Visit 3 - Reflections

Hello everyone,
These are some things which struck me during this week's observation session:

At the very beginning, the Computing teacher told the students that whoever did not wish to follow the lesson is free to go and surf the net on the PC. There was only one student who went on the PC; the teacher did not reproach him in any way. Then, after about 15 minutes this student joined back the rest of the class. Personally, I don't think that this is a good pedagogical skill to possess; if I were a student I would have thought that the teacher is not interested in teaching the whole class and haven't found a way to interest all the pupils. If I were the teacher, I would have created multimedia activities (examples: Webquests, games, podcasts) which will hopefully entice all the students to take an active part in the lesson without getting bored. However, on the other hand this teacher's method was actually quite effective because the student, without being summoned to, joined back the rest of the class and behaved well throughout.

A good skill which I have witnessed in one of the teachers is the ability to translate what is going on in class in order to teach life values. For example, when the acronym GIGO was mentioned, the teacher used the analogy of life; if a person does not consider his actions and consequences, then he will end up making a mess of his life. In addition to this, the teacher told those who brought the file with them to share with those who forgot it saying, "It's Christmas time and we should be more considerate of others." In the future, I will try to create experienes during the lesson in which apart from the academic content, the students learn something which they can apply for their lives.