English Assignment: Reflection On Teaching Experience
Question
Task:
For this English assignment, you will develop a learning story. Write a learning story based on your experience or an observation of your choice, demonstrating your pedagogical understanding of the valued learning that is evident. Explore possible future planning that might be offered as a result of your interpretation and analysis of learning.
Answer
Introduction to the concept of English assignment
Teaching young children who are at the age of 5 to 10 years needs a lot of hard work and as a teacher, it is very important to teach according to the preferences of the child. As a teacher, I went through a lot of different experiences and got to know about the capabilities of each student. Through this learning experience, I would put light into the Pedagogical Principles that I know and have used to make the students learn. Also, I would share my experience on the student’s behavior when I started teaching them and when I implemented the Pedagogical Principles.
Experience
Here I am reflecting on one of the experiences, where I was called to teach a class of students who were at the age of 6 to 7 years. There were 30 students and each one of them had their capabilities, I started my teaching by letting them draw whatever they want to on a sheet of paper and there were many results. Few students showed their creativity like drawings trees, cartoons, houses, etc. some tried but did not finish and few did not try to draw anything generally only two students gave their paper blank. I understood that these students were not communicating with others and are very quiet. Through this activity, I also got to know that they have not even tried as they were not interested in the color, also when they are asked to choose color, they chose darker colors and not brighter which indicated that they might be feeling bad or might be having a lack of interest in the class.
In the final activity, I gave them a set of problems and asked each one of them their name, and then answer the question. The question is regarding themselves like what they like where they want to go and how they would enjoy a vacation and fun questions like that. The answers were moderate according to their age and this let me identify how each student communicates, are they interested or not, their line of interest, what would help them to interact in the classroom, and other things.
Principles
After the classroom I recorded my experiences and noted down about the students, I prepared a teaching style including the Pedagogical Principles which would help the young students to learn better and interact in the classroom more. Through my experiences, in the initial days, the 1st principle I used was “Collaborative learning”. Through this principle I made the students form groups and kept the less interactive and less interested children with the extroverted and enthusiastic children. This principle made these children who are communicating less or is less interactive students gain more interest and become more interactive in the class. It emphasizes the wellbeing of the children by making them socially interactive and sustain better cognitive and interactive development. I did want to change their personal choices and with these principles, I was able to help these students to make new friends and gain interest in the teaching (Shoimov, 2020).
The next principle that was used was “Interactive learning”. According to Harbin, Thurber and Bandy (2019) “interactive learning can be at the physical, linguistic, or mental levels”. Being a pedagogical teacher, I need to teach the students in a way that would help them to interact more in the classroom and understand things properly. I made a quiz and word puzzle to let them learn and think better. It helps the students to found out interest and they started using their knowledge too in the topics that are taught to them. For English, I used to give them word puzzles and sentence formation and let them know where they were making mistakes, same goes for science and mathematics too where I formulated practical activities to make the whole thing more interactive and logical. As these subjects are totally at the basic level, so quizzes were better for the students to enhance their cognitive learning (Harbin, Thurber & Bandy 2019).
The final principle “Inviting imitation” that I used to make the students interact, understand, and learn good values from the class is by letting them imitate the good things. Children at this young age always try to copy what their teacher or seniors do and I need to portray them as a figure that they can not only imitate but also follow. Young children do not know anything and teaching them the set of values that would help them in real life is important. I used to make a situation like I am being scolded so how should I behave in front of the person who is scolding me. I taught them practically by considering the different hypothetical situations. This kind of imitation helped to teach and make the students learn good values in the classroom (SHISHOV et al., 2018).
The children in the classroom after I implemented and practiced these principles had a lot of changes, they were enthusiastic in the classroom. The kids who were not so much interactive in the initial days started enjoying the classroom and were also able to use their creativity and imaginations. The children were progressing and the changes were positive and is improving their mental wellbeing.
Future work
After the learning experience, I got to know a lot of things about the students and how these young learners need to be taught. The Pedagogical Principles and the procedures linked to them which I used for teaching are important, but there are few places where I want to focus in near future. According to the EYLF, I would want some learning outcomes for these young learners (Cohrssen, 2021).
- The children should develop their own identity
- Should feel safe in the classroom and enjoy the environment
- They should involve themselves with different activities and try to interact with as many people as they can at this age
- They should learn all the good values for future
- Children become strong in their emotional and social well-being through the classroom.
Conclusion
Young learners are delicate they adapt to what you teach them. Through the learning experience, I can conclude that the pedagogical principles and their procedures help young children to learn and interact in the classroom. The children can overcome their fears and get more interest in the teachings and also learn a set of good values from the teacher. Certain outcomes would be expected from the future but it would be done in a manner where the children do not feel pressured and enjoy the learning.
References
Cohrssen, C. (2021). Considering Form and Function: A Commentary on the Review of the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 18369391211018518. DOI: abs/10.1177/18369391211018518
Harbin, M. B., Thurber, A., & Bandy, J. (2019). Teaching race, racism, and racial justice: Pedagogical principles and classroom strategies for course instructors. Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice, 4(1), 1. Retrieved from: https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=rpj
SHISHOV, S., RABADANOVA, R., ARTEMYEVA, S., TONOYAN, H., & MEZHINA, A. (2018). Implementation of interaction principle in teaching pedagogical subjects in university. Revista ESPACIOS, 39(21). Retrieved from: https://www.revistaespacios.com/a18v39n21/18392130.html
Shoimov, S. (2020). WAYS TO DEVELOP PEDAGOGICAL COMPETENCE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING. ?????? ??????????? ?????? ? ???????????, 1(1), 88-92. Retrieved from: https://history.jspi.uz/index.php/fll/article/download/76/63
