachers to the most appropriate use of research-based strategies but does not constrain them as to day-to-day lesson design” (83). Instructional strategies are integrated into the unit plan, but should remain flexible in order to meet student needs and goals.

In the education world of today, it is understood that one can only be effective in teaching by taking into consideration the different learning styles of students. In a classroom, it is expected that teachers would want their students to acquire a meaningful knowledge base, become proficient problem solvers and learn how to work productively with others (Biehler and Snowman, 2006, p. 370). If this is the case, teachers need to know how to be able to develop this situation in the classroom and make it more conducive to learning. Therefore, it would seem that they need to encourage students to converse with each other with group discussions and assignments, to make sure they are active in

During this lesson students were working partners and they had the ability to use the think pair share strategy. This means that students could complete the activity in a lower stress group with just partners before they had to present to the class. This gives children the opportunity to work with just one person to get their idea “rule” across and they would have support from their partner and teacher if needed. This strategy is great in preschool because students are all beginning to interact with others and how to express themselves. This can also be done in small

As a pre-service teacher it is important to shift the mindset of students from thinking of getting the right answer and instead encourage critical thinking. The purpose of group learning activities is to help struggling students.To properly implement heterogeneous groups in my teaching I will make sure to articulate my goals during group work, and include academic objectives. I want to make sure that students achieve social skills that they may want to develop. It is critical to helping groups get started therefore I will explain the group’s task. I will explain how the task involves individual accountability, and how they will be assessed throughout the process. During group work monitoring and regularly observing group interactions and progress, by circulating during group work is something I would do as a teacher. Circulating during group work will make it easy to observe problems, allowing me to intervene and help students move forward on the task. I think getting different perspective is important and I plan on discussing with future colleagues what works best and what curriculum we are finding more

The three main components of interactive pedagogy are learner, teacher and environment. The one embarking in the process of acquiring new knowledge by utilizing his own resources is known as the learner. He wishes to assimilate the new knowledge. The educator is the person who leads the way to the learner. He acts as a facilitator in this process of learning. The various physical locations, contexts and culture in which students acquire knowledge is called the learning environment. It includes both the outside-of-school locations, outdoor environment and the classroom itself. The interactions between the three stakeholders can take place in the various ways. Some of the ways could be students working with various objects individually or in groups to solve problems, and exploring spaces other than the classroom, pupils collaborating in pairs or small groups to make meaning of the lesson with the support of their teacher to obtain information and ask questions to support learning. In this way, interactive pedagogy can be termed as active pedagogy.

Although the hands-on learning approach requires a great deal of preparation time, once students have adjusted to the teaching method, the learning process becomes an enjoyable experience for both the teacher and the students (Berk, 1999). When teachers make use of hands-on activities to illustrate concepts in mathematics and science, students perform better on assessments in these subjects because their level of thinking and curiosity increase as a result of their active participation in the learning process (Wenglinsky, 2000).

This involves a learning process that engages the learners. Attention is moved from the teacher to the learners through practices such as role playing, group work and problem-based approaches, for instance. These activities put the learners in a situation where it is up to them to use available learning resources to solve problems, hence causing active learning.

With knowledge gained from previous experience, I knew that the students I would be teaching were comfortable with a variety of learning methods, but work more effectively when a practical or group task is set. I shall therefore tailor my resources to promote this type of learning within my teaching group.

Effective differentiated instruction reflects where the students currently are in their educational stage and not where a teacher wishes them to be. This step is important; placing students either too high or too low in the instruction can be adverse to the teacher’s goal of helping all students. Developing lesson strategies for students that are too demanding may have a negative effect on performance and reinforce negative emotions concerning learning. Likewise, developing lesson strategies that do not challenge students to perform at their best can also have a negative effect. Some students that are not engaged by a teacher's instruction are left adrift waiting for new or more stimulating material. Engaging students in the learning strategy is the key ingredient in producing active learners.

Collaborative learning stems from the theory of Vygotsky’s conception of Zone of proximal development. The thought is that children learn best with “help and guidance” (Ormrod, 2012). In transitioning this zone to a collaborative learning experience, children work with their peers in broadening their learning experience, allowing small groups of students to work together to share knowledge, exchange ideas, problem solve, and more. These classroom environments help to create durable abilities in students and aid in producing a “smoother integration into adult society when the activities resemble real-world tasks” (Ormrod, 2012). As students work with peers and adults, they adopt some of the learning strategies demonstrated and develop more skills in problem solving. This scaffolding creates a trickle-down effect of knowledge construction. In collaborative learning, students are afforded a myriad of enriching opportunities to explore perspectives that may differ from their own. These activities serve to create a self-awareness in the student of their responsibilities to a group, requiring them to self-monitor their activity (Lee, Tsai, Chai, & Koh, 2014).

The first stragtey to discuss is her use of effective groupings arrangements. For instance, students are part of a whole group lesson, small group, cooperative activity, and partner work. First, Ms. Sullivan starts the lesson with the whole group seated on the carpet. This is when she introduces both the content and language objectives, discusses the target vocabulary, and explicitly reviews the lesson targets using visuals and modeling. Next, students work in partner groups using a “think, pair, share” strategy. To illustrate, students work together in partner work to discuss how they solve problems. At the end of the lesson, students also work collaboratively in a small group to complete a graphic organizer to reflect on what they learned. These grouping strategies are supported by Lev Vygotsky’s Constructivism theory. According to Vygotsky, discourse and interaction are channels for learning

During my observation time in a kindergarten classroom, I have noticed that the students have a wide variety of abilities, attention spans, interests, and love for learning. When it comes to the teacher’s instructional strategies, she intentionally takes into consideration all of the above characteristics to make sure each student gets what they need to be most successful. During lessons students are engaged because of the teacher’s ability to implement interests of the student’s into things and giving them options. If an error occurs during a lesson, the teacher normally, allows for the student who got something wrong to try again, or to call on a friend to help them out. This way the students are still giving the answers and not the teacher just telling them the information. The teacher chooses a lot of small group instruction and centers where she can work with a small group, but then, easily monitor all the other groups to make sure they are on task and doing their work.