Power Learning 21

Today, many teachers seek to engage their students to learn actively instead of the former passive way of learning that made learning non-interactive and dull. Although teachers aim to engage their students, many are not quite sure where to start. Imagining creative ways to engage students in and outside of the classroom that is both meaningful and effective poses a task for some teachers.

However, the model of active learning offers a way to conceptualize the learning process that may assist teachers in finding forms of active learning.

As this model shows, all learning requires experience or dialogue.

•Dialogue with Self: This occurs when a learner reflects on a topic. Asking themselves what they think or feel about the topic can help children learn actively if a teacher, for instance, asks students to keep a journal for the course.

•Dialogue with others: This is a back and fourth exchange of ideas and makes the classroom more dynamic and students engage in a conversation about the topic.

•Observing: When a student listens or watches another person discuss or perform the topic. Students can either observe directly (they see the act itself) or vicariously (they watch a movie on the topic/act).

•Doing: This refers to any activity where the learner actually does something. This is an engaging form of learning, as it will allow the student to better retain information if they relate it to what they are doing.

To put this model of active learning into place in your classroom, teachers need to:

•Expand the kinds of learning experiences they create

•Take advantage of the “power of interaction”

•Create a dialect between experience and dialogue

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Inclusive language is wording that aims to ensure that all members of society are treated with equal respect and that no individual group is overlooked. This type of language avoids terms that may be offensive or stereotype. The purpose of this type of language is to ensure equality in a piece of content such as official documents or statements from public figures. To avoid a poor choice of words, speakers should follow these dos and don’ts of inclusive language:

•Do not single out a person’s sex, race, ethnicity, or other personal traits/characteristics (sexual orientation, age, disabilities)

•Be consistent in your description of members of a group: Do not single out women to describe their physical beauty/clothes.etc.

•Respect requests by individuals to not be included. If someone prefers their name not be mentioned, exclude them specifically.

•When mentioning those with disabilities avoid singling out their individual disability and avoid words that imply victimization such as “suffer” or “victim”.

•To use gender-neutral language, avoid occupational designations with derogatory –ette or –ess endings, degender words by dropping the “man” off chairman (and other similar words), and convert adjectives to nouns by adding –ist such as in activist.

•Be especially careful when using gender-free terms in writing about traditional male or female activities: mothering to parenting.

•In names and titles where Mr. is used use Ms. as the female equivalent whether the female be single or married.

•In salutations in letters it is always safer to use “To whom it may concern” rather than “Dear Sir/Madame

•Avoid the pronoun “he” or “man” when both sexes are included.

•Avoid assumptions such as that a man is the head of the household.

Try to find neutral alternatives to the specific terms you are using. Always avoid personal pronouns (he, she, his, her) and other unwelcome terms that may offend your audience. Make your writing or speaking all inclusive to avoid all complications that may follow an uninclusive statement.

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VARK is a questionnaire that, when completed, will allow an individual to view how they learn best, based on the answers they provided. VARK stands for visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic. It’s acronym comes from the type of learning style that the questionnaire will match you will after answering sixteen questions. It is essentially a guide to learning styles, not a learning style itself considering that actual learning styles have over eighteen dimensions. VARK allows people to do something with the information they receive; changing the way they study or read.

VARK

To measure accuracy, VARK asks users to determine if their profile matches their perception and over 58% believe it matched. Although perceptions are said to be unreliable, the results still support the validity of the questionnaire. With only 16 questions, the VARK questionnaire narrows down the subject matter and allows people to stay focused, rather then get bored with the survey.

VARK finds differences in the learning styles of men and woman, teachers and students, and even different careers simply by which answers a person chooses. The database has had 200,000 surveys taken in September 2010 and was expected to reach a million by the end of 2010.

Simply put, VARK is a quick and easy evaluation of an individual’s preferred learning style. It gets you to think about the process of learning. Like anything else learning takes time, but knowing how you learn specifically, can help.

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Communication is very much a way of connecting with others not only by what you say, but how it is said. In the classroom, children learned when they are engaged and their instructor shows passions for the subject. How you express what you are saying can be thought of as nonverbal communication. These nonverbal messages can make all the difference in the classroom and knowing how to improve your nonverbal communication can be a vital skill in the teaching process.

Nonverbal Communication

To improve your nonverbal communication:

1.)   Make Eye Contact: This helps open the flow of communication and signals interest in students.

2.)   Facial Expressions: To further improve your nonverbal communication, smiling can transmit warmth and friendliness that will make you more approachable.

3.)   Gestures: To avoid seeming stiff, adopt an animated style of teaching to capture and engage your students. Nodding while a student is answering a question correctly gives positive reinforcement.

4.)   Posture and body orientation: This is a large part of how to improve your nonverbal communication. The way you walk, talk, stand, sit, etc communicates to students. Stand tall, or lean slightly forward when sitting to seem approachable to students.

5.)   Proximity: Recognize the student’s space. Do not crowd them while they are working independently. Observe and add positive remarks or suggestions. In larger classrooms, where proximity isn’t an issue, make use of the space by moving around.

6.)   Paralinguistic’s: Vary the tone, pitch, rhythm, timbre, and loudness of your voice to further improve your nonverbal communication.

7.)   Humor: Laughter releases stress. Although humor is sometime not encouraged, it does in fact develop a friendlier classroom and greatly enhances your nonverbal communication skills.

Becoming aware of nonverbal behavior will allow you to not only better reinforce learning, but also become aware of the nonverbal behavior your student’s displays and furthermore, develop a teacher and student understanding. To improve your nonverbal communication, create a classroom that not only urges learning and retention, but also can feel comfortable to students.

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The SAT is one of the most important tests a student will complete while in high school. Determining class placement and their overall application of all they have learned throughout their school career, this test will allow them to be evaluated on an even playing field. Therefore, practice for the types of questions that will be on the test is crucial to success on test day. Math, a commonly hard subject for many people due to the amount of practice required to master concepts, is often overlooked when studying because students are sure where to begin. However, by utilizing SAT Math Practice Tests, students will be ensured that they are prepared for that section come test day. View videos on SAT Math Practice Tests in order to work with the online instructor on a problem to ensure that you are doing each problem correctly. Powerlearning21 offers a variety of SAT Math Practice Tests, which allow students to pause at a section that is confusing and work along on a problem with the video. View the SAT Math Practice Test below and find more on YouTube on the PowerLearning21 channel.

SAT Math Practice Test 1, Part A

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Online instructors face a challenge when it comes to working with groups. The lack of face-to-face interaction presents a difficult situation when a group project is at hand. Teaming students together for certain projects enhances their collaboration and management skills. Creating, communicating with, and evaluating group work that is based online can be difficult, however, follow these teaching strategies for online group work to gain tips on how to enhance student collaboration.

•Plan group assignments: Assignments that are going to utilize group work should be planned, especially for online groups. Allow students advanced notice so they can email their collaborators and plan early on who will do what and when in the project.

•Diversify the groups: As an instructor, you may know the major of each student, the nationality, the gender, and other information in order to make the groups diverse in order to enhance the creativity of the groups.

•Set Group Expectations: You don’t want one student doing all of the work for the project. The work should be evenly distributed among the members of the group. One method to avoid this is to set up different jobs for the project and have the students of each group assigned to a job and they contribute to their specified position.

•Allow communication between the students: Students need a way to easily communicate with the entire group. Use technology such as Google Docs where you can assign a document to a group of students so they all have access to their group assignment and can collaborate within the document.

Grouping students together, even when face-to-face is difficult to facilitate. However, the benefits of group work are numerous and therefore, these teaching strategies for group work are necessary to enhance students collaboration skills.

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PowerLearning21’s online algebra lessons begin with pre-algebra and extend through basic algebra. The online algebra lessons have visual and multimedia lessons as well as interactive algebra problems. With the aid of examples, progress in algebra is assured through our online algebra lessons. The videos below are just a few of the online algebra lessons we offer.

Online Algebra Lessons

• http://www.powerlearning21.com/classes/view/1883-algebra_1_lesson_5_the_distributive_property This online algebra lesson highlights how to use the Distributive Property. The instructor, Mrs. Chapman, explains how the Distributive Property works using calculations and illustrations.

• http://www.powerlearning21.com/classes/view/1884-algebra_1_lesson_6_communative_associative_properties This online algebra lesson highlights how the Communitive and Associative Properties work.

• http://www.powerlearning21.com/classes/view/1885-algebra_1_lesson_7_logical_reasoning_counterexamples This online algebra lesson highlights how to solve Logical Reasoning and Counterexample problems that include Conditional Statements and Deductive Reasoning.

• http://www.powerlearning21.com/classes/view/1887-algebra_1_lesson_9_functions_and_graphs This online algebra lesson explains functions and graphs which includes ordered pairs and how to graph them and how to analyze graphs.

•http://www.powerlearning21.com/classes/view/1886-algebra_1_lesson_8_number_systems This online algebra lesson explains Number Systems.

Our online algebra lessons are perfect for students’ that want an interactive visual approach to learning or for students who need help in certain algebra lessons. Online algebra lessons are a new approach to home education and our courses take advantage of the web.

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A huge part of the teaching profession is the ability to motivate students. To motivate students, teachers need to spark interest in the topic and take different approaches to learning to make a daunting topic come alive. There are many principles of motivation that exist and are applicable to any learning situation. Follow these general principles to motivate students and make your teaching career a success.

Motivate Students

1.)   Make the environment one that can be focused in to obtain the students attention: If your classroom has too many distractions, students will be unable to learn what needs to be learned. Creating a warm and accepting classroom that also promotes persistent effort with motivate students to learn. Utilize visual aids to capture attention.

2.)   Use incentives: Incentives can range from candy to privileges when answering a question correctly. Receiving praise from an instructor motivates students to want to answer correctly and know the information.

3.)   Increase lasting internal motivation: Internal motivation requires continuous reinforcement and is common with children of certain ages as well as some adults. When a student gains feelings of satisfaction, student motivation increases.

4.)   Learning is most effective when an individual is ready to learn: When a student wants to know something, their motivation to obtain the knowledge increases. A students motivation may come with time. Your role as an instructor is to encourage the motivation of students and their development.

5.)   Organization: To motivate students, the way in which the material is organized makes it more meaningful. One method or organization includes relating new tasks to those already known.

To sustain a motivation in students, the goals for the learner must be realistic. Motivation can be determined by the interest students have on the topic. Remaining positive about the topic at hand and utilizing different teaching techniques can spark interest and motivate students.

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The steps to a teaching job are important to the many Americans looking for teaching jobs during this economic downturn. Many people, who have lost their jobs during the recession, have turned to the option of teaching work. Teaching provides both a passion for what you do as well as mental satisfaction. Training is of course required as a step to a teaching job, however if you can follow these simple 7 steps to a teaching job, finding the available positions is not impossible.

1.) Undergo Training: Federal States require teachers to possess at least a bachelor’s degree to teach. This is the first step to obtain a teaching job.
2.) Get Certification: You don’t need to be a graduate to apply as an undergraduate to teach K-12, however at a college, you need to be a graduate.
3.) Check aptitude: You need patience in the teaching profession. As a step to a teaching job, you need to do some self-evaluating and discover if you can deal with students of different backgrounds and learning speeds.
4.) Do substitute teaching: If you want to check your aptitude to see if teaching is something you would enjoy, taking part in substitute teaching is a good option in the steps to a teaching job. You can work part time or stand in for a regular teacher who is on leave.
5.) Identify Age Groups: A big step to a teaching job its to identify the age group you would be comfortable working with. Depending on your qualifications and training, you can evaluate which age groups you are able to teach.
6.) Interact with teachers: Be social during your steps to a teaching job. Talk with several other teachers at forums and find out what the actual teaching process is like. Get as much information as possible and exchange views to understand the challenges and rewards in teaching.
7.) Volunteer: Another great way to begin your steps to a teaching job is to volunteer by tutoring or other form of help at a local school and find out what motivates you.

Obtaining a job in the teaching profession is more about finding out if the career is right for you. If you are willing to commit your time and efforts to molding the minds of the next generating, then follow these steps to a teaching job to take part in a rewarding career.

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