The following were some observations that I commonly see in the teaching-learning processes at Kesatuan Bangsa School: investigative processes such as inferring, hypothesizing, measuring, predicting, classifying, analyzing, and experimenting, formulating conclusions and generalizations are employed; the procedure in gathering information is not prescribed by the teachers;the children are highly motivated to search, hence active participation was observed; the answers arrived at are genuine products of their own efforts; and focused questions before, during and after are critical ingredients that provide direction and sustain action.
Some facilitators of learning also prompt and facilitate discussions, guide students by asking questions that will lead them to develop their own conclusions on the subject, allow wait time after posing a question, and they engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
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They also prompt students to formulate their own questions (inquiry), allow multiple interpretations and expressions of learning (multiple intelligences) , and encourage group work and the use of peers as resources (collaborative learning).
To make things clearer I’ll put my one-day observation in the class of two superb teachers.
“This was a superb day! I observed 2 different grade levels: the class of Mr. Tito Auditama and Ms. Medina, grade 12 and grade 8, respectively. I gained a lot of techniques and strategies while observing these two expert mathematics teacher.
Mr. Tito is teaching grade12 students and when I entered his room, he told his students that they have visitor. He gave me an opportunity to introduce myself and to discuss my purpose why am I here. And of course with bravado, I delivered my short introduction about myself, my university and the thrust of the SEA-Teacher Project. After my closing statement, I was surprised that they gave me a round of applause. Mr. Tito gave me a seat at the back where I could observe the whole class. His lesson was all about definite integral. He began the class by comparing and contrasting definite and indefinite integral. He used the chalk to give some examples of it. After some examples, he gave the page number of practice exercises for them to work on using their chrome book. But that was a guided practice since Mr. Tito roamed around and catered some of the queries of his students. Indeed, in learning mathematics the 3 major keys are PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE. Yes, after the students heard the lecture of their teacher they just automatically took out their notebook and chrome book and then solve as many problems as they can. I also like the atmosphere of the classroom because students help each other when their classmates found some difficulties in analyzing and solving the problems. I have found out that inside that room there are some genius since some of them have gone and won some international mathematics quiz bee.
On the other hand, Ms. Medina is teaching grade 8 students. I did enjoy my three-hour straight observation in her class because of her style in facilitating the class. I can’t believe that she sustained the energy of her students in that very long period of time. She believes in constructivist and collaborative learning but she also believes in the power of scaffolding. He integrated games like domino in her teaching. After she discussed the concepts of function and mapping of function, she grouped them and she then chose the captain/leader in each group. Each captain is responsible for his members, they need to help each other to accomplish the task. While the group activity was going on, Ms. Medina and I roamed around for us to check if the can follow and to answer some their queries too. And after the allotted time for a specific activity, Ms. Medina checked the progress of her students by letting each captain report the performance of his or her members. I really like this idea and I could benchmark this one because this is quite superb. By doing this, students can monitor their progress by assessing themselves (Assessment As Learning). What I like the most was when she started to discuss the lesson about the inverse of the function. What she did, instead of practice exercises using a paper or activity sheet, she made it into a domino where students needed to connect the inverse of the the function by connecting the right one. Excellent! Ms. Medina then approached me and said, “Mr. Sandro, we have to learn these concepts in a very fun way so that my students will enjoy it, considering that 3 hours is quite long.” She also shared to me the app that she is using in finding the right game for her lessons. I also saw her classroom management skills, routine was really observed in her class. I saw some rules and posted on the wall that the students made by themselves . When they were a little bit noisy, Ms. Medina just waved her hands, and in a second silence was observed. I also like her approach in motivating her students, she really appreciates every act that the student is showing by saying, “I appreciate that” “good job”” very good” “wow”.