Zone of Knowledge

The title of this webinar grabbed my attention and I was excited to attend it and know more about how to deal with such a widespread issue. That's why I attended it in February 27, 2018 and I have learned several effective teaching practices that help in including poor children with other ones. Kathleen Budge and William Parett highlighted five powerful classroom practices that are essential for making the school a safe environmet for everyone. One of these practices includes building good relationships among students themselves and with their teacher to let them build the sense of belonging to a group. Another important practice is having high expectations towards students which will push them to learn and motivate them to exert more effort to succeed. In addition, encouraging pupils to take risks and have the courage and will to take actions is super important because this makes them feel competent enough to do whatever they're required to do. As a result, dealing with povert...

I have done this case study on a student named Mohammad. He is thirteen years old; one year older than all the other students in his class because he failed in the previous year. He is a confident student who always gives comments on his friends and makes fun of them. One time, they had a dictation and the teacher distributed papers for them to write the dictation on. Everyone was writing while he was acting as if he’s moving his pen and when she asked them to submit their papers, everyone gave it to the teacher except him. He didn’t only leave the paper with him, but also ripped it in front of his classmates and he was proud of that. This incident grabbed my attention and made me think deeply of his case. Since then, I always kept an eye on Mohammad and observed his behavior in class and how the teacher reacted to it. In the sake of knowing more information about this student, I asked people surrounding him about his family so they told me that h is elder brother died two...

A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning. Her ability to create an effective learning environment is an indicator of how successful she is but this isn’t easy because it requires the combination and integration of several skills and teaching methods all together. One main factor which strongly affects the learning process is the textbook which the administration selects for students. The book which I selected to evaluate is for grade six students. It’s from the Oxford Discover collection which I found very helpful and organized. It also includes different tools which allow the teacher to show and tell students using the poster pack and class audio CDs which come along with the book. Oxford Discover book  also taps into children’s natural curiosity, enables them to ask their own questions, find their own answers and explore the world around them. This is mainly done by having a big question in the beginning of each unit lik...

“ We acquire language when we understand messages, when we understand what people tell us and when we understand what we read” , Stephen Krashen. Starting from this quote, we can tell that if second language learners receive an input which they don’t understand, they won’t be able to acquire the language. That’s why knowing when and how to use L1 is a critical issue which needs to be considered in each and every teaching step the L2 teacher takes. The teachers’ beliefs also play a radical role in this issue. It makes a huge difference whether the teacher believes that her students don’t have any base regarding learning L2   or if she thinks that she can build on what they already know in their native language. The second belief facilitates the learning process, saves a lot of the teachers’ energy and engages learners. However, if teachers aren’t guided with principles about when to use L1 in the class, the benefits of using it turn into obstacles and st...

In the final project of the "Statistical Research" course, we were asked to do our own research on a topic of our choice. I found the teacher's age an interesting topic and what made me do my research on it was that I heard some students complaining about their teacher who isn't interested in teaching at all and who is old.   The first step which I have taken was comparing the grades of students of an old teacher and the ones of a novice teacher. The results showed that the novice teacher's students got better results in their mid-term exam. This made me curious to know the exact reasons behind that difference. As a result, I decided to observe both classes. My observations showed that the novice teacher is more up-dated with the new and interesting ways of teaching. She also based her teaching on students' interest while the old teacher just used the traditional ways. However, it was clear that the old teacher had a great knowledge and she only ne...

Today was a very special day. We had important visitors in our school so we were asked to do our best in order to let them form a nice idea about us as teachers and about our students as well. Though I had a stomachache, I didn't accept to leave all of the work to my colleagues  and I went there and worked with them. We cooperated all together and organized everything. What I have learnt from this day is that it's always great to contribute to the success of the group you're working with cause this will eventually lead to your own success and development. This day proved to me the importance of cooperative work and that one hand can never clap alone. That's why we must always have sportsmanship, accept others' ideas and work with them cooperatively to either succeed or sink down together. At the end of the day, the administrator thanked us and showed a lot of appreciation to our work and coaction which made all of us feel proud and successful. Hope I'll always...