LESSON PLAN

Creating a lesson plan is an important aspect of instructional design. Lesson plans allow professors to create learning objectives, organize and deliver course content, and plan and prepare learning activities and materials. It also outlines the type of informal or formal assessment methods professors will use in their classrooms.

Accordind to Rome 2014, successful lesson plan addresses and integrates three key components:

Learning Objectives

Learning activities

Assessment to check for student understanding

A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Then, a teacher can design appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. Having a carefully constructed lesson plan for each 3-hour lesson allows teachers to enter the classroom with more confidence and maximizes their chance of having a meaningful learning experience with students.

Bibliography

Mike Rome April 13 2014  Good Lesson Planning

ASSESSMENT

Assessment and evaluation (A&E) utilizes data to understand and improve pedagogical innovations and academic programs (Surbhi S 2016). 

Typically, assessment efforts are divided into two types, formative or summative.

Formative assessment implies that the results will be used in the formation and revision process of an educational effort. Formative assessments are used in the improvement of educational programs.

Summative assessment is used for the purpose of documenting outcomes and judging value. It is used for providing feedback to instructors about the quality of a subject or program.

Assessment is defined as a process of appraising something or someone; Assessment is made to identify the level of performance of an individual.

Bibliography

Surbhi S July 7,  2016 Different between Assessment and Evaluation

EFFECTIVE LEARNING

What are some of the best ways to learn? Do you want to become a more effective and efficient learner? According t Cherry 2018, there are some tips to become a effective learner:

Memory Improvement BasicsThere are a number of different things that you can do to improve your memory. Basic tips such as improving your focus, avoiding cram sessions, and structuring your study time are a good place to start.

Keep Learning (and Practicing) New Things

if you are learning a new language, it is important to keep practicing the language in order to maintain the gains you have achieved.

Learn in Multiple Ways

Instead of just listening to a podcast, which involves auditory learning, find a way to rehearse the information both verbally and visually.

Becoming an effective and efficient student is not something that happens overnight, but putting a few of these tips into daily practice can help you get more out of your study time.

Bibliography

Kendra Cherry June 02, 2018 How to Become a more Effective Learner

TEACHING METHODS

There are a few fundamental teaching styles most educators tend to use(Gill 2013).

The Authority, or lecture style

The authority model is teacher-centered and frequently entails lengthy lecture sessions or one-way presentations. Students are expected to take notes or absorb information.

The Demonstrator, or coach style

The demonstrator retains the formal authority role by showing students what they need to know. The demonstrator is a lot like the lecturer, but their lessons include multimedia presentations, activities, and demonstrations.

The Facilitator, or activity style

Facilitators promote self-learning and help students develop critical thinking skills and retain knowledge that leads to self-actualization.

Every teacher has her or his own style of teaching. More and more teachers are adjusting their approach depending on their students’ learning needs.

Although it is not the teacher’s job to entertain students, it is vital to engage them in the learning process. Selecting a style that addresses the needs of diverse students at different learning levels.

Bibliography

Erick Gill January 5, 2013 Effective Teaching Methods

ANDROGOGY

WHAT IS ANDRAGOGY?

Typically, according to Graham 2017, andragogy means the understanding of the science and practice of adult learning. This contrasts to pedagogy, which is the understanding of the science and practice of children learning.

This fact makes the task of every leader of adult groups real, specific, and clear: Every adult group, of whatever nature, must become a laboratory of democracy, a place where people may have the experience of learning to live cooperatively. Attitudes and opinions are formed primarily in the study groups, work groups, and play groups with which adults affiliate voluntarily (Graham 2017).

As children mature into adults and gain more experience, certain things become intuitive. Their experience allows them to intuit things that they never would have understood previously.

Adults encounter problems, learn how to solve those problems, and then immediately apply their knowledge to those problems.
Every experience is a new opportunity for adults to learn. Additionally, people are always changing, which adults must learn to accept and even embrace.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Steve Graham, May 22, 2017 Easy to Understand Guide to Androgogy

HOMEWORK

Homework improves student achievement.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework "scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average."

Homework helps to reinforce learning and develop good study habits and life skills.

Everyone knows that practice makes perfect. As a student I can say that students typically retain only 50% of the information teachers provide in class, and they need to apply that information in order to truly learn it. 

Too much homework can be harmful.   

High-achieving high school students say the amount of homework they have to complete leads to sleep deprivation and other health problems such as headaches, exhaustion, weight loss, and stomach problems.

I am a student now, and I know that homework improves student achievement and allows for independent learning of classroom and life skills. Also, homework gives parents the opportunity to monitor their children's learning and see how they are progressing academically.

On the other hand, too much homework assignments may be harmful for students as it can increase stress, reduce leisure and sleep time, and lead to cheating. 

Bibliogrphy

Adam V. Maltese, Robert H. Tai, and Xitao Fan, "When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math," The High School Journal, 2012

FEEDBACK

What exactly is feedback? We hear the term all the time, but do we truly know what it is and why it is so important?

According to DeFranzo 2015, feedback is the helpful information or criticism about prior action or behavior from an individual, communicated to another individual (or a group) who can use that information to adjust and improve current and future actions and behaviors.

We must have clear that to use feedback helps to improve and enhance, whether an individual, group, business, business unit, company, or organization – and that information can be used to make better informed decisions. It also allows us to build and maintain communication with others. That means that feedback is not only used in classrooms.

I may say that feedback is important just for the following reasons:

Feedback can motivate

Feedback can actually motivate students to perform better. Students can also provide feeedback; they like to feel valued and appreciate being asked to provide feedback that can help formulate better decisions. 

Feedback can improve performance

Feedback is often mistaken for criticism. In fact, what is viewed as negative criticism is constructive criticism and is the best feedback that can help  to improve and increase performance.

Feedback is a tool for continued learning

Feedback will help the person who receives it to learn for his or her mistakes; this person will look ways for learning and putting to practice what the feeback said.

Bibliography

Susan E. DeFranzo July 1, 2015 Feedback Defined

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION

What is successful Technology Integration?

Technology integration is the use of technology resources such as computers, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, digital cameras, social media platforms and networks, software applications, the Internet, in daily classroom practices, and in the management of a school.

According to Berge 2018, successful technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is:



• Routine and transparent       
• Accessible and readily available for the task at hand
• Supporting the curricular goals, and helping the students to effectively reach their goals.

"Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions -- as accessible as all other classroom tools." -- National Educational Technology Standards for Students, International Society for Technology in Education

How we define technology integration can also depend on the kinds of technology available, how much access one has to technology, and who is using the technology. For instance, in a classroom with only one computer, learning is likely to remain teacher-centric, and integration will revolve around teacher needs, not necessarily student needs.

When technology integration is at its best, a child or a teacher doesn't stop to think that he or she is using a technology tool. Students are often more actively engaged in projects when technology tools are part of the learning process.

Bibliography

Tom Berge November 19, 2018 Technology integration, Edutopia

National Educational Technology Standards for Students, International Society for Technology in Education

TEACHING 21ST CENTURY SKILLS

 According to Kurshan 2017,  “21st century skills” refers to a range of abilities and competencies that go beyond what has traditionally been taught in the classroom, including problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity and innovation. 

Others define the term as “information literacy, media literacy, and information, communication and technology literacy.”👉

The science of learning can be distilled into some points(Rosefky 2016), all of which are about how students learn 21st century skills and how pedagogy can address new learning needs.

😉😉Make it relevant

To be effective, any curriculum must be relevant to students’ lives. Transmission and rote memorization of factual knowledge can make any subject matter seem irrelevant. Irrelevance leads to lack of motivation, which in turn leads to decreased learning.

👷👷Teach through the disciplines

Through disciplinary curriculum and instruction students should learn why the discipline is important, how experts create new knowledge, and how they communicate about it.

😌😌Teach students to learn how to learn

There is a limit to the skills, attitudes, and dispositions that students can learn through formal schooling. Therefore, educating them for the 21st century requires teaching them how to learn on their own. To do so, students need to be aware of how they learn.

👉👉Make full use of technology to support learning

Technology offers the potential to provide students with new ways to develop their problem solving, critical thinking, and communication skills, and transfer them to different contexts.

I have already recognized that teaching 21st century skills is not just about flinging more ideas or more tablets or more Smartboards at schools and students. I believe that the way to get better ideas is not just to ask one set of stakeholders their opinion about what might work well. Instead, better ideas require efforts to engage many stakeholders in an ongoing conversation about our fast-changing world and about what skills and competencies students will need to stake their claim to a place in the world.

Bibliography

Barbara Kurshan JULY 18, 2017 Teaching 21st Century Skills for 21st Century Success.

Anna Rosefsky March, 2016 Teaching and Learningh 21ºst Century Skills

LEARNING STYLES

What are learning styles?

The term learning styles is used to describe how learners interpret, organize, come to conclusions , and “store” information for further use. According to Frenzel 2018, the term learnig styles means that every student learns differently. Generally, an individual's learning style refers to the preferential way in which every student absorbs, processes, comprehends and retain information.


There are three common types of learning (Cesar Villeda), visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners.

Visual learner

Visual learners prefer the use of images, maps, to access and understand the new iformation.

           

Auditory learner

Auditory learners best understand new content through listening and speaking in activities such as lectures and group disscussions.

Kinesthetic learners

Kinesthetic learners understand information through tactile representation and practicing.

                                                    

Despite the variation in categories, the fundamental idea behind learning styles is the same: that each of us has a specific learning style, and we learn best when information is presented to us in this style. For example, visual learners would learn any subject matter best if given graphically or through other kinds of visual images, kinesthetic learners would learn more effectively if they could involve bodily movements in the learning process, and so on.

Bibliography

• Sam Frenzel, September 13, 2018. All Students Are Created Equally and Differently. Vanderbilt University.
• Cesar Villeda, November 2, 2018. Learning Styles (flipgrid video)