Activity 3.5 Minimum
criteria and learner-centred teaching
Part
A: Using the minimum criteria to analyse the inclusivity of Video Clip of
Secondary English Class
The
lesson began with students dictating short paragraphs to one another, thus
encouraging them to speak. Students exchanged roles, The teacher also prepared
the students to write article in the magazine. A student without arms was
motivated to learn to use his legs to write.These classroom practices are
geared towards raising the students’ self esteem.
The
teacher regularly checked on the understanding of the students. The teacher is
being observant.
The
teacher exhibited flexibility by using brainstorming to involve as many of the
students as possible in learning; making students to exchange roles; and making
students to dictate paragraphs to one another while observing the activity.
Part B
Now think again about a lesson you have
taught or observed recently. Think about each of the criteria above and
identify two or three ways in which you could have made the lesson more learner
centred.
The
last lesson which I observed was during the field-based monitoring (FBM)
for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Northern
Education Initiative Plus (NEI Plus) Activity was conducted to collect data on the reasons
behind the low Early Grade Reading (EGR) ratings of pupils as seen in the 2018
Mid-line EGR Assessment.
It
was an English lesson for differentiating between Big letter W and Small letter
w. The lesson began with teacher writing the topic on the chalk board and in
recapped with the students on previous lesson, and then went straight to teach
the current topic not minding if the students showed any understanding of the
previous lesson (i.e, the teacher was not observant).
The
way the teacher was following the teacher’s manual showed that he too did not
actually know how to deliver the lesson with enthusiasm in order to capture the
attention of the students, an evidence of the teacher’s low self esteem. The teacher
merely wrote the letters on the board with no pupils’ participation. A teacher
with low self esteem has no skill to raise pupils’ self esteem.
There
was no
evidence of flexibility because the teacher’s eyes were glued to the
teaching material and the chalk board.
At
the debriefing meeting with the teacher, it was pointed out that:
Though
there is already a teacher’s teaching material with lesson notes, the teacher
could make the lesson more participatory and interesting for the pupils by
asking them to write the letters in their notes individually (flexibility), while he goes round to
inspect (observation). He could then ask pupils to volunteer to write on
the chalk board thereby building their self esteem.
Back to my experience of feeling excluded in
IIEP, If the Atlas GIS had an English
version of the Manual, and I was given adequate time to study it, I could have
felt better learning by plotting the graph on the Nigeria map by myself. Though I did a good job
with the narratives, I felt very inadequate not being able to use the package.
