Biggest of Mistake is Not to Use Mistakes as Part of the Learning Process...

Finding Value in Error

Teachers, like doctors, are expected to be mistake free. Administrators, parents, and even other teachers judge them very negatively for making mistakes. Yet when a teacher forms strong relationships with another teacher or two, they share their problems freely, ask for and give advice, and learn from each other. This also happens in schools where mentor teachers share ideas with new teachers.

9 Ways to Teach With Mistakes

The problem for students is not that they make mistakes. The real problem is that teachers don't use those mistakes to allow and promote learning. Because shame is currently attached to mistakes, students are afraid to take chances, explore, and think for themselves. As a clear example of how damaging this view can be, look at the makeup of most gifted and talented programs. In far too many schools, the students in these classes are not the most creative risk takers or unique thinkers. They are the students who scored the highest on standardized tests. Therefore, we label as gifted or talented the students who make the fewest mistakes. I believe that it's a mistake to think of mistakes as something bad. When mistakes become learning opportunities, everything changes. Students take more risks, think in new ways, cheat less, and solve mysteries that had previously eluded them.

Here are some things that we can do in the classroom to change this defeating way of thinking, including both formal and informal evaluation processes:

Stop marking errors on tests and papers without explaining why they're wrong. Give enough explanation to help your student understand what went wrong and how to fix it. A big red X is insufficient.

Give students a chance to correct their mistakes and redo their work. This allows mistakes to become learning opportunities.

Improvement must become a significant factor in the evaluation process. The more a student improves, the higher his or her grade. Nothing shows learning from mistakes more than improvement.

When a student makes a mistake in a class discussion, don't say things like, "No, wrong, can anyone help him?" Don't just call on someone else without further comment. Instead, ask the student, "Why do you think so? Can you give an example? If you could ask yourself a question about your answer, what would it be?"

 If a teacher asks, "Who was the first PM of the India?" and a student answers, "Narendra Modi," instead of saying, "You're wrong," try saying, "Narendra Modi is a PM, you're right about that. However, he wasn't the first. Let's go further back in history." Even silly answers can be responded to in this way.

If a student needs help with an answer, let him or her choose a classmate to help. Call the helper something like a "personal consultant."

Instead of (or at least in addition to) walls filled with students' achievements, have a wall where students can brag about their biggest mistakes and what they learned from them.

Have biweekly class meetings where students share a mistake they made, what happened after, and what they learned.

Be sure to tell the class about your own mistakes, especially if they are funny, and what you learned from them.

I would love to see a sign on every entrance to every school that says, "Everyone who enters here will learn." Learning means not being afraid to examine mistakes that teachers make and encouraging students to think in ways that might produce mistakes. Use all these mistakes to learn from, to improve, and to feel good about individual progress.

About the Author:

The Author is Ms. Nupoor Batra, Meenakshi Public School

www.meenakshipublicschool.com

VALUES – An integral part of Education...

Our epics such as ‘Mahabharata’ and ‘Ramayana’ tell us the true story of our being Indian. The Indian values are world known for our tradition, our respect for others be it elders or youngsters.

Are we loosing that most integral ingredient of building a personality of being Indian, ‘the values.’ These used to be time when once a person makes a promise, he fulfills that even at the cost of his life. ‘That’ used to be the strength of Indian values. I’m wondering, where that indianness has vanished? Why do we see that these values slowly loosing its importance in one’s personality and why people have become more self-egoist and self-centered.

I believe, the solution to bridge this gap lies to ensure teaching values as a subject to indicate qualities of a balanced personality. No doubt, Value is a very vast concept. What all it includes has to be taught. So why not values to be included in the curriculum itself. I know, today’s generation is in the run of development and progress. They are more practical and futuristic. They are under the notion that of they are qualified and educated they are up-to-date but they forget that values acts as a garnish to every end- result. It adds on the grace of anything. Values make person more civilized. It inculcates the true value of living.

Value of values is now-a-days more important. In the materialistic world human are not becoming literate but getting inhuman. While running on the path of success they tend to forget what the true success is? Ask your ownself, whom would you call a perfect human, one who is educated or one who is educated as well as having values in himself.

Indeed, teaching value is not as easy as it sounds. It is much more than that. Today’s generation is more pro western culture and compromise majority on their values. I know today kids want to be global. Even we want India through these kids as an integral part of the world, but being global doesn’t mean that leave our culture, our values behind.

We need to lead the world, our generation (view) have everything. They are bold, not afraid of taking risk and have the desire of touching the sky, if they are given the touch of ‘values’ through their education. They will become unbeatable like the ‘Great King Ashoka’ and we will again have ‘Indian Epics’ of course modern ones having their space in all civilization.

About the Author:

The Author is Ms. Anandita Chauhan, PGT Commerce, Meenakshi Public School

www.meenakshipublicschool.com

Parent Involvement to Parent Engagement...

It is often a debatable topic that who has more influence, Parent or Teacher on children in becoming a better student and a good citizen of the country. To be honest I have no intention to start the same debate again. Infact I want to draw attention to something which has not been taken cognizance yet both by Schools and Parents. Before I tell what is that, let’s talk a little about 'Early childhood programs' and what schools talk a lot about parent involvement but what that means is often not clear. And one major involvement program is PTM (Parent Teacher Meeting). Well, I define PTM (Parent Teacher Meeting) as the minimum involvement program a school does with parents on monthly or quarterly basis to keep them informed of children progress. What is the real outcome of these meetings is well known to all of us, and again honestly I'm not critical of the outcome because that in itself is quite a progress made in last two decade or so.

However, the point of contention here is how we make further progress by moving from Parent Involvement to Parent Engagement.

First, one needs to understand the difference between “Parent Involvement” and “Parent Engagement”. Though there can be a positive result from both, I believe the most trust can be developed through engagement.

Simply put, parent involvement is often more of a "doing to," while engagement is a "doing with." With involvement, schools tend to lead with their mouth -- generally telling parents what they should be doing. Engagement, on the other hand, has schools leading with their ears. By listening to parents' ideas, and by eliciting from them what they have found works best with their children, we can develop a more genuine partnership that is helpful to young people.

For me this thought of parent engagement is coming from 3 major observations of my 12 years of teaching experience:

1. The students who need more help, the parents are not available to talk or they will not really listen.

2.  Low income, uneducated parents are less involved due to their lack of confidence and abilities than middle or high class, educated parents.

3. Parents who actively promote learning in the home, have direct and regular contact with school, have children who demonstrate positive engagement with their peers, adults, and learning.

I believe there lies a great opportunity for schools to move from Involvement model to engagement model. How it will be done? Who will do it? What to expect out of it? Are obvious questions but I think teachers, management, psychologists, Councillors and parents if sit together can certainly design and decide the scope of the new engagement program.

For me, we shouldn't "make" parents do anything they don't want to do. The notion that we should "make" or force someone to do something implies some hierarchy of power, where we are higher on the hierarchy and they, the parents, are lower than us. This premise will not result in a positive reaction from parents and only further obstructs any relationship we hope to foster and nurture with our parents. Parents are teaching partners and should be embraced as such. Teaching partners work in a symbiotic relationship based on mutual respect, trust, and consistent communication. When we as teaching professionals acknowledge and accept this relationship, we'll be better prepared to support all students and families in any learning capacity.

In this trusted environment, teachers and parents share information about the child’s development and what he/she is learning in the classroom and in the home. Assessment data is shared with parents and learning goals are set together. When parents are engaged, children are enjoyed and celebrated, they are not ignored, children see that their family values learning and are able to relax and learn knowing that their grown-ups will support them. Parents learn about their own strengths as parents, their power to influence their child’s school and advocate for their child, are more informed about community resources, and have more strategies for meeting their child’s needs.

About the Author:
The Author is Ms. Poorti Sharma, PGT Commerce, Meenakshi Public School
www.meenakshipublicschool.com

TRUTH IS THE SOURCE OF GOOD REPUTATION...

Today ‘Jealousy’ and ‘Ego’ have become prevalent without any limit in the entire world. If one of the students gets first class, the other students become jealous of him. Similarly, if somebody is healthy and happy, others feel jealous of him. A pauper feels jealous of a wealthy person. The same can be said of birds and animals also. Cranes make fun of swans. The melodious singing of a cuckoo is like cacophony to crows. Wordly people are like crows. Therefore, people who are on the path of truth should not bother about what others say; they should make efforts to lead their life on the righteous path.

Without bothering about the barking of dogs, the elephants to move forward majestically. Where the elephant is and where the dogs are! There can be no comparison between the two. Likewise, a cuckoo bird continues to sing melodiously without bothering about the cawing of the crows. Does it stop singing just because the crows are cawing at it? No. In the same manner, people may feel jealous of your goodness, progress, wellbeing and purity. But you should continue to keep your heart pure without taking any notice of them. You should not be dejected or depressed by their negative feelings and criticism.

“If the feeling behind an action is good, it is bound to be fruitful.

If the feeling is polluted, according the result will be negative.”

About the Author:
The Author is Ms. Neetu Shukla, PRT, Meenakshi Public School
www.meenakshipublicschool.com

Collaborative learning viz. Community Building...

“It is not what you do for your children,

But what you have taught them to do for themselves,

That will make them successful human beings.”

Ann Landers

Strengthening its base with fast pace in education industry, Collaborative learning is a teaching style in which students team together on an assignment. In this method students can produce the individual parts of a larger assignment individually and then “assemble” the final work together, as a team. Students are individually accountable for their work but also for the work of the group as a whole, and both products are assessed. They can be assessed: individually, by team, by role, by work product?

This works well by placing students in groups that have between four and seven members. Here group can share ideas, teaching strategies, and solutions. It can be an effective teaching strategy for several reasons:

Firstly, students develop the skill for how to work together and support each other in learning and discovery.

Second, becoming effective and productive team members allows students to develop their independent learning skills by working individually on a portion of a group project that makes them accountable not only to the instructor but also to team members.

 And finally, integrating teamwork into a course can result in adding structure to out-of-class time and increasing student accountability for their learning.

Some activities or assignments well suited for collaborative learning include:

• Case studies

• Discussions

• Student-moderated discussions

• Debates

• Collaborative writing

• Collaborative presentation

• Games

• Demonstrations

The idea of an educator will be to help the team to develop

Purpose, goal, and mission of the team—what the team will accomplish

 Expectations for the team as a whole as well as for individual members

Roles for each individual

Meeting schedules and deadlines

Although there are always the two sides of the coin so are the anticipated issues or challenges attached with this learning style. Some difficulties that the instructor or students might encounter while working on a collaborative project are workload issues, meeting deadlines, combining their individual pieces into one, work distribution, and so forth. With little diligence an educator can help learners overcome all of them.

Through a variety of collaborative activities, starting early and persisting throughout the course, participants can foster and encourage community, collaboration, and team building among their students.

About the Author;

The Author is Ms. Sumita Gupta, Coordinator, Blooming Buds

www.bloomingbudsmws.com