What's my role in the classroom?
In this session we'll explore the roles of teachers in the classroom and talk about how to stay engaged during class. (Created by Richard Ng)
- For Teachers and TAs to understand the value of teacher training
- To make every education volunteer feel like they have a vital role to play in Code Your Future (whether as TA or Teacher)
- For Teachers and TAs to have a joint understanding of what they can reasonably expect of each other
Key takeaways
- We can help students to learn more effectively by considering the science of teaching and learning
- Some results are counter-intuitive
- Providing formative evaluation to teachers is one of the most high impact ways of improving student outcomes
Exercise
Individually, take some time to decide whether each of these has high, medium or low effects on student achievement.
Discuss in groups and arrive at a group consensus.
- Ability grouping/tracking/streaming
- Concept mapping
- Cooperative instead of individualistic learning
- Direct instruction
- Feedback
- Home environment
- Individualised instruction
- Peer influences
- Matching teaching with student learning styles
- Metacognitive strategy programmes
- Providing formative evaluation to teachers
- Providing worked examples
- Reducing class size
- Student control over learning
- Student expectations
- Teacher credibility in eyes of student
- Teacher expectations
- Teacher subject matter knowledge
- Teacher-student relationships
Tally the responses from each group before comparing to the results.
Results
| High | Medium | Low |
Ability grouping/tracking/streaming | | | x |
Concept mapping | x | | |
Cooperative instead of individualistic learning | | x | |
Direct instruction | | x | |
Feedback | x | | |
Home environment | | x | |
Individualising instruction | | | x |
Influence of peers | | x | |
Matching teaching with student learning styles | | | x |
Metacognitive strategy programmes | x | | |
Providing formative evaluation to teachers | x | | |
Providing worked examples | | x | |
Reducing class size | | | x |
Student control over learning | | | x |
Student expectations | x | | |
Teacher credibility in eyes of the students | x | | |
Teacher expectations | | x | |
Teacher subject matter knowledge | | | x |
Teacher-student relationships | x | | |
Discussion
Individually, then in groups:
- 1.What do you find most surprising?
- 2.What does this mean for us as education volunteers?
- We are outcome-oriented: getting students into junior developer roles
- To support students to reach those outcomes, we take them through a journey of great change in acquiring knowledge and skills
- Our role is to help build up to those knowledge and skills
- We should think purposefully about the knowledge and skills that we are intending to deliver in a given interaction or period of interactions
Individually, take some time to think about the knowledge and skills that we might want a student to leave with at the end of the programme.
Discuss your responses in groups.
Feedback to the room and collect common themes on the board.
Repeat for a Module (JavaScript) and Lesson (functions).
Indicative table
| Knowledge | Skills |
Programme | HTML/CSS JavaScript React Node.js MongoDB | Problem-solving Resilience Teamwork Communication |
Module, e.g. JavaScript | Data types Control flow Functions Testing DOM manipulation Conventions | Naming Structuring code Refactoring Pair programming Googling Whiteboarding |
Lesson, e.g. functions | Reusability Referencing vs executing Parameters / arguments Helper functions | Abstracting out Naming a function Naming a parameter |
Discussion
Individually, and then in groups:
- 1.Who is this useful to?
- 2.How is it useful to them?
Key takeaways
- The classroom is a complex system with multiple actors (student, teacher, TA)
- Any given actor has needs from, and responsibilities to, every other actor
- A lesson is a cooperative enterprise built on mutual respect for these other actors
- It is the interests of everybody - students, Code Your Future and volunteers themselves - for all volunteers to continually develop their teaching skills
- Feedback is a gift that helps people develop those skills, for themselves and others
- Each actor has a unique vantage point from which to give feedback
Group activity
Split the room into small groups. Each group is tasked with considering a given role (‘student’, ‘teacher’, ‘TA’) and that role’s needs from and duties to the other actors in the classroom.
(Students have duties to / needs from other students in the class; TAs have duties to / needs from other TAs in the class; teachers have duties to / needs from other teachers in other classes)
Discussion
Have groups feedback to the room. Collect key things in a table, similar to the below:
Y’s need from X Y’s duty to X | … Student | … Teacher | … TA |
Student... | | | |
Teacher... | | | |
TA... | | | |
Individually, come up with:
- 1.The most important thing that you know or understand more about now
- 2.The biggest unanswered question you have, or what is most unclear to you, or what you would like to learn next
Last modified 2yr ago