Educ 215

Ouhaila safieddine

201900898

Teaching effectively

Education is an important medium of acquiring essential knowledge and skills. Our world is

constantly changing and developing so it is very important to teach and bring up intelligent

people who could understand the problems of modern society and solve them in a proper

way. Education plays a vital role in shaping successful people. Therefore, we have to put a

lot of effort in improving the learning techniques used in schools, and in training professors

to be able to give their best to help students acquire the needed education. In the following, I

will be discussing the three approaches of teaching 5th graders a biology lesson about the

digestive system. The chosen approaches are behavioral, social cognitive, and social

constructivist. In addition, I will mention the strategies that I would choose to implement in

order to ensure the students’ understanding of the material explained.

The first approach is the behavioral approach which emphasizes on children’s experiences as

determinants of learning and behavior. The behavioristic approach includes 2 concepts

classical and operant conditioning. As a teacher I would choose to use the operant

conditioning form of learning, in which the consequences of a student’s behavior would

change the probability of occurrence of his/her behavior. The two aspects of the operant

conditioning technique are reinforcement and punishment and they play a major role in the

student’s learning experience. Reinforcement, is a consequence that increases the chances

that a behavior will occur. When I’m reinforcing a student’s behavior it means that I’m
strengthening his/her specific behavior. For example, I could ask my students to work on a

simple project like making a model of the human digestive system on a cardboard and the one

with the most accurate model will get to showcase his model on the board in the hallway.

This way I would make sure that my students actually understood how the system works and

did not just memorize information. By applying this approach I would be rewarding my

students for their hard work. In addition, if I wanted to motivate my students to study hard so

they can score higher on their exams I would positively reinforce them by giving them a card

called a “bon point” after every “A” mark on a test. And I would set a certain number of

cards, when they collect the specified number of cards they can exchange them for a gift from

a set of chosen gifts. This reinforcement schedule technique was applied by my school back

in my elementary years. And it personally motivated me very much to study harder because

each time I got a card I would feel some kind of pride and self-accomplishment and I would

be motivated to keep studying harder. Also, I could work on an in class activity where I

would put pictures of certain digestive organs and ask my students to put them in order for

the first time, then I would ask them to name the organs and finally I would ask them to

determine the function of each organ in the digestive system. Of course, I would be

reinforcing every step along the way until they fully understand the concept.

Now moving on to the second approach, the social constructivist, which emphasizes the

social contexts of learning and argues that social involvement creates opportunities for

students to evaluate and refine their understanding. This approach is very useful since it

creates an opportunity for beneficial collaboration and social interaction between students.

This approach can be easily implemented in a school setting for the purpose of increasing

students’ understanding of the material explained. For example, as a biology teacher I would

assign every 2 weeks a small group of students (2-5) with different academic abilities to work
on a science project together. I would make sure that no social loafing is going to take place

by assigning each individual a task to reach a common goal. For example, I would ask my

students to first sit together and discuss what they know about each organ and its function in

the digestive system. In the assigned group for example, there would be someone whose task

is to write the information, another one will try and draw the organs, and a third will make

sure that what they’re writing is consistent with what we discussed in class. I would monitor

the students’ progress and I’ll make sure that nobody would be left out. By applying this

approach, I would be encouraging the students to benefit and learn through the interaction

with their peers. In addition, peer tutoring can be beneficial to both the tutor and the tutee

especially cross-age tutoring since the younger student would feel more comfortable with the

older tutor whom he would consider as wiser and more skilled. So I would match students

from my 5th grade class with those from either 6th or 7th grade and ask them to work together.

The older student would try to explain to his younger peer about what he already learned

about the digestive systems, how food is broken down in the stomach and then processed to

acquire the nutrients needed. Also, I would be the supervisor to my students’ work, I’ll guide

them through their learning journey, and I can start gradually altering my support level with

every developmental progress I would witness. For example, in the first week the student

might only remember the name of the organs, so if assign them activities to match the organ

with its function they will start distinguishing each organ’s specific function in the process of

digestion and later they will have a more complex look at the whole process.

The third and last approach is the cognitive and developmental approach that focuses on the

individual’s thinking and learning capacities. Cognitive learning encourage students to think

effectively and out of the box to find solution to problems they face, instead of memorizing

without understanding the concept behind the problem. By applying this approach, I would

help the students analyze and use critical thinking in order to understand the various scientific
topics presented to them. For example, I would tell them that food should first be

mechanically processed to be able to pass to our stomach, therefore we have teeth to help us

process the food into smaller particles. This way the student will understand that every organ

somehow has a function and is as important as the other organs in order to facilitate

digestion. In addition, as found by Bandura observational learning plays a major role in the

cognitive development of students, that’s why I would include some lab sessions, where we

could dissect a frog/rabbit and look at its digestive system and discuss the order and function

of each organ and how it’s important for the completion of the process. Or I could play some

animated videos related to the scientific topics that I would be discussing with the students in

class. Like those videos on the internet that shows the path that food takes to be later

processed in our body. By doing so, I would easily grasp my students’ attention and help

them encode the new information so they can retrieve it later on.

Finally, being a teacher isn’t an easy task since a teacher is someone who’s building the

future generation by affecting both the students’ thinking and personality. That’s why to

become a teacher a lot of practice and experience are needed. Teaching in the right way can

help bring the best out of the students and provide them with courage, motivation and the

needed knowledge to build a successful individual whose work’s going to inspire others and

help make the world a better place.