Unit code: BET 2101

Unit Title: Peer Teaching and media Practicals

Lesson 3

By
Benson Njoroge, PhD
MICROTEACHING SKILLS

STIMULUS VARIATION
STIMULUS VARIATION

What is stimulus variation?

• Stimulus variation refers to those actions that develop and maintain a high
level attention on the part of the pupils, during the course of a lesson.
What causes pupils to lose attention?
1) Most pupils have a short attention span. They often lose interest after a
certain period of time
2) Fatigue may cause loss of attention
3) Inability to cope with the level of work given may rapidly lead to loss of
attention.
4) Boring presentation by a teacher and lack of pupil involvement leads to loss
of attention.
5) When other stimuli in the environment are stronger than attending to
learning tasks, e.g. a moving plane that flies low near the buildings.
Why is stimulus variation necessary?

• Studies show that animated behaviour on the part of a teacher

stimulates the attending behaviour of learners and this enhances
learning.
• Stimulus variation arouses leaner’s interest and stimulates menial
activity
Stimulus variation definition …
• Stimulus refers to an agent, action or condition that elicits,
accelerates or arouses to physiological or psychological action, activity
or responses.
• Variation means changing these stimuli to explain content lively and
remove the boredom from the classroom teaching
• Stimulus variation- is the set of teacher behaviors that tend to secure
and sustain pupils attention.
Important words Word Meaning
Word Meaning
Stimulating inspiring
Focus Centre
Variation Deviation
Pattern Prototype
Movement changing the position
Verbal Oral
Gesture Signal
Objectives for stimulus variation
To enhance the students’ capacity of thinking.
To enhance the active involvement of the students in the teaching.
To enhance students’ understanding of the concept.
To enhance liveliness in teaching.
To enhance continuous thinking of students for understanding
concepts.
To grab the attention of the students.
To minimize students mental fatigue and boredom.
Techniques for Stimulus variation
1. Teacher movement
The following teacher behaviours are capable of arousing attention:
• Teacher movement, if well used, compels pupils to make sensory
adjustments so that their attention is likely to be gained.
• Teacher movement is important teacher behaviour in the classroom. -It
contributes significantly towards securing and sustaining learners’ attention.
• Firstly, the teachers who are in the habit of delivering their lesson from one
position for a longer duration reflect their lack of alertness and enthusiasm.
This also adds to monotony in the lesson.
• Secondly, pupils get fatigued due to focusing their attention on the teacher in
the same posture for an unreasonably long duration. The movement of the
teacher helps pupils to change their postures, which provides physical
relaxation to them and also contributes to the alertness, enthusiasm and
variety in the teaching behaviour.
Teacher’s Movement…
• Any type of movement is not likely to be conducive to securing pupil's
attention. For example, habitual movements, which are a kind of
mannerism/behaviour of the teacher, fail to attract their attention. For
movements to be effective in securing and sustaining pupil's attention,
they have to be meaningful. Only carefully planned meaningful
movements are likely to achieve the twin objectives of securing and
maintaining pupil's attention.
• The teacher can make meaningful movements in the classroom in a
number of situations. He moves to the blackboard for writing. He moves
to the pupils in the classroom to guide when pupils are doing the given
assignment. He sometimes moves to the pupils to listen to them. These
movements help in securing and sustaining pupil's attention.
Teacher Movements….Techniques
• Moving from one place to another with some purpose. (For writing on the
black board; to conduct experiment; to explain the chart or model; to pay
attention to the pupil who is responding to some question etc.)
• Move freely and relax to avoid fear and to control the students' behavior;
• Never write on the board while talking;
• No explanation while walking around all the time;
• No looking downstairs or upstairs while teaching;
• look around the class to see the situation;
• look into the students' eyes;
• Move away from the student asking a question so as to involve the other
students;
• To observe the whole class, move slowly from the back to the front.
2.Gestures

• Use of gestures is teacher behaviour for introducing variation in

teaching. Gestures are non-verbal cues to express feelings and
emotions; to emphasis significant ideas or objects; to indicate shape,
size and movements of objects. Gestures essentially consist of hand
and head movements, eye movements, facial expressions etc.
• Verbal communication is less effective in conveying feelings,
emotions, etc., than verbal communication combined with gestures.
Gestures, thus/enhance the effectiveness of verbal communication.
But as in the movements, the use of-gestures will be effective only
when they are properly planned. Secondly, the gestures have to be
appropriate to the size and shape and the nature of the idea being
explained.
 3.Changes in Voice/Varying speech patterns

• Teacher's behavior in the classroom is predominantly verbal. So his voice plays a vital role
in communication in the classroom. The voice of the teacher has several dimensions,
namely, pitch, tone, and speed. Constant use of the same level of pitch, tone and speed of
the teacher makes his communication dull and drab. As a consequence, it affects
adversely pupil's interest and attention in classroom teaching.
• This is where the teacher changes speed, volume and pitch of the speech to match
various circumstances. Planned silence or pausing can also be effective in capturing
attention.
• In order to secure and maintain pupil's attention, a skilful teacher varies his voice.
Sometimes, he varies the speed of talking while at others; he varies his pitch and tone.
• The teaching-learning situation provides ample opportunities for introducing variation in
voice in the natural course. For, example, situations needing emphasis on particular words
and phrases provide an opportunity for changes in tone and volume of the teacher.
Sudden changes in tone and pitch of teacher's voice immediately attract pupil's attention.
4. Focusing

• A teacher secures pupil's attention indirectly using behaviors such as body

movements, gestures and change in voice.
• At times, teachers secures their attention directly using behaviors that
focus pupil's attention on a particular object word, idea, rule and
generalization.
• Focusing can 'be done through several ways:
a)verbal focusing
b) gesture focusing and
c)verbal-cum-gesture focusing.
a)Verbal focusing involves emphasis of particular words of statements e.g.
listen to this, look at this diagram .Verbal statements like "Look here, this is
an important aspect fall in the category of verbal focusing.
Focusing…
b) Gesture focusing
• When focusing is done through gestures, emphasizing some pionted,
it is termed as "Gesture focusing."
c)Verbal/gesture focusing.
• This is a combination of gestural and verbal focusing e.g. when the
teacher says “look at this diagram” as he points at the diagram
• When a teacher uses both verbal statements and gestures to indicate
shapes, express emotions, to emphasize size, etc., it is known as
"verbal-cum-gesture focusing".
 5.Changes in Interaction Pattern

• Teaching is an interactive act. In the classroom, communication between teacher and

pupils goes on constantly as initiatory or responsive acts. This communication is
called-"Interaction". This interaction is broadly of two types: Verbal; and Non-verbal,
• When the teacher or pupils communicate through gestures without talking, non-
verbal interaction is said to have occurred. There can be a number of interaction
patterns in the classroom: single channel interaction like lecturing, where only the
teacher talks in the classroom and pupils act as passive listeners only. There can be a
two-way communication pattern wherein pupils also react to teacher's
communication.
• The teacher sometimes interacts with the class as a whole, sometimes with sub-
groups in the class and while at others, interacts with individual pupils in the
classroom. Sometimes, he puts a question to one pupil and without commenting, he
redirects the question to another pupil. In this way, he encourages pupil-pupil
interaction and thus involves a number of pupils in the discussion
5.Changes in Interaction Patterns

• In the classroom, there can, therefore, be three patterns of

interaction among pupils and teacher:
-Teacher-learners or teacher-group, interaction;
-Teacher-pupil interaction;
-Pupil-pupil interaction
• Continuing, the same pattern of interaction for prolonged duration in
the classroom introduces monotony with the consequent lack of
interest and inattention in pupils.
Interaction Patterns…
6. Pausing
• Pausing stands for introducing silence during talk. Silence has
a language of its own and if it is used effectively, it helps in
securing and sustaining pupil's attention.
• A short pause before saying something important is an
effective way of attracting pupil's attention. A sudden pause
in the middle of a sentence helps a teacher to draw pupil's
attention. A pause of three second's duration is considered
appropriate for this purpose. If the pause is unduly long, it
loses "its effectiveness to secure and maintain pupil
attention.
7. Physical Learners’ Participation/ physical activity.

• Pupils tend to prefer those lessons in which they get opportunity for
physical participation.
• It holds their interest and attention in the task in which they are
engaged.
• Physical participation can be in the form of handling apparatus,
dramatization, and writing on the blackboard
• The teacher may introduce a lesson and then allow learners’ to
handle apparatus or make their own notes or diagrams.
8. Switching (Oral-visual switching)
• A teacher while imparting knowledge to his/her pupils uses, oral,
visual or oral-visual medium.
• Constant use of one medium for imparting knowledge distracts pupil's
attention from what he is saying or telling. In order to secure and
maintain pupil's attention, a teacher should vary his medium through
which he interacts with them.
• He/She should, therefore, bring variation in the medium, i.e., from
oral to visual or oral to oral-visual or visual to oral etc
8. Switching (Oral-visual switching)….
• Change in the medium of interacting with them helps
a teacher to secure their attention.
• visual medium can be in the form of showing any
chart, picture, graph, map etc., or in the form of
drawing pictures, figures, graphs on the black-board.
9.Using different senses
• During a lesson pupils process information by means of the senses.
The ability to process information can be significantly increased by
appealing to sight and sound alternately. Pictures and models imprint
information more permanently than when only verbal stimuli ware
used.
Guiding principles to stimulus variation

i. The teacher must be clear in his/her mind about the purpose of the
change in the activity he is going to introduce, the changes must
relate to the general plan and content of the lesson.
ii. The teacher should introduce the variations smoothly so that t h e
flow of the lesson is not interrupted.
iii. The teacher must carefully plan and organize the lesson particularly
if he intends to use audio visual aids.
iv. The teacher would need to modify his use of variation in response
to the feedback he obtains from the pupils
DOs
  1. Managing Student Discussion: Structure classroom discussions with
purposeful questions
2. Manage dialogue in large and small group discussions. By doing this the
teacher can learn where students are in their understanding and provide
timely assistance through his/her own questions, clarifications and follow
up activities based on what he/she has learned
3. Assisted Performance and Scaffolding: Teachers can provide various
forms of assistance such as providing a model, demonstrating a process
physically and talking aloud about how experts think on an issue. Teachers
can also help by breaking up a task into smaller units.
4. Developing Learning Communities: Learning communities consist of
student- to- student interactions and the exchange of ideas in a social
context.
Donts
1.To move like pendulum.
2. To come forward & go backward unnecessary.
3. To seat on the table.
4. To touch head or hear
5. To touch lips with the tongue.
6. To stand on the same place for long time.
7. Avoid board work.
8. Repetition of the same activity.
9. To move shoulders
10. To rotate neck again and again.
11. Touch the eyes
12. To move the eyebrow
13. To play with chalks
14. To tight the pant
 The End.
Thank you for Listening