The best job I have ever done!

Today, it was our (oğuzhan and I) turn to give a lesson about the topic that was given previously-Language and Learning. First, I was worried about how I can narrow it as it is a broad subject. Later, I had managed to organize it by dividing into three major subtopics. I think our presentation was good, because we achieved to get our peers' attention during the 50minutes lesson. We had also two guests, one of them was our instructor of the other course which we take and the other guest was one of our peers from the other courses. Although, I had such an  experience in giving the lesson in my other courses, it was very different and also it was the best among the others. I felt very good and confident during the lesson as we could engage the everybody in the lesson with the activities. Moreover, to see that everybody understood the each point which I talked about made me feel  that I achieved my goal.
I  always think that ''how a teacher can gain all students' attention and engage them in the lesson?'' I am wondering about it because in my opinion it must be the main goal of the teaching. I remember that when I was in high school, I was not really interested in some lessons as they weren't getting my attention. Today, I understood that not the lesson that couldn't get my attention, but the teacher. I have decided to research on that issue in more depth to learn much more ways I can manage the classroom successfully as in today. I believe that by this way I will become an effective teacher...
http://712educators.about.com/od/discipline/tp/disciplinetips.htm
The link above gives some good  tips in managing classroom successfully. This is the first step of my research about that issue.

Robert Gagne's Conditions of Learning

20 March 2013

It was one of the enjoyable lessons- Conditions of Learning. It was conducted in the open air-the school's garden. After we covered the topic in the first two hours, we went out to the garden for the practical part of the lesson. We applied to making Turkish coffee in the Gagne's stages of instruction. It was a really nice instruction, everything was fine except the weather. It was a bit cold:)))

To make a difference instruction, there are some factors should be regarded:
To identify five distinct domains or variety of learning outcomes that represent the range of human accomplishments, such as verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies and so on, to determine requirements for instruction that support learning and to guide for designing instruction.
What are the conditions of learning?
External conditions which are stimulus from the environment and internal conditions which are the learner's internal states like his/her feelings, thought and emotion.
According to Gagne, there are 9 phases of learning. In order to give an effective lesson, these phases should be followed.
-In the preparation stage for learning, gaining attention, identifying the instructional objectives and retrieval information take place.
-In acquisition and performance stage, selecting perception of stimulus features, responding and reinforcement are important.
-In the final stage, transfer of learning, cueing retrieval and generalizability is getting involved.

Sophisticated Lesson

One of the enjoyable lessons was conducted last week. Three groups in the classroom were given an opportunity to give a lesson. Next week, the rest of the class will perform on giving an instruction. One of the groups is  my friend and I. We are going to cover the topic ''Language and Learning''. It is very important to give students such a chance so that they gain experience. Moreover, it contributes to gaining knowledge as preparing and conducting the lesson requires doing research and doing some activities as a real teacher. In addition to prepare a lesson plan is an inseparable part of the perform in an effective lesson. A teacher also has to know the principles of the teaching such as which method should be applied, which steps should be followed, what kind of activities should be provided to make the topic clear, and so on.
If it is needed to be evaluated the last week performances, I can say that all of them don't reflect the features of the effective lesson which I have talked about a few of them above. In other words, the performers were not able to convey the important points of the subject. They could have given the lesson in a more effective way, for instance, they might have added more activities into their lesson. In spite of the poor performed lessons, to become experienced in teaching is a good side of such a tryout instruction. Nevertheless I congratulate my colleagues because of their teaching performances.

Constructivism Learning Theory

Last week the topic we have covered is ''Constructivism'', one of the learning approaches. After doing a little research, I have found some basic assumptions and features of the constructivism learning theory which completely correspond with the class experiment. In the experiment. In the classroom activity, we were asked to search in the given topic by means of the web and then take note to highlight the key points and summary the topic, lastly we made a short presentation to explain our topics to each other. These activities reflect two of the key concepts of constructivism learning theory :
Assimilation; to learn by assimilating new idea to the experienced one.
Accomodation; to learn by constructing new structure and by reframing the expectations with the outcomes.
The other basic principles of the theory are : knowledge is consrtucted by learner, social learning is prefered, students are actively engaged in learning process-physically,mentally,verbally, motivation is a key component in learning, the more we know-the more we can learn and learning is contextual.
I have never experienced in this learning theory. When I was in highschool, traditional method is often used in  teaching process. Constructivism learning theory is very different approach toward traditional learning. Instead of telling, the teacher should begin asking, instead of answering questions, the teacher in this case must make the student comes to the conclusion on their own.
I have attached a video, which explains the theory in an effective manner,  I am sure you will enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa59prZC5gA

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE

It is the first time that I have experienced online instruction with a group of people, even for the multıple-chat. It is very interesting and I have noticed the benefits of the technology one more time. The subject of the instruction is Gardner's multıple intelligences test. First we have made the test and then we have seen our percentages of all types of intelligence in a line chart. According to the MI model of Gardner's, at least five types of intelligence should be embedded in the instruction, as these types may differ from person to person and also the learning process can be maintained effectively by referring to different types of  intelligence.

The learning hierarchy, which takes into account certain courses given in the school and ignores the others, is used in education system of all countries, so it disregards the significance of the MI. That is the authority doesn't pay enough attention to the students' ability in all fields of study. For example, math is one of the fields which is paid more attention than the music or sport. I have a story which is directly related with learning hierarchy. When I was in high school, even though I was very interested in English, I was forced to study only math as it is important for the University entrance exam. 

The director of the school constituted a special class by aiming to succeed at high success for the school. I was in that class and our class was given a special foreign language education-English. One day, our first class was math, but our English teacher came to the school with a native speaker on that day and wanted us to speaking practice with his guest in the first two class hours, as his guest needed to leave from the school after lunch time. Then, he asked for a request to take the first class hours from math teacher, but she didn't accept with the excuse that we hadn't need to English for University entrance exam, we needed to Math. After they debated on this issue, director of the school came and convinced Math. teacher, so it was a great experience for us in speaking practice.

THE WORKING PROCESS OF THE BRAIN

One of the major topics of Cognitivism, which is one of the approach of learning, is the working process of the brain. The computer model is considered as a key metaphor to explain this approach clearly. Basically, the working system of brain is very similar with the computer: input,links between the inputs and activation of the links. In order to maintain the learning process effectively, a teacher definently needs to know some essential stages in the working process of the brain such as sensation, perception, attention, encoding and memory. These are directly related with the gaining knowledge. Therefore,  it is urgently required to be aware of this subject while planning the instructional objectives and in particular materials.
Thanks to the course in which I have learnt ''Cognitivism Approach'' and the workshop I attented a few weeks ago, I had have a chance to see an importance of knowing the brain system for an instruction. This is one of the initials which I have encountered in my school life. Because the gaining knowledge requires to take  account all of brain functions, instruction should be given by focusing on at least five different intelligence types. To do this, the use of various instructional materials is necessary. However, in traditional learning method, which I experienced through my education life, always the same method and its principles were used for the instruction. Because of this, practical implications of cognitivism- in particular attention makes the information memorable-weren't took into consideration. I hadn't been taught by any different method apart from the memorization.
Education is not a subject to be taken lightly. So, it is necessary to use a variety of instructional mateials to able to storage of information in long term memory by means of konwing the working process of the brain and to change the point of views toward the education.

Reflection of ''Behaviourism''

In this week, the subject of the lecture is ''Behaviourism Approach to The Learning''. It has been instructed in an amusing way which includes both an instructional video-TED and an episode of one of the TV series. In contrast to the traditional way, teaching by this way makes the learning easy as it is observable. I had already learned and known this topic from the course which I took previously. However, I had difficulty in understanding, especially specific points of the topic such as unconditional-conditional responses and stimuluses. Since I always messed up differences between them, I had to make an effort  to able to figure out the subject. In addition, I confused with the mean of negative and positive reinforcements. Through the technique which was applied in the lecture, all these points were so clear that I had no problem in understanding as in the past. I don't think that I would have any problem with these points any more. As it can be understood from Behaviourism Approach, which focuses on observable learning events as demonstrated by stimulus and response relationship, learning always involves a change in behaviour, just like as in my behaviour toward this  subject.

There may be many teaching methods and techniques, but the most important point is to define and apply a suitable technique among them to the instruction. In order to teach effectively and accomplish the goal which is to make the students understand clearly, it is crucial to determine the right method in the right time.