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Strategies for Sustaining Students' Interest and Participation

In this section, I will be reflecting on the strategies sustaining students’ interest and participation. Teaching strategies are methods that are used to help students learn the desired learning objectives and are able to develop achievable goals. It identifies the different available learning method to enable teachers to develop the right strategy to teach the targeted group.

 

 

When I was in SK Seafield 3, one common strategy that I observed from all the classes I been in was repetition. Repetition is an instructional strategy used to maintain information in working memory (Driscoll, 2000). With maintenance rehearsal, repetition is used to retain information for a certain period of time. However, for information to reach long-term memory, maintenance rehearsal is insufficient. While repetition may lead to successfully retaining over-learned material such as spelling words, it cannot ensure that more complex and meaningful information will be stored in long-term memory. Since it was the lower ability classes that I been in, in my opinion, the teachers try teaching as much as possible where the level of understanding of the students met. They do not always follow what has planned by the standard scheme of work.

 

 

Besides repetition, I also observed in two classes the use of organizational techniques where the students are given a heading of a mind map and they had to collaboratively discuss the topic. For example in Pn. Hafni’s class, the students were instructed to  discuss in groups of three or four about the groupings of “wants” and “needs” from a list of given items. Before carrying out this activity, she gave some example for the students to get the gist of what this activity is all about. Then, while they were doing the activity, she would walk around to provide adequate assistance for the students if they get lost. On the other hand, when Pn. Chin relieved a class, she came up with an instant activity where similarly she asked the students to brainstorm ideas on ‘things sold in a night market’ and the students individually and was given the permission to discuss. While they were carrying out this activity I went around and realized that some of them were just listing the vegetables or fruits they know of. I then taught them that they could categorize them by chunking all the fruits into one and naming that category ‘fruits’.  Organizational techniques assist the learner in organizing information to be learned (Smith & Ragan, 1999). Clustering and chunking by categories, using graphic organizers, generating expository and narrative structures, and using advance organizers are all organizational techniques.

 

 

Pn. Chin using mind mapping and presentation

As said previously, I was privileged enough to be given thirteen students to be taught during the placement. One of the lessons that I planned was related to what they have learned about the essential things needed by one when they had lost everything in a fire. But when they were doing that activity, I realized that most of the students did not know the words they were writing into their exercise book, so, I made a lesson where the students will be given a picture and a set if the letter which made up the word of the picture. They had to figure out what their picture is and then spell it out using the set of given letters with the help of their teammates. Imagery is the use of pictures, illustrations, graphics or simply instructions to form images related to text material (Driscoll, 2000). Imagery is usually easiest with concrete concepts, but can be useful for learners in developing a visual to concretely represent a more abstract concept (Smith & Ragan, 1999). I also observed the use of imagery during one of Pn. Hafni’s lesson. The topic of that lesson was ‘Spending Wisely’ and the students were required to read a text about it in their textbook, but knowing their proficiency level, my mentor made an activity out of it. She broke down the passage into six parts and typed it out onto A4 papers respectively. Each part of the passage also matched a picture which my mentor had printed out. Instead of merely reading the passage, the students then had to voluntarily go to the front and pick the first part of the passage and so on. If any of them was having any trouble figuring out which part comes next, Pn. Hafni would help out by showing the new next picture and they would match the segment explaining that picture.

 

 

The use of illustration in teaching

Learning activities are not the only strategy that it out there that can be used to sustain students’ interest and participation. An effective teacher would and should also use positive cues and reinforcements as their strategies to sustain students’ interest and participation. It is important to consider what the children already know and can do and the learning goals for the specific situation.

 

 

Below are some of the teaching strategies I noticed to have worked:

  1. Acknowledge what a student does or say. Let the student know that we have notices by giving positive attention, sometimes through comments, sometimes through just sitting nearby and observing. (“Thank you for your help Ben.””you found another way to do addition”)

  2. Model attitudes, ways of approaching problems, and behavior towards others, showing students rather than just telling them. (“Hmm, that did not work and I need to think about why”) (“I am sorry Alicia, I missed part of what you said. Please tell me again”)

  3. Encourage persistence and effort rather than just praising and evaluating what the student has done. (“You are thinking of lots of words to describe the dog in the story. Let us keep going!”)

 

 

I have to point out that encourage persistence does help students gain interest and are willing to participate more in activities. I say this because I have observed this working during my placement at Charles La Trobe College, Melbourne. Students of age five to seven were in the class I was assigned to. They were learning about the phonics ‘oo’ and were asked to provide an example of words which had ‘oo’ in it. Students then started throwing out words and as they went on, their teacher would say “that is a good word” or “wow that is a big word, Nate.” By listening to these, students get encouraged and would try harder and harder to get good words as well.

 

 

Here we can see the strategy Mr Thomson used to teach '-ng' words

Reference

 

Driscoll, M. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

 

Smith, P., and Ragan, T. (1999). Instructional design (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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