Identifying Appropriate Instructional Activities and My Own Classroom Experience as A Teacher

Identifying Appropriate Instructional Activities and My Own Classroom Experience as A Teacher

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

Identifying required and appropriate instructional activities is often challenging and crucial while designing the instructional process (Brown and Green,2016). It enables teachers to plan what should happen in the classroom so that effective learning takes place. Reflecting on my classroom experience as a teacher, I believe the two questions by Brown and Green (2016, pp. 132-133) that I should ask myself are:

•                 How to make students learn the content? and

•                 Should the learning environment include learner, knowledge, assessment, or community, or should be a combination of all?

 

First Prompt and My Classroom Experience as a Teacher

To address my first selected question, “How to make students learn the content?” by Brown and Green (2016, pp. 132-133) before commencing my teaching, I reflect on how should I be presenting the content to my students than planning for what content I should explain. I believe that I should constantly focus my delivery on making connections with other interesting content. My conscience always says that teaching isn’t simply the teaching content for academic excellence but it should be something that facilitates learners through varied learning processes to make them lifelong learners (Moss, 2017). In fulfilling my belief, mostly I follow Gagne's (1992) nine events of instruction in my classroom to help students learn the content through constructive activities and strategies. Mostly, my students are engaged in creating intuitive thinking whereby they critically analyze any incomplete evidence using their cognitive skills and make the learning systematic. His nine events of instructions guide me as a checklist before planning the lesson as per the steps provided (Emerald Works Limited, 2022).

As per my classroom experience, first, I prepare my students for learning by gaining their attention and informing them about the learning objectives. I then engage them in recollecting their prior knowledge about the content that they are going to learn or study. I believe that engaging students to recall their prior knowledge can positively influence their knowledge acquisition and boost their higher-order thinking and cognitive problem-solving skills (Hailikari, Katajavuori, and Ylanne, 2008). In the next phase, I present the stimulus to the class. Obviously, I make the content into chunks and make students work in groups so that learning becomes more effective through collaborative learning. When my students are engaged in their tasks, I provide them with instructional support and guide them to learn from newly gained knowledge. Finally, I make them present their work. Sometimes I ask questions to check how they have learned during the process. When they present their work, I usually provide them with constructive feedback to better their learning. Any forms of evaluation I conduct in my classroom are based upon peer evaluation and feedback systems as they not only keep them engaged but also learn from each other. Finally, I assess myself on the effectiveness of my lesson using the rubrics that I have designed to test them through the unit test I conduct in the classroom and ask them to come up with reflection writing based on the lesson learned. In doing so, I am creating learning opportunities for my students, not that I lecture and lecture. Students learn best the content by getting involved themselves.

Second Prompt and My Classroom Experience as a Teacher

To address my second selection, “Should the learning environment include learner, knowledge, assessment, or community, or should be a combination of all?” by Brown and Green (2016, pp. 132-133), I should say my learning environment combines all four learning environments. I believe that to make my teaching effective I should align all those learning environments because simply engaging students through problem-solving and promoting thinking skills by making my teaching learned-centered isn’t enough, it should also be knowledge-centered. Well-organized knowledge, I believe is essential for thinking properly so that problem-solving becomes effective. To test the knowledge, assessment plays a vital role because assessment is necessary to evaluate students’ progress in knowledge whereby, I can also guide them through necessary feedback and suggestions and the room to revisit, revise, and learn. Thus, I see my students engaged actively in the classroom through collaboration, cooperative activities, and learning by doing during the learning process through interactive manners. 

As per my classroom experience, I follow the STAR legacy cycle (IRIS Center, 2021) to bind them all and make teaching and learning effective in my classroom. In following it, first, I try to challenge my learners by organizing a case-based scenario based on the content that I am going to teach them. In doing so, I inquire by asking questions and introducing the content gradually. Here, I brainstorm firstly to gain their initial knowledge so that I can generate some background ideas about what they already know about the challenge that is put in place to discuss. Soon after that, I make them explore to further understand the challenge in a deeper sense by engaging them to either interview their peers or by browsing the internet. I believe it would make them understand the ideas that they initially rejected. Later, they are engaged in compiling summary reports following the writing process and go for peer evaluation for necessary feedback and suggestions. Finally, I assess their work for final suggestions and feedback. It helps them to understand their work based on what they have understood and known after the activity. Finally, I ask them to write a reflection based on the lesson they have taken.

To conclude, we know that the main purpose of teaching is to boost learning in the classroom through quality dissemination of the content using appropriate and variety of activities and strategies that make students think, reflect, and make learning out of it. The students should be encouraged to participate so that they gain knowledge, skills, or insight into the content meaningfully (Brown and Green,2016). In a nutshell, any teaching should provide ample learning opportunities to students through discussion, collaboration, research, etc. so that it becomes fun and engaging. All these happen if we can mindfully plan the instructional design by identifying appropriate instructional activities during the design process and making the learning environment conducive and effective.

 

References

Emerald Works Limited. (2022). Gagne's Nine Levels of Learning. Mind Tools. https://www.mindtools. com/pages/article/gagne.htm

Gagne, R. M., Briggs, L. J., & Wager, W. W. (1992). Principles of instructional design. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Brown, A. H. & Green, T. D. (2016). The essentials of instructional design: Connecting fundamental principles with process and practice. Routledge. https://ikhsanaira.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/the-essential-of-instructional-design.pdf

Hailikari, T., Katajavuori, L., and Ylanne. S. L. (2008). The Relevance of Prior Knowledge in Learning and Instructional Design. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630138/#:~:text=Prior%20knowledge%20has%20long%20been,influencing%20learning%20and%20student%20achievement.&text=The%20amount%20and%20quality%20of,order%20cognitive%20problem%2Dsolving%20skills.

Moss, G. (2017). Central Purpose of Teaching. https://teaching.usask.ca/articles/central-purpose-of-teaching.php#:~:text=Teaching%20aids%20the%20learning%20not,and%20physical%20attributes%20and%20limitations.