Reflection on our teaching experience

We as a group have been assigned to teach in a Tamil school for 4 weeks. We carried out some simple activities which engaged the students and make them have fun with those activities. The activities that have been carried out are mind mapping, collage art, writing sentences and article reading. All this activities are related to the selected theme of habitats.

As we all know according to VAK theory, most people have a preferred learning style; however some people have a mixed and evenly balanced blend of the three styles:

1.    Visual learners

2.    Auditory learners

3.    Kinesthetic learners     

The activities that we carried out includes all VAK theory because we believed  that the lesson should be caters to every learner in a one way or the other which will encourages active participation among learners. Therefore the lesson that planned by the teacher will be interesting. For example during our teaching days, we teachers allow the students to have group discussion about their topics and then all the students have to come together and share out their ideas. This will allow success in learning for the individual and also helps in differentiation in classroom. Although, there is no special child in my class, but the lesson that we planned as group will helps in supporting Learning Disability Students.

Now let’s look at multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner of Harvard has identified seven distinct intelligences. According to Gardner (1991), His theory has emerged from recent cognitive research saying that students possess different kinds of minds and therefore learn, remember, perform, and understand in different ways. Therefore, we are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, and the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of ourselves. The seven intelligences are Visual-Spatial, Bodily-kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Linguistic and Logical –Mathematical. There are advantages and disadvantages for this MI.

In our lessons, we didn’t focus much on MI theory because it is difficult for us as teachers to identify each student’s strengths and weakness. One of the reasons is due to time constraint. Moreover, we teachers cannot plan a particular lesson in seven different ways. This is impossible especially in Malaysian context classroom where the teachers have a compulsory to finish up the syllabus on time. Although there are some advantages of using MI in our classroom, but we teachers are restricted to certain reasons.

Advantages of MI

§    Provides opportunities for authentic learning based on your students' needs, interests and talents. Students become more active, involved learners.

§    Parent and community involvement in your school may increase. Activities involving apprenticeship learning bring members of the community into the learning process by demonstrating student’s work before panels and audiences.

§    Students will be able to demonstrate and share their strengths. Building strengths gives a student the motivation to be a "specialist." This can in turn lead to increased self-esteem.

§    When teachers “teach for understanding,” students will accumulate positive educational experiences and the capability for creating solutions to problems in life.

Based on my teaching experiences, I have some criticisms about MI. we teachers plan our lesson  in the goal to reach all students, if we going to label the student saying that he is kinesthetic because he works on cars, it could simply be his socialization that led him to that point. When we teachers make that assumption without knowing the science of multiple intelligences, we can accidentally stereotype students. Moreover, we teachers have to consider the flexibility provided in a classroom in order to adapt to different learning styles. Despite that, some students have problem in identify their own strengths and weakness.

Experiential learning

There are various terms have been used to label the process of learning from experience. John Dewey (Dewey and Dewey 1915) discussed “learning by doing,” while Wolfe and Byrne (1975) used the term “experienced-based learning.” The term “trial and error” learning is used to explain inductive learning processes.

Advantages

§    Creates an opportunity for students to engage and to apply academic understandings through hands-on experience.

§    Have an opportunity to take what they learn in class and apply it to real world situations.

§    Students will be able to take their learning beyond the classroom which provides them with new perspectives and first-hand experience while allowing them to make personal contact with the community and give of themselves in ways they may never have thought possible.

§    students gain confidence in their own abilities, discover innovative ways to overcome obstacles and turn a class project into a life experience

For our lesson, we in cooperate bit of this experiential learning where we asked the students to connect their prior knowledge of visiting such places in Malaysia and asked them to shared their experiences on what they have seen and do.  I can see that the students were enjoying sharing their experiences with us teachers and peers. However, not all the time we teachers have the opportunity to in cooperate experiential learning in our lesson but some lesson really goes well with this theory.

This project benefits me a lot because I think that the theories that I learned during the class helped me. For example, the VAK theory really helped me out in planning my lessons. I try to in cooperate balanced level of VAK theory. This is due to I understands that not all the students love hands on activities, some students like to work on their own quietly. As a teacher, I cannot force my students to do hands on all the time which is not practical at all. One of the reasons is time constraint. No matter how many theories that we include in our lessons, at some point we teachers have to remember that some time all this activities takes too much time and we teachers couldn’t finish the syllabus on time.