Positive Interdependence in Group Working

While working in groups, students should have a sense of positive interdependence among each other to be acting as one team.

                                     

There are several ways to strengthen positive interdependence, some of them:

-1- Goal: the whole team should have one goal and all should work together to achieve it.
-2- Incentives: this means to motivate students and give them rewards.

-3- Resource: teachers should provide students with materials they may use in their work
-4- Role: students must divide the roles among them so each one should have a specific task, either academic or social role.
-5- Sequence: when the task has steps, students should follow a certain pattern.

-6- Simulation: teachers should put students in a situation similar to real life where they need to work all together.

-7- Outside force: this is related to giving students a challenge, it could be a time challenge or competition with other sections or groups.

-8- Environmental: students should have a specific zone related to them where they feel they are belonging, then it would be known for others it is their own zone in the class.

-9- Identity: each group should have an identity; a name, a logo, that defines who they are. it makes them more involved and belonged to the team.

A teacher can use 3 or 4 types to develop the work depending on the task.

Importance of Evaluation

Evaluation is the process of assessing the work of students in a classroom activity as individuals or in group working.
                                       

*But why do we have to evaluate?
- evaluation helps the teacher himself to check if he did the job correctly and how much the idea is understood by the students
- it helps the teacher to know where can the students move next
- it helps teachers to check students understanding of the material, and sometimes when working in groups it checks the social skills gained by students
- it helps students themselves get motivated to work more harder in the class to achieve better results
- it gives grades for students so that each one knows where he can work more and how he can improve to get higher grades that before

* Evaluation can be done by the teacher, by students (evaluate themselves or evaluate others) or by both of them.
* Evaluation can be done
-  at the end of the work called summative evaluation, where you assess the final outcome
- during the process called formative evaluation, where it is a continuous manner.

How to Work on Motivation in Classrooms?

Motivation is very important in learning, it drives students to achieve more and make them more accountable.

                                                      

 Teachers must design a culture to work more on intrinsic motivation using several ways, some of them:
-1- Success: teachers must let the students taste success by giving them easy tasks based on what they know. once they feel success, they feel that they want more of it.
-2- Concern: students should feel worry and anxiety but in the positive sense of this word, so they become more caring about learning. a teacher should encourage their response and validate their answers, and also be close to them physically to monitor their work.
-3- Interest: teachers should find for the students something that is interesting for them to make them excited to do the task, and tell them how it is useful and important in their real lives.
-4- Meaning: teachers should give students tasks that are related to them, to their past, present, or future, and let them know how meaningful it is.
-5- Knowledge of the results: this is related to giving marks and grades to let students know at least what they did and how well they are performing.
-6-Positive feeling tone: teachers should be positive towards students and their work and towards their effort. this is related to building good relationships with students.

Risk Taking in Classrooms

The risk taking in classrooms gives an image of a comfortable environment in the class; its foundation is built on inner beliefs about the real meaning of errors, the speed differences in learning, and the need for an individual to learn alone as opposed to working with other classmates and getting help from them.

                                          

 There are several ways to strengthen the climate for risk taking in the class:

•           Errors: most students think about errors as signs of weakness and not having the ability to answer like others. It’s the teachers’ mission to help them behave with mistakes as opportunities to do better tasks. 
•           Speed: students also believe that the faster someone can solve a task, the brighter he is, and do not give attention to the quality and subject of the work. 
•          Getting feedback and help: most students think that good ones do the task by themselves, without any help from others or from the teacher. Getting the students involved into groups help them to ask for help from each others, so any miss understanding every student can ask his teammates for help. 
•          Effort and ability: this overcome to the theory of intelligence, where students think that intelligence is fixed and born inside everyone, and not evenly distributed among people. That is why there are bright students who are able to get the information from the first time. 

Learning Styles

Every student has his own way of absorbing information. A skilled teacher must be knowledgeable of these different learning styles and understand that every student learn differently. There are seven learning styles:

1-      Verbal learning style: students take a huge amount of information in a small period of time and can express anything through words.

2-      Visual learning style: in this style they prefer to have images, documents, graphs, and organizers.  They learn through seeing.

3-      Auditory learning style: students depend on listening. They prefer to study while listening to music or even can make the lesson like a poem to sing.

4-      Physical learning style: those students prefer body languages. They like to perform experiments in labs, or any activity with movement.

5-      Logical learning style: students here depend on reasoning to learn. They like to become problem solvers.

6-      Social learning style: students who prefer this style usually love to learn in a community, or within a group or team work.

7-      Solitary learning style: this is also called the intra-personal style, where students like to learn by themselves, alone without any intervention from other people.

Realism

Realism:

Like idealism, it is one of the oldest philosophies in Western culture. Aristotle rejects the idealists’ notion that only ideas are real, and believe that matter is also important but they are independent (ideas and matter). It emphasizes the issue of experience, and that learning cannot take place through thinking and revelation.

Methods:

According to realists, getting the right answer is more important than the answer itself. And this is based on the scientific method, which is done through observation and experimentation. And for small kids, learning takes place through classification, organization, and by play.

Realists use the inductive method, and think that education will not develop if it is not used. Since by following some idols, our knowledge will be limited and no improving and we will continue to be lethargic.

However, whatever the method used, it should come from systematic, organized, and dependable knowledge.

Role of a teacher:

According to realists, the teacher is not necessary a person, it might be a computer, or TV. And in all cases, his role is to teach the students everything that helps them live and survive in the society. The teacher must present materials in a systematic and organized way, and teach students to understand the information and apply it in real life. Moreover, teach them why they are learning these issues and their uses.

Role of a student:

 The student must understand the information either from the teacher or can have a tutor helping in the process of learning. And after understanding very well, a student must apply everything learned in their real lives.

Aim of education:

The main aim is also to gain knowledge and reach the truth using matter. Realists depend on self-preservation; they teach students to survive in the world and get adapted to their culture and fit in it, and teach morals in addition to that. Also helps them to understand matter and control it and not get controlled by it. Moreover, realists emphasize the practical side of education, linking every idea to real life and relate it to examples.

Idealism

Idealism:

It is considered as the oldest philosophy in the Western culture. The first teacher was Socrates. After his death, his student Plato published his ideas. It is based on ideas that are the only true reality. Most of the idealists tried to apply their principles to the practice of education. They think that the truth is absolute and is born inside human. They trust the mind and not the senses; “man cannot create knowledge, but discover it only”.

Methods:

Idealism is a traditional philosophy where the teacher is the center of the class, and must be the role model for the students. Idealists use the dialectic method in teaching; they depend on asking questions to the learners. They trigger thinking and force the learners to think and approach the truth, through intuition and revelation. Any new idea should be understood deeply through presenting the anti-thesis, or by the lecture method. The curriculum should be designed comprehensive not very specialized, and must include good values.

Role of the teacher:

Man cannot teach other, but just deliver the information from the inside of a student, since every human is born with innate information and ideas. So the teacher works as a facilitator helping students to bring out the ideas. The teacher is the central part of the class, so he must be a good role model for students, let them be happy by their products, and encourage them to ask questions and discover the new material.

Role of the student:

Students should adopt the good model presented by the teacher to be a good citizen. They must answer the questions asked by the teacher and react in the class to discover the new material. They should receive and memorize the lecture given by the teacher and then determine the rules for their lives.

Aims if education:

The major aim is to search for the truth. And the process of searching is more important than the truth itself.

This philosophy deals with human from the highest level of thinking, and thus their minds should be respected and treated from this high level. They should be asked questions that respect their mind and thinking abilities.

Another very important aim is the self- realization, which involves the full knowledge of the self. Also, it develops the child mentally, morally and most important spiritually.