Motivation to be a Teacher!

It was my first time to join the Motivation class with Ms. Lydia. Yes, Ms. Lydia is the lecturer for Motivation and Management of Students for Effective Learning (MMSEL) course. When I entered the class, I was curious what we will learn about motivation? Something like Educational Psychology course or what? I want to know more about that. And actually on the beginning, Ms. Lydia leads us to think what make us come and join her class. Of course I want to know more about Motivation. As we know that motivation is so abstract and difficult for me to build my motivation by myself. That’s we called intrinsic motivation, involvement as a means to an end. But, we also need other people to build our motivation and we call it extrinsic motivation.

I’m interest with the question from Ms. Lydia about why do you want to be a teacher? Do you know my reason? Nothing reason in my mind! Actually before I entered SSE, I don’t really want to be a teacher even though I love teaching. It’s just because I don’t like to stand in front of many people and to be on the spot light. After I did school experience in some schools and learn about pedagogical skill in SSE, I can know that to be a teacher was interesting and so fun! We meet many students that have different characteristics of learning. I am not only teaching the students, but I can learn many things from them. Being a teacher make me feel “useful” for others. And I admit that I love teaching and I love being a teacher! 🙂

If I have to choose teachers whom I admire most, I will choose one teacher from movie “Taree Zameen Par”. The teacher in this movie shows the best care to one student that has dyslexia. That student study in general school, not special school. So, that student feels difficult to understand the lesson. Luckily, the teacher really shows care, always try to teach and motivate him until he gets his expertise in drawing lessons. What a great teacher I think. The personality of the teacher like that can motivate me to be a great teacher.

After sharing moment, we discuss about theory of Motivation in group. There are 4 theorist of Motivation, that are Behavioral, Humanistic, Sociocultural, Cognitive and Social cognitive. My group get Sociocultural theory. This theory say about “all in this together”, how history and society impact the way of humans develop and learn. From this theory, we can apply how the students increase their motivation from the society, especially motivation and support from their family, school, and environment. So, build the motivation of students is so important for learning process and I conclude that MMSEL course is important for me as candidate teacher. Do you know why? Because the students have different motivation in learning and in this course, I can learn how to build up motivation of the students. Thank you for great first meeting, ms. Lydia. 🙂

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How to Make a Good Lesson Plan?

Creating good lesson plans can be the most difficult task for new teachers, right? When we create a lesson plan, we need to developing effective lessons that engage the students, and foster a desire for continued learning.

A Good Lesson Plan should have to:

1. Review the information that will be presented to make sure you have a clear understanding of what needs to be taught. Remember this is the first time some of your students have been presented with this information. You need to be the expert in the classroom. We understand about the standard competence, basic competence, and Content material. We need to determine the goals, objectives and indicator for the learning process. So the teacher and students can focus to the indicator that has determined based on standard competence and basic competence.

2. Familiar with the lesson content, brainstorm several ways the information relates to students. Is there a new information about the topic? For the learning process, not only students that will learn about the material, but also the teacher. The teacher should to know what the students need and Does the topic relate to certain aspects of their learning process? You can connect the new information with students’ prior knowledge. So we make the lesson content to be interesting activity in the lesson plan that can recall students prior knowledge.

3. Now it’s time for actual presentation. Take step two and create a colorful, meaningful introduction to the lesson. You could show a clip from a movie or play a familiar song. You could even dress in character to enhance the presentation.

4. Through lecture, demonstration, etc. you will present the information. You should know the students age and how to gain attention from the students. We can use the interesting thing in the learning process. Maybe, we can use movie or other activities that can make students feel enjoy and feel not bored.

5. Next, guide the students as they practice the concepts that were presented. We should to conduct the activities that can guide students into the problems and how to solve it. The problem can be related to their real life, so the students not only focus to the content material, but also to the practice.

6. As you close the lesson quickly review the information through some form of creative, authentic questioning.
7. Homework should be given only to reinforce the concepts presented during the lesson.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5230549_write-good-lesson-plan.html

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The New Digital Classroom :)

What is new digital classroom?

New digital classroom !

Learning from technological tools that can improve English language, science and digital studies. You can learn from the video that like a digital classroom.
We can find the new information from the video from the digital classroom. Reading, writing, and also thinking ! That activities is like about the learning classroom right?

Maybe you can visit this link:

The New Digital Classroom

In these videos,you can leading experts share strategies to transform learning and instruction in the 21st Century using inquiry, collaboration, technology, and more. Learn how to prepare students to succeed and thrive in the 21st Century world in which they live, learn, and work.

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Hands on, Minds on, Authentic Learning in Mathematics

When considering the mathematics curriculum, many people focus on computational skills and believe that they constitute the full set of competencies that students must have in mathematics.

To improve their knowledge in Learning Mathematics, the people (students) not only learn from teacher’s explanation and doing some exercises, but also learning by doing and understanding. Learning does not mean simply receiving and remembering a transmitted message.

When educators begin to see learning as knowledge construction, they change their thinking about curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and also developing more powerful approaches to connecting thinking in mathematics and designing more mathematically instructional learning experiences. Learning experiences are:

1. Hands-on,
involving students in really doing mathematics – experimenting first-hand with physical objects in the environment and having concrete experience before learning abstract mathematical concepts.

Students find new knowledge from their activities

Students learning by doing. Based on the research at the University of Chicago,

“This study highlights the importance of motor learning even in nonmotor tasks, and suggests that we may be able to lay the foundation for new knowledge just by telling learners how to move their hands,” writes lead author and psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow in the article “Gesturing Gives Children New Ideas About Math”.

The students learn Mathematics with gesture. They are not still stuck on their seat when they were given problems. On each problem during the lesson, they were told to repeat the words or words/gestures they had been taught. Students can extract the information of the lesson from their gesture.
So the students can be active in the class and they can learn effectively. Beside of that, they can find something different that so interesting in the learning classroom.

2. Minds-on,

Thinking about thinking

focusing on the core concepts and critical thinking processes needed for students to create and re-create mathematical concepts and relationships in their own minds
Students is thinking about thinking. Students improve their thinking and try to connect with their prior knowledge to get the new information. Students analyzes and describes the components of Mathematical concepts. So, the students can develop their Mathematical thought.

3. Authentic learning, allowing students to explore, discover, discuss, and meaningfully construct mathematical concepts and relationships in contexts that involve real-world problems and projects that are relevant and interesting to the learner.
Students construct their thinking about Mathematical concept and then create a concept in their mind. They can explore their knowledge and try to solve the real life problems to get something new about the concepts.

Students discussion

You can read more, in this link:
http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/math/ma300.htm
http://news.uchicago.edu/news.php?asset_id=1556
http://www.wiziq.com/tutorial/2290-Mathematics-mind-s-development

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How to Solve Problem Solving in Mathematics?

Learning Mathematics is not only receive the information from teacher and do the exercises from the textbook, But also solve the problems that can improve student’s higher order thinking.

Based on the core of NCTM Mathematics framework, the core concept of NCTM Mathematics framework is that students develop mathematical power through problem solving, communication, reasoning, and connections. Then, how to develop mathematical power through problem solving? There are 4 steps to solve the problem that needs higher order thinking.

Problem Solving Plan has 4 Steps:

1. Understand the problem carefully :

students think the problem critically

Students should be able to understand mathematics concepts, think the relevance between concepts and apply the concepts into the problem. Some students have difficulty making meaningful connections within and across mathematics experiences.To understand the problem, we must have to read the problem carefully and then Underline clue words. Ask yourself if you’ve seen a problem similar to this one. If so, what is similar about it? and what did you need to do? you can relate the problem with your prior and previous knowledge that relevance with your problems. and then we think what do you need to find out.

2. Design a mathematical model and Planning the solution:

Try to find the answer

This is the way students communicate mathematically, providing opportunities to explain their reasoning, and to listen to and understand the reasoning of others. So, the students can be easier to solve the problem. After that, we can define the plan and strategies to solve the problem. We can try out the strategies using formulas, simplifying, use sketches, guess and check, look for a pattern, etc. If your strategy doesn’t work, it may lead you to an ‘aha’ moment and to a strategy that does work.
This is the example to solve the problem using the graph: klik disini

3. Solve:
After we make a planning the strategies to solve the problem, you can use the strategies to solve the problem.

4. Reflect:

The answer is right and reasonable? hmm..

This part is critical. Look over your solution. Did you answer the question? Are you sure? Did you answer using the language in the question with the same units?
You have to think critically to reflect the solution of the the problem. We have to make sure that the answer is true and reasonable.

With the 4 steps above, Students expected to improve their higher order thinking to solve the problem. How incorporating problem solving in Mathematics curriculum provides the context in which student’s work together and communicate with one another. 🙂

You can learn more about problem solving in this link:
http://math.about.com/od/1/a/problemsolv.htm
http://problemsolving.p4tkmatematika.org/

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A Teacher as an Instructor VS an Instructor

teacher give instruction to the students

We know that the teacher is people who teach the students and the instructor is people who give the instruction. But, we can decide the teacher and an instructor like that. And we should know about the relation between the teacher and the instructor. I’m not saying what’s better, but we should know about the differences about the teacher and instructor. Sometimes, we think that teacher and the instructor are the same because teacher also doing the same thing like the instructor that is an explanation about material.

I think the teacher as an instructor is also as an instructor because teacher gives the explanation to their students and do effort to give an understanding to their students. But we must still remember that teacher as an instructor in not only gives the explanation to their students, but also make some activities that can construct his/her mind about the instruction of material.

The word “instructor” is very basic. They teach, and then go away until the next class and that’s it.
But “teacher” as an instructor show a deeper relationship and deeper connection about the material and students understanding. But students still can be more active to think and give the opinion on the discussion or something like that. The instructor is about the teacher who gives the explanation or teaches the students about the material. An instructor will not give the chance to the students to be more
active in the class.

Teacher and students will be active in the class

We can see the different between the teacher as an instructor and pure as an instructor. A teacher will give an instruction about explanation of material. But, teacher also gives an understanding to their students and gives the chance to their students to be more active, give the opinion in the class, and improve their higher order thinking.

The instructor has a different with the teacher. An instructor will be teacher centered. The students can’t improve their thinking about thinking because the instructor is center of learning, not the students. I think, learning with “teacher” as an instructor can be more effective than learning with an “instructor”.

How about your opinion about that? Do you agree with teacher as an instructor?

Don’t be hesitate to give some comments about that, okay.. thank you 🙂

Reference: http://www.martialedge.net/forum/martial-arts-instructors-and-teachers/re:difference-between-a-teacher-and-an-instructor?/

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Teacher as Facilitator, Motivator and Inspiration

In general, there are still many one-way system of learning between teacher and students, called “Teacher centered learning” (TCL). Learning systems such as this can break the liveliness and students creativity in the classroom. Actually system teacher-centered learning (TCL) system must be balanced with student-centered learning (SCL). But it would be more effective if learning is more centered on student activeness in class, otherwise known as “Student centered learning”. Teachers only act as a facilitator, motivator and inspiration for students.

1. Teacher as Facilitator
learning system which is the “Teacher Centered Learning” (TCL) will be limited to the role of teacher as facilitator. The task here is only to guide teachers and guide the students to be more active in class in creativity and develop existing skills in students. Not only give them with a variety of lessons that can decrease student creativity. A teacher should involve students in learning activities in class, either in the form of presentations, question and answer, discussion, or other activities.

2. Teacher as motivator
Teachers gives motivation and spirit to their students that can build the confidence from the students. A teacher as did not give a punishment if their student made a mistake in answering or doing exercise. But the teacher will continue to support and motivate students to repair the mistake. Teachers must be able to build the character their students through a variety of activities that can enhance student creativity in building self-motivation in students. Teachers should always be constructive to adopt innovative new methods to motivate students to learn the children by placing their students as a center of learning, meaning the extent to which the material presented is not depends on the teachers and the curriculum but it depends on the students.

3. Teacher as inspiration
Teachers not only as a student assistant in the classroom, but also acts as a friend who can provide inspiration to their students. Here, teachers have an important role in building strong character in their students as a teacher trying to construct Therefore students thought the teacher should be an inspiration which can be an inspiration for the others.

Based on Student Centered Learning, the teachers should be as a facilitator, motivator, and inspiration for students that can construct students creativity and their understanding.

Reference:
http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2009/10/10/menjadi-guru-yang-konstruktif—bagian-2/
http://www.pelitakarawang.com/2010/07/konstruktif-dan-berkarakter_21.html

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Welcome! ~

Hello !
Let’s we learn together about education in our life..
Education is very important things in our life..
We can share it together in this blog 🙂

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