Happy World Teachers' Day

 

 

Have you ever imagined how the world would look like without teachers? A world perhaps, where parents and guardians would be struggling without a headway to meet up with their roles as parents, and molding complete individuals. Teachers are special and teaching is a noble profession.  

The importance of teachers in the society cannot be underestimated as their glaring roles stare at the world repeatedly. It is not a surprise therefore, that the world has created a space in its calendar to celebrate teachers.

The roles of teachers range from School leaders, Curriculum specialist, Learning facilitators, classroom supporters, Resource providers, Mentors to Instructional specialist.

The responsibilities are enormous, and the result are to a great extent, visible in the lives of some learners. Beyond the classroom, teachers are faced with other hidden tasks, which contribute greatly to the development of total individuals.

To every teacher out there, who had taken out time to be committed to their job, to raise 21^st century learners, time will reveal your effort. Keep being dedicated, and add patience and enthusiasm to your work. Proudly a teacher! Happy World Teachers’ Day.

Key Elements of a Lesson Plan: Download

 

 

The Creative Teacher

 

There are many routes to a place, and which ever route a driver takes to his destination, depends on his present situation. If I had a treasure and needed to get on the other side of a wall, I could choose to climb over the wall, jump over the wall, or make a hole and go through the wall. Whichever way, I get to my treasure. This is creativity; it is turning imaginative ideas into realities.

The concept of creativity in teaching arises because, there is a problem which has to be solved to meet set objectives. In other words, a creative teacher is one who has a skill of solving problems. Creativity allows you to see things in different ways and express yourself.

As a creative teacher, you must have different ways of meeting your learners’ need. Doing it the same old way could be boring and not give you the expected result. One way to be creative is promoting the 21^st century skills through critical thinking and problem solving skill. You must be able to measure your proficiency in the 21^st century skills, so as to help your learner develop theirs.

It is vital then, to have a personal plan of a continuous professional development if you must stay relevant. You hit your target and make more impact, when you are equipped for the task. It’s a new era, where the new normal has come to stay. Get creative “teacher”; do it differently this time.

Developing 21st Century Learners

 

 

Bridging the Gap

 

What is Literacy if the essence is lost at the foundation stage? Every developmental mile stone that is skipped in the literacy journey, has a way of hunting any educational system. After my experience with three secondary school students from different schools, who could not read nor write well, a question refused to leave me. Did they pass through foundation stage? If yes. Then what went wrong?

Literacy focuses more on reading (decoding words) and the ability to spell (encoding). This goes down to applying the knowledge of phonics in early years teaching. Beyond having the knowledge of phonics, which should be a criteria for any educator who is interested in result, every educator should have the skill of teaching kids how to read and write.

Having thrown this light, it is paramount therefore that educators always trouble shoot, to find out reasons why their students are not reading or spelling well at a particular age. The earlier this is spotted, the better chances of developing the reading and writing skills of learners.

For learners to be able to read, they must be able to decode sounds. This invariably means that building the reading skill must begin early with learners being able to identify individual sounds. Kids should be able to link letters to sounds from their early age.

Helpful tips

1.     Make sure your leaners know their individual letter sounds. Don’t assume they do, because of their age, you might be shocked when you assess them.

2.     Make sure they are able to identify the individual sounds that forms a word. Depending on the age, it could be two, three, or four letter words.

3.     Make sure they can blend sounds to form two, three or four letter word, according to their age and mental ability.

4.     Let them know the difference between vowel and consonant sounds. This depends on the age and class. There is no need to rush, if your learners are not there yet. Focus on result, and check from time to time if your teaching is effective. If it is not, provide extra support.

5.     Introduce them to CVC words and how to blend consonant and vowel sounds to form them.

6.     Expose them to digraphs, and teach them how to blend them with other sounds to form words

7.     Form simple sentences based on the sounds and words you have taught and have them read

I hope this helps …