Teacher's in Today's Society

2264 Words10 Pages
Teachers in today’s society are faced with many different and unique challenges. There is a focus and push towards state testing and less focus on the needs of the children in the classrooms. It is imperative for today’s teachers to be able to adapt to society’s changes. It is important for the teacher to tune in to how children learn. Research clearly shows that a person must be engaged to learn. People learn by actively participating in observing, speaking, writing, listening, thinking, drawing and doing. Learning is enhanced when a person sees potential implications, applications, and benefits to others. Learning builds on current understanding and misconceptions too (National Research Council, 1999). It is necessary for teachers to use their time effectively by using many different techniques to keep the children engaged. Some effective teaching strategies include cooperative learning, equal opportunity for response, latency or wait time, physical proximity, feedback, praise of learning performance, higher level questioning, student empowerment, transitions and establishing rules. Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Cooperative learning results in participants striving for mutual benefit so that all group members will gain from each other's efforts, they recognize that all group members share a common fate; they know that one's performance is mutually caused by oneself and one's team members and they feel proud and
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