problem-solving strategy

Today we learn about Problem solving strategy, and from this strategy i learnt the following things;

Objectives+ obstacles=Problem
Definition : -Problem-solving strategy is a tool(solve problems and achieve goals), skill(we use it repeatedly) and process(involves steps)

Purpose

• Give tools to face challenges of the real world
• to help students to foster self-discovery and adaptation
• to help students understand complies dilemmas
• help students to think about problems and trace the obstacles to achieve objectives
• can be guided to effective problem solving strategy

Principles

1) model a useful problem

• .can be difficult and tedious
• show students your example to be patient
• follow a structured method

2) teach within a specific content

• the real life problems
• do not teach as an independent abstract skills
• teach in context in which they will be used

3) help students understand problems

• students need to define end goal

4) take enough time

• understand problem and define goal
• understand individual student or as a whole class
• asking questions

5) Ask question and make suggestions

• make student predict
• explain why something is happening
• ask questions and make suggestion

6) link errors to misconception

• use errors as evidences of misconception, not careless or random guessing

7) make an effort to isolate the misconception and correct it

• teach students to do by themselves

Types of problem solving

1) convergent/closed problem

• one right answer

2) Divergent/open ended problem

• requires knowledge from different areas

Element of problem solving

1) definition of problem

• one must have the knowledge of the problems
• read and explore

2) definition of problem solving

• implies a connection between thinking and knowledge
• need previous knowledge

3) algorithms

• step by step procedure fro problem solving(prescription for solution)

4) Heuristics

• allows learning making student to discover themselves
• need self exploration

5) the relationship between theory and practice
6)  teaching creatively

• no one creates, one only integrates/applies previously learned knowledge

7) the transfer or the application of conceptual knowledge

• connection of two/more real life problems due to some same properties to solve the problems

Procedure of problem solving
1) define problem

• how is current situation different from what you want it to be?
• what you wan something to happen?

2) Problem Analysis

• how is problem effecting you and others?
• who else is expressing?
• how others deals with the problems

 3) Generate possible solution

• analysis problems
• find causes and the solutions

 4) Analysis solution

• is it relevant to situations
• is it realistic and manageable
• what is its consequences

 5) implementation

• how it effects
• did it achieve what you want
• what consequences(good or bad)

Advantages of problem solving

• solving problems in real life experiences or situation
• direction to decision
• build proper attitude

Demerits of problem solving

• superficial thoughts
• over  realization
• missing sight
• no good conclusion

Individualized instruction strategy

Here teacher should not stick on a method but try with many and they must observe the student individually.

Definition- Classroom practices of teaching which recognizes the uniqueness of each student learner and thus provides for adequate tutorial, guide and other support services suited to bring about development in the person

Purpose of Individualized instruction strategy

•       To enhance and develop listening habit
•     Enables the teachers to explain a lesson or demonstrate a technique to small groups of students at a time
•     Individualizing instruction allows each student to progress through the curriculum at his or her own pace
•       Long term retentions they note down what they usually understand
•       Importance is given as individual not as group or class
•      Careful use of teaching aids is encouraged
•        Smooth and continuous lesson but timely interruption
•       Uniform and equal learning despite of individual differences
•         Less time and effort needed for re-teaching the weak areas
•        Provide the normal students the opportunities and needs to make them successful

Principles of Individualized instruction strategy

• Clarify key concept and generation
•     Use assessment as a teaching tool to extend various merely measure instruction
•    Emphasis critical and creative thinking
•    Engaging all learners is essential
•  Provide balance between teacher-assigned and student assigned task

Requirement of Individualized instruction strategy

•      Each student learn differently
•     All students are talented in different ways
•     Educating children with special needs
•     It meets the unique educational needs of the children
•     Teaching requires differentiated and individualized instruction

Procedure for Individualized instruction strategy

1) Content

•   it includes the knowledge, skills and the attitude we want children to learn
•  Must have the tasks and the objectives to achieve the learning goals
•  Teacher must focused on the principle and the skills

2) Process- in include varying learning activities to provide appropriate method for the students to explore concept

3) Product

•   Initial and on- going assessment of student’s readiness and growth are essential
•   Students are active and responsible
•   Varying expectation and requirement for the student’s responses

Advantages of Individualized instruction strategy

•    Meeting needs and interest of diverse learners    
•  Help student’s background knowledge, language, readiness and preferences in learning, interests and to react responsively 
•    Maximizes each students growth and individual success
• Helps in providing for the uniqueness of each children

Disadvantages of Individualized instruction strategy

•     Time constraint and chopped up schedules are an obstacle
•    Class size and teaching load are two of the biggest constraint 
•    Teacher preparedness

Field trip strategy

Field trip strategy

It was introduced in 1827 by George Shilibees for a Quarter School at Abney Pared in Slode Newington, London, United Kingdom.

Definition- It is teaching and learning strategy y where we move outside to get more and better information about a particular topic.

Features of field trip

ü  It facilitate the learning of abstract concepts

ü  It motivates students through increased interest and curiosity

ü  It increases student-student and student-teacher social interaction

ü  Develops social awareness

Purpose of field trip

ü  It enhance the curriculum

ü  Renewal by saving from boredom and refreshing]

ü  Give students experiential learning experiences

ü  Concrete skills such as note taking

ü  Involvement in real world experience makes learning more meaningful and memorable

ü  It helps students appreciate the relevance and importance of what they learn in the class

Types of field trip

1.       Instructional trips- it is a visit by the class or group of classes to a location outside the regular classroom

2.       School contest of festivals- it is to provide an opportunity for student s to demonstrate knowledge and skills developed through subject area instruction

3.       Motivation trips- it is going out with our own interest

Steps involved

1.     Trip selection

2.       Logistics planning

3.       Field trip preparation or pre-trip discussion

4.       Post field trip

5.       Evaluation of the trip

Advantages

ü  Real world experience

ü  Increase in quality of education

ü  Improvement of the social relation

Disadvantages

ü  Expensive

ü  Time consuming

ü  Lack of support from school administration fort he field trip

ü  Poor student’s behavior and attitude

ü  Shortage of resources and choice of venue

ü  Medical risk

Activity-based strategy

it is the form of teaching where the learner is actively engaged in a task and  focuses is on making the abstract concrete and on learning by doing.  And it can be teacher-driven - with direction from an instructor - or learner-driven with the learner having freedom to explore.

And this strategy is having seven principles and they are as follows

1. Encourages Contacts Between Students and Faculty.
2.  Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students.
3. Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques.
4. Gives Prompt Feedback.
5.  Emphasizes Time on Task.
6. Communicates High Expectations.
7. Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning.

Then it has three kinds of learning activity which are as follows

1)   Absorb-type

- it includes presentations, demonstrations, stories, and field trips

 2)  Do-type

-include practice, discovery, and playing games

-allows the learner to practice what they’ve learned

-learner is able to actively seek, select, and create knowledge 

 3) Connect-type

-provide a way to link learning to life, work and future learning  and lets the learner put what they’ve learned to use.

And it is having seven Criteria for organizing activities

1.   Should be relevant
2. Time bound
3. Should contain meaning
4.  Involves real world experiences
5.  Involves skills (listening, speaking, writing, etc….)
6. Engage cognitive progress. (selecting, classifying, ordering and reasoning) 
7.  Have particular out come.

Four procedural steps

1. Planning
2. Instructions
3. Monitoring
4. Evaluating

And here the Roles of teachers are to: -

• Plan and prepare in advance.
• Give instruction.
• Facilitate.
• Debrief
• Clarify learner’s doubts.
• Set up routines and expectations for learning.
• Monitor the results using appropriate assessment strategies and recording devices, e.g., checklists, rubrics etc.
• Choose activities that are relevant and stimulating for students.
• Provide opportunities for students to present to an appropriate audience. Observe group dynamics and co-operation.
• Support and encourage students

 

Demonstartion strategy

From today's discussion, we came to a conclusion that demonstration strategy is a visual approach examining information, ideas and processes.

And the main purpose from the teacher's point of view is that,  it allows learners to see real examples or procedures of the things to be learned, where as from students point of view, it allows the students to demonstrate mastery of a skills or procedure.

  And it is needed to illustrate points efficiently,  provide a change of pace, cover the Lack of equipment, Time constraint and to avoid risky experiments

In order to have a better demonstration following procedures should be followed;

1. Carefully plan the demonstration.
2. Practice the demonstration.
3. Develop an outline to guide the demonstration.
4. Make sure everyone can see the demonstration.
5. Introduce the demonstration to focus attention.
6. Ask and encourage questioning.
7. Plan a follow up to the demonstration.

And the the advantages and the disadvantages of this strategy are as follows,

Advantages

•  Seeing before doing
• Task guidance
• Economy of supplies
• Safety

Disadvantages

•  Not hands-on
• Limited view.
• Pacing issue

Questions and answers session on 'Project Strategy of Teaching'

We were ask to read before hand on the project strategy of teaching in order to have the question and answer session in our next session. We were sitting in an arrangement forming a 'U' shape. The first question went to Migma Dorji, then counted to four and the person next to that person was to answer the next one. the questions covered all the content in the hand-out that was provided to us to read such as the definition, types, procedures and so on. The question were random and unpredictable leaving us with only one option that is to read the whole content of the note or the hand-out provided to us.

Reflection on the group presentation on 'Questioning Strategy'

We started the session with the regular meditation on that day. The very presenter was Dessang Dorji who defined the strategy as "to create life long, independent learners who uses questioning as a tool to learn". Than he talked about the features such as up-to the students level, brief, clear and simple and so on. Than the next presenter Yeshi Dema explained on the classification of questions such as: -

• literal level question which is the most often used in the classroom
• the inferential level which means to think and search
• applied level
• thinking time/wait time
• no hand questioning and so on.
•  basketball questioning where the moved and brought for discussion among students.
• conscripts and volunteers where the teacher selects volunteers to answer.
• phone a friend where the student take assistance from a friend through phone.
• Hot seating where the is placed in a 'hot seat' and asked questions.
• and others like preview, pair rehearsal, big question, fat question, skinny question and seek a partial answer. 

I came to know regarding the three types of Questioning strategies
i. Socratic Questioning : - 
Socrates the greatest educator taught through questioning his students. His uses Six different to draw answer from his students such as 1. Conceptual clarification question where they are make to think about what they are asking. 2. Probing Assumptions where they are make to think about the presupposition  and unquestioned beliefs. 3. Probing rationale, reasons and evidences  4. Questioning viewpoints and perspectives  5. Probe implications and consequences 6. Questioning about the questions.  

ii. Bloom's taxonomy : -
where Benjamin Blooms focuses on the six levels of question parallel to the six levels of thinking like
1. Remembering
2. Understanding
3. Applying
4. Analysing
5. Evaluating
6. creating

iii.  Kipling Questions: -

which is based on 5 wife and one husband. The 5 Ws are what, why, when, where who and the H how.

Role of teacher

• model of critical thinking
• Respect students views
• probe their understanding and shows genuine in their thinking.

Role of students

• participates when called upon
• answer questions are carefully and clearly as possible
• address the whole class so that everyone can hear their answer
• be as succinct as possible
  

Continuation on the lesson on the Deductive Teacing Strategy

We continued on the same session on the deductive teaching strategy. We looked at the advantages and disadvantages of the strategy. As discussed the prominent advantages of the strategy were: -

• less time consuming as time being one of the factor.
• it is different from the rode learning as in involves logical interlinking of the elements.
• Most teaching materials and curriculum can be easily taught through this strategy.
• it involves all levels of questions.

And the disadvantages of this strategy are: -

• student's active involvement and participation is missing in the beginning of the lesson.
• As the strategy is a teacher-centered approach, it may not be challenging for the brighter students.

 Next we discussed on the role of  teacher in the strategy: -

• presents principles and generalization
• need to plan and prepare detail information including materials
• teacher has maximum authority
• teacher should have abstract content and illustrate the with examples
• provides guidance and scaffolding to the students.

Session on Deductive Teaching Strategy

As usual the session started with the mediation which was the part of our GNH classroom. Than we started with the actual session that was on 'Deductive Teaching Strategy'. We were done the previous topic that was om the inductive way of teaching in the classroom. This strategy to me was where the things such as principle or generalization are presented first and than the testing and application of those presented are been done or else was the opposite of the inductive strategy. Than we discussed the purposes which was to help students with learning disabilities to enhance their learning which is the most important of all. After that we discussed on the phases in the deductive teaching strategy. It has four phases: - i. Presentation of Abstraction where the principle and generalization are presented. ii. Teacher illustrate it with examples  where the teacher provides examples to illustrate the abstraction. iii. Students gives examples of the concepts and apply them in a new situation where the students responses by giving their own examples and try using the abstract idea in a new context or situation. iv. Students restates the concepts or definition that they've learned where the tries to put the learned idea in their own understandable forms and words.

We started the session with the mindfulness practice. Then we tried to revise what we have discussed in our last session that we had. We revised and talked on the previous topic that was the inductive teaching strategy. Our tutor sir Bijoy Kumar Rai discussed about the strategy that he used in the previous discussion on the topic 'Inductive Teaching Strategy'. He said it was the Arouson's Jigsaw strategy that he used. He explained the benefits of the strategy was that reciprocal learning take place which means the learning is not a one way but a two way traffic where both the tutor and the learners(students) learn from each other. I understand that the main purpose of the inductive teaching strategy is not to make the classroom interactive or nor to improve there class participation which goes in general for all the strategies but to make the learners individual and independent learners themselves.  

Discussion on the expert group findings in our original groups.

We had a block session and had the mindfulness practice a bit longer than we used to have. We were back from our expert group to our original group and was discuss on our finding we have done in the expert group. We probably started with the concept of inductive teaching and learning strategy. Tashi Dendup the expertise regarding this topic said that:

• Inductive Teaching Strategy is discovering and inquiry based learning where a known thing or a simple thing is used to teach something abstract or something that is unknown to the learners.
• There are two types of Inductive teaching strategy:- i. Guided where some sort of hint or instruction is provided to the learner. ii. Unguided where the learners are left on their own to learn.  

The second presenter(Tshering Choden) who was the expert group who worked on purposes of this teaching strategy stated the following as the significant ones:-

• Motivating students to corporate
• Enhance classroom participation
• Promote teamwork within the students
• Make lesson interesting and entertaining
• Discover course content for themselves
• Learning by doing things o their own
• Maximum student's participation
• Students centered learning

And the most important of all is to make them(learner) an individual and independent learner.

The third presenter who worked on the the sub-topic procedural steps of inductive teaching strategy was Tandin Om who explain their expert group finding as following:-

• There are two procedures:- i. four phase inductive teaching strategy. ii. Six phase strategy out of which we are to focus on the four phase one only.
• In the four phase strategy the first phase was the  open -ended phase   where the teacher shows the students examples and non examples of the concept they are going to teach. The students simply observes and tries the pattern  through the examples given. Further the students are given more examples.
• Then comes the second phase, the convergent phase  where the teacher prompts his/her students to identify the pattern in the given list of examples that were already provided to them.
• The third phase was the closure phase   where the students arrives at conclusion either through defining it by stating the patterns of the given examples.
• The last phase is the application phase  where the transfer of knowledge take place. Application of definition with additional examples is the prominent step in this phase.

Then the last presenter(Tshering Zam) explained on the advantages and disadvantages of using this strategy while teaching in the classroom:-

•  It takes involvement of learners through observation, inference, classification and comparison.
• The strategy can be used in teaching at various degree of study.
• discourages wild guessing which is common among the students.
• Students are activated to learn better.

The disadvantages are such as:

• Time consuming.
•   Minimum content coverage.
• It is frustrating and difficult on the path of a slow learners to cope up with the fast learners.
• All topics cannot be taught inductively.

Expert group reflection.

We started the session as usual with the mindfulness practice. We broke off from our original groups to form a another group known as the expert group. Then we were given smaller topics from the broad topic(Inductive Teaching Strategy) where we were to discuss and come up with a combined presentation of what we had discussed. Me and the member of my expert group were to explore and come up with a presentation on the sub-topic 'The role of a teacher' in this teaching strategy. We split into two groups to cover the two ultimate sources of information available in our campus. Me and my friends who went to computer laboratory came to know that the role of the teacher came be lay down in short as following:

• Guiding and scaffolding where the teacher ask question back to the students about thing that are in doubt and difficulties while they are trying to learn on their own.
• Modeling and coaching in the process of their independent learning.
• Prompting and facilitating where the teacher helps them.
• To corporate or foster corporation in the class where it be in between the students themselves or within teacher and students.
• Teacher minimizes authority in the class.
• Creates democratic environment in the class thus rendering equal opportunities in term of learning, sharing their views and so on.
• Design activities in order to exercise their mind(Brainstorming), discussion(Buzz session) and gaining experiences through experiments.
• The teacher ask questions in order to check individual's understanding after the concept to be learned is generalized.
• To encourage their students in order to foster their learning, participation and so on.
•  The teacher at the end generalizes the whole points they were discussing over.          

Day 3

On the next session we met, we discussed on the terms such as strategy, skill and so on as a revision dwell to have clear and better understanding of the meaning in regard to education. We were provided with handouts so later if we face any problem, we can go through the handouts. The difference between teaching strategy and teaching skills is that teaching strategy is the plan that consist of series of actions designed to achieve a result , goals or significant objectives where as teaching skills is the part of the strategy which includes the teacher's abilities, experiences and his/her knowledge to carry on the plan of actions(strategy) to reach the targeted learning outcomes. A effective teacher qualities are:
i. should have the ability to change the method through which they are teaching to suite the learning styles and abilities of the students.
ii. should be flexible with the methods and strategy, which means he/she should be able to switch from one method to other to suite they learning needs and learning style.   

Day two reflection Paper

We started the first session of the module (EDN 205) with the practice of mindfulness which now was the part of the GNH class in the education system of ours. We did it about five minutes and are suppose to begin every session with this. Then we familiarize ourselves to each other. As we were done introducing ourselves then our tutor provided his introduction and some detail about himself. Our tutor shared and gives us information which was of utmost importance to us in the coming future and our day to day life. We ended the session with the mindfulness practice and then call of the day, as an individual I felt it was the perfect start we needed as everyone was one way or other seem to be participating. Everyone was enjoying on their own either through taking part in the chat or laughing when something humorous happened.

Reflection on the first session

The session begun with the mindfulness practice this was the part of our class as a GNH classroom. We did a group work regarding the terms which we were to explore on our own as home task. In the group of five and some six, we discuss the meaning of the terms and were asking to find a suitable meaning which was relevant to education. One by one we presented the meanings that we found were related to education to the class and later discuss and combined the meanings to make a common meaning to have a common understanding. I was really helpful to me as we shared our finding I came to know lot of other meaning other than what I explored and written. I learned that the term method is more or less similar to the term approach which means 'the way of doing'. Skill and technique too have similar meaning. Both mean the personal ability of someone to do something. The session ended with us coming to a common understanding of the meaning of those five terms