Reflective Teaching

REFLECTIVE TEACHING

 

INTRODUCTION

Since the purpose of reflective teaching is to focus on one’s own teaching, the strategies for reflections are best made by personal preference rather than mandated. Many schools of education incorporate reflective teaching strategies as a means for student teachers to learn how and why they teach. While this is a valuable tool for student teachers, reflective teaching strategies can also be used by teachers in the classroom who wish to enhance their teaching skills.

CONCEPT MAP

A concept map is a type of graphic organizer used to help students organize and represent knowledge of a subject. Concept maps begin with a main idea (or concept) and then branch out to show how that main idea can be broken down into specific topics.

Benefits of Concept Mapping

Concept mapping serves several purposes for learners:

• Helping students brainstorm and generate new ideas
• Encouraging students to discover new concepts and the propositions that connect them
• Allowing students to more clearly communicate ideas, thoughts and information
• Helping students integrate new concepts with older concepts
• Enabling students to gain enhanced knowledge of any topic and evaluate the information

Concept Maps in Education

When created correctly and thoroughly, concept mapping is a powerful way for students to reach high levels of cognitive performance. A concept map is also not just a learning tool, but an ideal evaluation tool for educators measuring the growth of and assessing student learning

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members

The term was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in the 1953 book Applied Imagination.

Following these two principles were his four general rules of brainstorming, established with intention to:

• Reduce social inhibitions among group members.
• Stimulate idea generation.
• Increase overall creativity of the group.

 Types of brainstorming

·         Speed storming

·         Brain Writing

·         Reverse Brainstorming or Reverse Thinking

·         Content Brainstorming Key

·         Focus Group

·         Team Brainstorming

PROBLEM SOLVING

Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems. It is a mental process that involves discovering, analyzing and solving problems.  The best strategy for solving a problem depends largely on the unique situation.

STEPS IN PROBLEM SOLVING

In order to correctly solve a problem, it is important to follow a series of steps.

1.     Identifying the Problem

2.     Defining the problem

3.     Forming a strategy

4.     Organizing information

5.     Allocating Resources

6.     Monitoring Progress

7.     Evaluating the result

JOURNALING

 It is a teaching strategy. Journaling is used in academia as a means of aiding refection, depending students understanding and stimulating critical thing. The value of Journaling in improving student learning outcomes cannot be overemphasized.

            Points that you found especially interesting in your reading, and would like to follow up in more detail. Questions that come up in your mind, because of points made in material you read on this topic.

It is simply a summary of the course material.

PORTFOLIO

          A student portfolio is a systematic collection of student work and related material that depicts a student’s activities, accomplishments, and achievement in one or more school subjects. The collection should include evidence of student reflection and self evaluation, guidelines for selecting the portfolio content and criteria for judging the quality of the work. The goal is to help students assemble portfolios that illustrate their talents, represent their writing capabilities, and tell their stories of school achievement.

TWO TYPES OF PORTFOLIO

Process and product portfolio are the major type of portfolios.

A Process portfolio documents the stages of learning and provides a progressive record of student growth.

A Product portfolio demonstrates mastery of a learning task or a set of learning objectives and contains only the best work.

Teacher use process portfolios to help students identify learning goals, document progress over time and demonstrate learning mastery.

In general teachers prefer to use process portfolios because they are ideal for documenting the stages that students go through as they learn progress.