Kinds of Memories

Being a successful teacher makes you work on improving many aspects and pushes you to exert more effort to make learning last as longer as possible in students' mind. One main part that falls here is knowing about students' memories and relating that to their age. For instance, knowing that my KG students can't be attentive for a long period of time, I divide the lesson into chunks to help them better understand and retrieve the information easier. Moreover, with older learners, it's very helpful to teach them the strategies that would aid them in learning the new knowledge and remembering it easily. One effective strategy could be acronyms which leads to more enduring learning. To sum up, making teaching successful requires making learning successful as well through planning how to teach and how to help students retain what they have learnt forever. 

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is one major component of  effective learning. I have heard a lot about this approach and learnt about the importance of knowing how to apply it in our classes. However, it is not easy at all to teach KG students how to work cooperatively. That's why I'm working on having the students form an idea about how to work with each other through applying simple group work or pair activities. this will teach students the importance of putting their hands together to finish their work successfully. I hope to reach with them to the stage where they can learn a complete lesson through cooperative learning approach. Reaching this level for now with young learners makes me feel delighted and hopeful because this is one basic element of cooperative learning and which is building the trust and love among learners. With more advanced levels, I used cooperative learning successfully keeping in mind that cooperative learning is group work but not all group work is cooperative learning. In other words, it's essential to know how to apply this approach and to make sure all of its essential elements and present in order to reach the desired successful results.

My School's Project

In my school, we yearly work on a project to help our students overcome one of the challenges which they face. This year we chose a very important topic ''Ethics and Morals''. And as we know that morals is a huge topic and has many branches like ( respect, love, participation, justice, cleanliness, honesty.... ).
We started to work on each value separately by doing a lot of activities and events that enhance the value in the mind and the actions of the child. For example, on World Peace Day we celebrated by doing activities that enhance the value of love and participation among students. Also, we make a big tree on the wall of the school and name it ''Tree of Morals'', it is filled of leaves and every child who is distinguished by moral value through his actions and behaviors, his name or photo will be put on a leaf of this tree. In addition to many awareness sessions for students about personal hygiene and taking care of the surrounding environment. The school's project from the beginning showed positive results through the behaviors of students, and the work on this project continues to promote good moral values in their minds and hearts.

Teacher's Consecutive Evaluation

As for today, I had three educational experts attending my session and evaluating my teaching process. Actually, I was really worried when I knew that I'll be evaluated and by three individuals because it's not easy to have more than one person observing each single act that you do and criticizing it. However, the feedback which they gave me after their observation was really motivating and beneficial. Their way was very kind and effective because they told me that the main purpose behind this evaluation is my own development which will be positively reflected on my students' achievement in return. They also mentioned my positive aspects of teaching at first which encouraged me and made me share more ideas with them. As for the negatives, though they weren't many but they really showed me that there are some points which I have to work on to improve my work. As a result, teachers shouldn't worry so much for being evaluated because no matter how annoying it is, it will lead for their own development and sustainable success.

The Importance of Sharing

It's very important to share the beautiful values that exist in each religion because diversity is very important to our culture. Islam and Christianity have similarities in many values such as charity, justice, helping the poor, and love others. A lot of schools have students from different religions and they share morals and values.
Last week Christian visitors came to our school and they met some Islamic students and asked them about Islam and the Islamic morals that they follow in their daily and academic life. The students talked about the most important values that they play a key role in education such as respect, love and cooperation. Our visitors agreed with them on these morals that found in Christianity too and they stressed the importance of being one hand to reach our goals. when they share moral values, our students figured out the similarities and they were open to new values.

Motivation of KG Students

Motivation is a key  element in education because it pushes children to work hard and be more productive. Every teacher must know how to motivate her students and implant in them the love of learning. Once this step is achieved successfully, nothing would stop students from learning more and more. What I mainly work on with my KG students is motivating them intrinsically with some extrinsic pushes because when they have the passion of learning they'll be pushed to learn without caring to get any rewards for that. Their only reward will be success. I have a student who was obliged to come to school with zero motivation. I tried to motivate him extrinsically through giving him a sticker for any simple positive action that he does. This worked well with him but for a short period of time. That's why I thought of how I have to keep him working always without feeling demotivated and here comes  the importance of intrinsically motivating students through believing in their abilities and giving them high expectations.

My Day With Friends

Today was a very special day to me because it included both hard work and fun at the same time. After I taught a full-time day, I went out with my friends to eat dessert and relax for a while. Though the relaxation time didn't exceed 15 minutes, it was enough to make us energetic again. This shows that a teacher needs to give his/herself some time to release the stress and get ready for another productive and effective teaching day. Such time is better when spending it with colleagues who share the same responsibilities. Moreover, the most beautiful thing about this day was the rainy and warm weather which made us feel comfortable and fresh. It's awesome to have  great friends who share every single moment with you. Without them, my professional and social life would be much harder. 

With My Students

Teaching KG students isn't an easy job as most people might think. Based on my own experience in teaching this level for three years, I can say that working with children of this age is one of the hardest practices because it requires teaching them every single detail starting from the simplest behavior like holding a pencil to a more complicated one such as writing a word or learning a skill. In addition to the educational aspect, one of our responsibilities is to prepare them for the social life and to teach them the basic communication skills like asking for permission, greeting someone or respecting others. This consumes a lot of time and energy from the teacher more than teachers of students of more advanced levels. However, there's a great pleasure for teaching this level and interacting with those kids who are like a piece of clay and my role is to shape it the way I want them to be. As a result, I have to make sure I be the perfect model for them and be careful before saying any single word that might affect their whole learning journey. 

My Conversation With a Native Visitor

Last week a native visitor came to our school , so I had a short conversation with him. He told me that in US they don't teach grammar and they have a minimal focus on the rules of the language. What they mainly care about is having students learn the language for real life communication and the purpose of this communication is to deliver the right meaning regardless of being 100% accurate. His view grabbed my attention and I felt like this is what the language should serve because focusing on real life communication is essential. This doesn't mean that we have to deny the importance of teaching the linguistic items and rules of the language, but we have to help students communicate via the language at their beginning levels with more attention to the rules in the more advanced ones.