Good learning

 Good learning is both effective and engaging. There are many ways that we can use in the class, to make learning effective and engaging such as:

Hands on activities / providing variety / giving opportunities to self-assess and self-adjust / limiting fear and providing a safe environment / setting time for reflection.

First way is hands on activities, hand-on means to involve the students in the learning process; so you are not only giving the students the information, but they are participating in the learning and they are involved in the content. By doing so I'm letting my students have an active rule rather than a passive one. For example, if I want to explain to my students a lesson about flowering plants, instead of coming to the class and spending all the time talking about different types of flowers and their structures. Simply I can take my students to the field, divide them into different groups and give them some names of flowers and ask them to bring information about them, about their colors, and about their floral leaves (sepals, petals, stamen, and carpels) and later on they have to determine by themselves whether the flowers they worked on are complete or incomplete. So in this case learning is more effective and students are more engaged. Another example, if I am teaching my students about planting steps, instead of showing them pictures only, I can take my students to the field, divide them into groups and let them learn about planting by experience, they can ask the farmers there, or they can follow some steps to plant something. In this way students can learn or notice things, me as a teacher don’t think about it before. So in this case students are able to construct and think about the information, and they are able to understand the objectives of the lesson very well and they will never forget it. Moreover they will be more engaged and they will try to think and follow me all the time.

The second way is proving variety. It means to provide variety in methods, tasks, and grouping. And this means instead of following only the traditional way of teaching, and instead of using the same method all the time, I can use a variety of methods. One of the methods is using technological tools. For example if I want to explain to my students a lesson about the solar system, so instead of following the traditional way of teaching and talking all the time and trying to describe for the students how the solar system looks like, simply I can show them a video on the net about the solar system, and this help both the teacher and the students, help the teacher to explain the lesson in very clear way and help the students to understand very well. So varying the use of technological tools is one of the methods that can increase the student’s motivation, which in return increases their interest and engagement and make the learning process more effective.  Another thing is that I try to use a variety of learning strategies inside my classroom. I try to use collaborative learning. For example, I ask students to work in groups, to work with peers, or maybe to collect data by going around and asking people, or by filling up a questionnaire. Also I try to ask them some challenging questions, and try to make class discussions. All of this really contributes to more effective and engaging learning.

 Moreover, I try to use variety of tasks for example I can post an assessing question to my students on the google classroom and open it to the students to see each other’s answers and be able to reply to each other’s so that if one of the students have certain misunderstanding he will cover it and deal with it.  This will give the opportunity for the students to share their ideas and knowledge about certain concepts, which in turn make the learning process more effective and engaging.

The third way is using self-assessment. In self-assessment, students are going to reflect on their own personal test. So students are going to identify their weak points and they are going to set targets for future learning. For example, I can give the students rubric and ask them to assess their own work, like to put a check mark on the points that they did correctly and X on the wrong points. By doing so I am helping my students, especially those students that don't get high grades in the assessments, to be more motivated and more engaged. Moreover, self-assessments make the learning process more effective, as the students are knowing their weak points and trying to set a target to improve their learning.

The fourth way is providing a safe environment for taking risks. As a teacher I have to help my students learn from their mistakes. For example, if one of the students fails in something or makes a certain mistake, I have to encourage him to learn from his mistake, i try to avoid using negative feedback so that in this case the student will feel safe to share his ideas or answers also the next time. So, in this case the students will respect the teacher more, will feel confident and courage to share and express their ideas in front of the class, and students will learn to respect the mistakes among each other’s, so really providing safe environment can help us a lot to increase the engagement of our students and to increase the effectiveness of our learning.

  The fifth way is setting time for reflection, for example when i finish the explanation of certain idea, I can ask the the students to reflect on what they understand from the topic in front of the class, this reflection will help me as teacher to know some misunderstandings the students may have and try to solve it, or either the students can reply to each other’s and correct their mistakes or misunderstandings, so this way help me a lot to have effective and engaging learning process.