How to create a learning environment
Learning
is by far the only entity that remains constant in our rapidly changing world.
Time is compressed, meaning that we have very little time to keep abreast with
change. However one has to learn to adapt and be a part of change. The only way
this can be achieved is to learn how to survive or "how to learn"
with the ever increasing demands of life. A learning environment involves
people who are willing to improve themselves through continuous education and
training
Invest in education and training.
These investments can include effort, finance, and coaching, tutoring and
guiding people to improve academically or creatively. Encourage creativity by
engaging in activities like, planning a garden, making an item, or even painting
the house is a form of creative activity.
Create opportunities
for learning. Encourage active participation in family activities,
household budgeting, home improvements, decor etc. Give children the
opportunity to buy commodities, groceries or any item, in terms of a tight
budget. Provide them with finances and mentor or guide them towards effective
spending and thriftiness.
Place
an emphasis on learning. Let this be constant and ongoing.
When things are becoming stagnant, notice and take action.
Incorporate learning with fun activities.
Laborious and boring educational activities will only hinder the learning
process. One can read a story to children in a favorite picnic spot. Introduce
games like solving riddles. This can be very effective in educating and also
provides a form of entertainment.
Provide
the necessary resources. These may include time, money,
trainers etc. The amount of resources will determine the quality and quantity
of learning. This means that one has to support the learning process.
Be
committed to the learning process. Always bear in mind that
there will be no end to this attitude of continuous training. Create an
awareness
A learning resource centre
is a facility within a
school, staffed by a specialist, containing several information sources.
Purpose Information and
communication development opportunities and information flow are the big
challenges arising from a dedicated review of most educational questions,
whether from theoretical frames or material :wikt:facilitate|facilitations.
School libraries are then considered one of the most important resources within
educational facilities. The need to develop school libraries is urgent in that,
on the one hand there is a need to convey information via a wide diversity of
technologies and resources, and on the other hand, there is a myriad of new
teacher and student roles to support. Within this view, came the project of
learning centers. The objective is to raise school libraries to an
international and more technical standard. Learning Resource Centres can also
be institutionalized in various institutions for teaching and learning
purposes. The purpose of a resource center is to advanced the learning
experience of students and teachers in any educational sector.
Concept A school utility
driven by a qualified expert. It contains several information resources and
their techniques, which the teacher directly deals to acquire searching skills
of information, analyze and evaluate to build a new knowledge and experience,
then develop them using several learning methods. It also provides services to,
facilitate the useful for both teaching and learning.
How to MOTIVATE STUDENTS
A classroom
is a learning space, a room in which both children
and adults learn about things. Classrooms are found in educational institutions
of all kinds, from preschools to universities,
and may also be found in other places where education or training is provided,
such as corporations and religious and humanitarian organizations. The
classroom attempts to provide a space where learning can take place
uninterrupted by outside distractions.
Nobody
ever said that teaching students was easy. Motivating them to learn is even
more difficult. Whether you're teaching eighth graders or adult learners at a
vocational school, it can be a challenge to make students want to work and
learn on their own. However, there are many approaches you can take to make
learning more fun, exciting, and necessary for students.
1. Offer
extra information about your subject. If you want the students
to be excited about what you're teaching, then you'll have to go above and
beyond the curriculum. Keep the students updated with recent developments
regarding their subject. If you are a science teacher for example, you could 1)
Bring an article from Scientific American for the students to read in class or
2) Give the students a summary of the article, show them pictures of the
article, ask them questions about the concepts in the article and what certain
sentences mean and tell them that you have copies of the article if anyone
wants to pick them up after class.
2. Give
assignments that let students think outside the box.
Do an extensive class project that is unconventional and fun. For example, your
class could put on a science-related (or whichever subject related) play that
you could perform at a local museum for younger children.
3. Have
a good sense of humor. Having a good sense of humor can help
you engage students, make the material more lively, and make it easier for them
to relate to you. The fact of the matter is, if you're serious 100% of the
time, it'll be much harder for them to care and to really connect with you.
Though you don't have to be a goofball, joking around every chance you get, if
you create a more fun environment for your students, they will likely be more
motivated and eager to learn.
4. Ask
the students to share their opinions. Your students are less
likely to be motivated if they feel that you are simply lecturing at them and
not caring what they think. If you ask them what they think about a certain
political issue, a literary passage, or the validity of a scientific
experiment, they are more likely to perk up and to speak out. If they feel that
you care about what they have to say, they will come out of their shells and
will be excited to share their views with you.
5. Encourage
lively class discussion. If you lecture all the time, students
are likely to zone out. If you want to keep students motivated to learn and keep
them on their toes, then you have to facilitate meaningful class discussions
throughout your class. Ask questions, not of the class, but of each student
directly, calling each one out by name.
Classroom Management and Organization
The classroom environment
is influenced by the guidelines established for its operation, its users, and
its physical elements. Teachers often have little control over issues such as
temperature and leaky ceilings, but they greatly influence the operation of
their classrooms. Effective teachers expertly manage and organize the classroom
and expect their students to contribute in a positive and productive manner. It
seems prudent to pay careful attention to classroom climate, given that it can
have as much impact on student learning as student aptitude (Wang, Haertel,
& Walberg, 1993). Effective teachers take time in the beginning of the year
and especially on the first day of school (Emmer, Evertson, & Anderson,
1980; Emmer, Evertson, & Worsham, 2003) to establish classroom management,
classroom organization, and expectations for student behavior.
Classroom
Management
Effective teachers create
focused and nurturing classrooms that result in increased student learning
(Marzano et al., 2003; Shellard & Protheroe, 2000). These teachers teach
and rehearse rules and procedures with students, anticipate students' needs,
possess a plan to orient new students, and offer clear instructions to students
(McLeod et al., 2003; Emmer et al., 1980). They use a minimum number of rules
to ensure safety and productive interaction in the classroom, and they rely on
routines to maintain a smoothly running classroom (McLeod et al. 2003). In
fact, it has been noted that classroom management skills are essential in a
classroom for a teacher to get anything done (Brophy & Evertson, 1976). In
some ways, classroom management is like salt in a recipe; when it is present it
is not noticed, but when it is missing, diners will ask for it
Rules
Virtually everything that
involves interactions among people requires rules. Webster's dictionary defines
a rule as “a fixed principle that determines conduct” (McKechnie, 1983). Let's
deconstruct this definition: a rule is “fixed” meaning that it does not change
regardless of the situation. In reality, we know that rules have to undergo
occasional modifications in the everyday life of a classroom. Nonetheless,
rules establish the boundaries for behavior (Nakamura, 2000), and consistency
in their implementation is essential to effective classroom management.
Effective teachers have a
minimum number of classroom rules, which tend to focus on expectations of how
to act toward one another, maintain a safe environment, and participate in
learning (Marzano et al., 2003; McLeod et al., 2003; Thompson, 2002). These
teachers offer clear explanations of the rules, model the rules, rehearse the
expectations with students, and offer students opportunities to be successful
in meeting the expectations (Covino & Iwanicki, 1996; Emmer et al., 1980).
There is no magic number of rules that govern a classroom; rather, it is the
clear establishment of fair, reasonable, enforceable, and consistently applied
rules that makes a difference in classrooms.
Effective educators have a
sense of classroom tempo and student harmony such that they are aware of when
an intervention may be needed to prevent a problem (Johnson, 1997). Often,
teachers use nonverbal cues, proximity, and redirection to prevent misbehavior.
These techniques typically allow the momentum of the instruction to continue
and refocus the student; however, there are times when a stronger intervention
is necessary. When a rule is broken, an effective teacher is prepared to
address the problem. Effective teachers tend to react in several ways,
including the following: positive reinforcement that points to the desired
behavior, consequences that punish the negative behavior, a combination of
reinforcement and consequences, or indirectly responding to the behavior such
that the student is reminded of why a rule is important. What an effective
teacher does not do is react to an entire class for a rule infraction by a
single student.
.
Classroom
Organization
Classroom management and
organization are intertwined. While rules and routines influence student
behavior, classroom organization affects the physical elements of the
classroom, making it a more productive environment for its users. How the
classroom environment is organized influences the behavior in it. For example,
actions as simple as color-coding folders, establishing fixed locations for lab
supplies, maintaining folders for students to pick up missed work after being
absent, keeping extra copies of “Back to School Night” items to share with new
students, and designating specific places for other classroom supplies can have
a dramatic effect on classroom organization and, consequently, on student
learning. While these procedures and a multitude like them are simple matters,
they nonetheless can be essential components for a smoothly operating
classroom.
Classroom organization is
evident in a room even if no one is present. Furniture arrangements, location
of materials, displays, and fixed elements are all part of organization.
Effective teachers decorate the room with student work, they arrange the
furniture to promote interaction as appropriate, and they have comfortable
areas for working (Kohn, 1996). They also consider student needs in arranging
the room by leaving space for wheelchairs to maneuver; having walkways so
students can access materials, pencil sharpeners, and the trashcan with minimal
disturbance to others; and organizing in such a way as to allow the teacher to
freely move around the room to monitor student progress (McLeod et al., 2003).
Rules
Last year, Mandrel had his
classroom rules, along with the consequences for not following the rules,
posted for students. However, he found it difficult to get students to follow
his rules. Worse yet, he knows that he did not do a very good job enforcing
them. Before the new school year started, Mandrel met with his mentor to
examine the classroom rules he had created.
Expectations
for Student Behavior
Attending to issues of
classroom management and organization provides the foundation for having high
expectations for student behavior. Effective teachers have higher expectations
for how students are to conduct themselves in the classroom than their less
effective colleagues (Stronge et al., 2003). They are better managers of
student behavior (Emmer et al., 1980). They establish relationships with their
students in which high levels of cooperation and dominance (i.e., giving
students a sense of purpose and guidance) are balanced, resulting in an optimal
relationship (Marzano et al., 2003). Effective teachers teach expectations to
students and reinforce the desired behaviors with their verbal and nonverbal cues.
Another characteristic of effective teachers is that they hold students
individually accountable (Kohn, 1996) and, if necessary, use intervention
strategies to help students learn the desired behavior (McLeod et al., 2003).
An exploratory study of effective and ineffective third-grade teachers found
that ineffective teachers had five times as many disruptive events in an hour
when compared with their more effective counterparts (Stronge et al., 2003).
Through fair and consistent discipline, teachers reinforce their expectations
of students and create a classroom that is focused on instruction.
Common Classroom Occurrences
- Attendance
- Lunch counts
- Collecting work
- Returning work
- Distributing supplies
- Returning supplies
- Walking to specials (PE, art, music,
library, computers)
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- Morning work
- Make up work
- Afternoon dismissal
- Settling students down
- Changing activities
- What to do when you finish your work
- Drills: Fire, Tornado, Lock-down
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