My Journey to be a Reflective Teacher

Using direct instruction as a teaching strategy means teacher plays a central role and has direct influence over what, when and how students learn. This strategy is not appropriate for a teacher who is lack of confidence and not well prepared. Students can easily become bored and lose interest. For students to learn from a direct instruction, they have to be able to listen actively and see the logic in the structure of the lesson. Since not all students capable of perceiving and gaining knowledge this way, teacher has to cater the different needs and abilities. In addition, direct instruction involves a lot of one-way communication, opportunities to gain students' feedback is limited. Some students might have developed misconceptions.

I believed the real challenge to successfully implement this strategy depends heavily on self-confidence and skill to project myself as an educated and energetic teacher in front of class. In order to do that, I must prepare myself with a detailed structured lesson plan. For example, start the lesson with a question to prompt learners to think about particular issue, provide an overview, and tell what outcomes students will be achieving in the lesson. I also need to engage students by using techniques like probing and using student ideas. Furthermore at a certain point, I have to summarise and put emphasis on important information. It will definitely help students to take note and ensure they know what exactly they are learning about.

Whole class discussion enables teacher to control the learner activities and maintain focus on the lesson. It requires the teacher to explain why students are being asked to engage in discussion. If teacher fails to do so, students will think their participation is unnecessary and learning process will be hindered. For discussion to be successful, students are requested to state their ideas clearly, respect others' view, and respond appropriately. These mean students have to both listen and think during participation.


This teaching strategy helps students develop communication skills but at the same time potentially causes trouble. It is easy for talkative students to dominate discussion and either influence or annoy other students. As Killen (2012) stated in his book, students' contribution is sometimes judgmental rather than positive and constructive. This may lead into competitive emotional battlegrounds instead of productive discussion.


My strategy is to present different perspectives through media or presentation to make sure students are ready for discussion. I would rather carefully integrated discussions with other teaching strategies than using it as a whole lesson. The reason is that I found 2 main points which is really hard for me to refrain from. First, I need to contribute without giving students the impression that my opinion is more important. Second, I must able to hold myself from guiding the discussion too narrowly towards some predetermined conclusion. These will certainly help learners see that their ideas are valued, and that means a huge responsibility for me. To handle the undesired situation, “Let’s pause for a minute and consider where the discussion is now heading”. That statement I would like to use to refocus students on the purpose of discussion.

Problem solving enables students to develop the ability to make judgment and emphasizes the importance of explanation. Based on Savoie & Hughes’ experience, this teaching strategy helps to make learners responsible for shaping and directing their own learning. Yet for students are learning independently, they may acquire misconceptions or incomplete knowledge. In group, learners can identify flaws in their thinking and trying to understand the real concept. However, it is easy for less able or less confident students to be dominated by capable student. Another issue comes when students are discouraged to discover answers due to lack of interest or accustomed to their teacher being the main source of knowledge.

I am sure that motivation is a key element in problem solving. Excellent application of problem solving is best exemplified by my classmate which students are asked to find the best place to have a picnic. That means I will need to prepare a problem which is relevant to real life to engage students. I have another idea such as choose which dog is the most suitable for family with particular background. I will provide information about dogs and story of the family, encourage students to read problem several times and explain the important feature. Furthermore, I will pose questions and ask for clarification to help students understand and also enable me to monitor them.

Illustrate problem solving as picture above may be the best way to tell them that there are so many alternatives to solve problem so they respect any contribution and willing to discuss with others. I think this strategy is ideal to use as a conjunction with cooperative learning. Learning climate in which learners can freely discuss with one another what they understand support this idea.

Role play is learning activity in which one or more students are required to act or pretend to be someone other than themselves. The application of knowledge in real situations enable student deal with complex social interaction. Since it involves students because of the realism, it is usually time consuming and students may forget about their learning. The disadvantages from role play comes from some students who:

To successfully implement role play, I have to prepare the resource material, select carefully students who are confident for early attempt and  less confident to support roles, explain learning outcome for students participating directly and indirectly (observe, note taking), and then brief them on their role.

"Role-playing can be hard work for the instructor, both in preparation and in execution, but the work tends to pay off in terms of student motivation and accomplishment"

Cases offer students opportunities to grapple with issues, problems, an dilemmas in ways that are challenging. As a result, students have chance to foster their critical thinking.
 

"Most students are inductive reasoners, which means

that they learn better from examples"

~Dunne, D. and Brooks, K. (2004) Teaching with Cases~