WEEK 1

(28th February - 2 March 2017)

During three days of teaching practicing in Cranleigh school, my focus was observing MST’s teaching and learning methods. The main strategies applying in MST’s classroom were based on inquiry learning circle which include the following steps: engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. I noticed how my MST engage students in lessons by asking questions to raise their interests and evaluate their current knowledge. Then, my MST and assistant teacher provide challenging activities for learners to explore ideas by doing experiments and creating projects. In groups, Students communicate and explain their understanding while the MST plan further activities to extend students’ knowledge. Moreover, my MST evaluate students understanding at the end by doing informal and formal assessments.

In my point of view, children benefit from my MST’s strategies especially when they have a variety of problem-solving activities and open-ended questions. This kind of activities, allows children to construct their knowledge individually as Piaget mentioned in his cognitive development theory. According to Piaget, environment plays an essential role in developing child’s thinking that why my MST consider to provide a rich learning environment. Furthermore, learners benefit from my MST’s strategies when they have a good opportunity to work in groups and communicated with each other. As Vygotsky claims, children improve their language through social interaction that what learning centers offer in my MST’s classroom. On the other hand, I noticed that my MST planning and creating activities in different learning styles and levels. As I learned in previous courses, Gardner explains that there are multiple types of intelligence such as linguistic, mathematical, musical and intrapersonal. My MST realizes the difference between her students that why she including all types of intelligence in daily activities and routines.

As a student teacher, I learned that engaging students in the learning process will help me to achieve the learning outcomes. I inferred that the ideal way to involve students is by planning and designing attractive activities. Also, I learned that in my future classroom I should be aware of the differences between my students to help them in increasing their capabilities. In general, I found my third experience of teaching practice clearly different than two previous experiences in ADEC’s schools. In international school, like Cranleigh the curriculum focus not only in academic development but in all areas of child’s development. However, classroom in Cranleigh has only 18 students while in ADEC’s school the number of students in classroom reach 28. Furthermore, I found that my MST not only teach English, math, and science but also art, humanities, and ICT.