Buyung A. N Sudrajat - 6th E-Reflection

Principles of Effective Teaching and Assessment

6^th E-Reflection – Micro Teaching Evaluation and Model of Instruction 

(Multiple Intelligences, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Differentiated Instruction)

 

                After attending the sixth meeting of PETA course, I have learned many new and interesting things. As I mentioned in the previous reflection that last meeting we had not enough time to do the micro teaching, so there were one group that had not performed. As a result the last group performed their micro teaching in this week. The performance of the last group was quite good, but they still need to improve the collaboration of between members so the task of teaching can be carried out proportionally. Besides that I noticed there were some technical problems and some of the instructions were not really clear and inconsistent. From this I have learned that in performing a teaching especially team teaching there are many aspects outside the lesson that should be considered and prepared well. After the last group performed, we had a reflection session about the micro teaching practice. Each group shared what they think about their teaching and the other groups will add or give comment.

            In reflection session my friend and I shared our group evaluation about our micro teaching practice. According to my group our teaching practice were good and ran smoothly. All the activities can be done accordingly to the lesson plan. My friends who pretended as students helped also by participating actively in our micro teaching practice. We have done all the main components of teaching in which introduce the objectives, do the activities to achieve the objectives, and do assessment to measure whether the objectives were achieved or not. Even though we have done it the best, there were some parts in teaching that we need to improve. One of them is about how to close the lesson; before closing the class it is important to give short summary and reflection about what we have learned that day. From this experienced I have learned that each past of the lesson is important. From the other groups sharing and comments from Ms. Ine, I have learned that I still need to improve my skills to become an effective teacher. Some important aspects that I noted are preparation before teaching, the clarity of the objectives that the students have to achieve, the clarity of instruction, and appropriate assessment to assess the students’ understanding.

            After the sharing and reflection session about the micro teaching, we discussed the topic about multiple intelligences and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Actually I have learned about multiple intelligences in another subjects, but it still interesting to me. Moreover, through the discussion I have learned about the old and new views of intelligence. It is important to me as a teacher candidate for knowing and understanding about the intelligence because in the old view the misconception of intelligence was used by the teacher to sort the students. It is not good because it will make the students feel being treated unfairly. I have understood clearly about the multiple intelligence concepts. The new view is describing that intelligence is not single but multiple, can be developed, cannot be measured in isolation or separately, and generate the new problem. According to Gardner there are eight types of intelligences those are logical-mathematical, verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, and naturalist. Since the intelligences are not single they become variety in the class, so the teacher needs to accommodate those variety.      

I have also learned about Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is about the level of students’ thinking skills. I have understood clearly that in Bloom’s taxonomy there are six levels of students thinking that divided into two groups which are lower level and higher level. The lower level thinking covers the students’ ability to remember, understand, and apply the materials that have been learned. That ability can be analyzed or seen by asking the students to recall, explain, and transfer the material that has been learned. Meanwhile, the higher level thinking covers the students’ ability to analyze, evaluate, and the highest is to create. It will be very good if the teacher can develop all the thinking skills in the learning. However, with the students’ variety in learning especially with the multiple intelligences it is hard to develop all the Bloom’s taxonomy. The Bloom’s taxonomy here become the challenges for the teacher to able create a lesson that can develop all the Bloom’s taxonomy with the variety of students’ multiple intelligences. That is also something that I have not understood clearly. I want to know more about how to do it practically in real classroom. I want to know about it because until now I only know about the theory. I think I should learn more about this by asking my seniors or lecturers.   

The last, we discussed about another models of instruction that we have not been discussed. We discussed about the differentiated instruction; it is one of the models of instruction that is good to accommodate the variety of students’ character and intelligence. Through the discussion I have learned about that not all students learn with the same way. I have understood clearly that the purpose of differentiated instruction is to provide the students with the most suitable instruction for them. However, it does not mean that each student will get different instruction, it will become individualization. Differentiated instruction tries give the student same content but with the different multiple intelligences. I have also understood some ways to do the differentiated instruction such as based on the content, process, and product. For instance the differentiated based on the context is by giving the same material but different level of complexity. The thing that I have not understood clearly is how to create a lesson that combines the different level of thinking in Bloom’s taxonomy with the multiple intelligences. In my opinion it will be complicated and hard to do that in same time. However, Ms. Ine has told me about her friend experience in teaching by combining several multiple intelligences with the Bloom’s taxonomy, I can learn from this to solve my problem and I will ask my lecturer also.

From all my explanation above I can conclude that this session was really interesting and meaningful to me as a teacher candidate. This session gave me more knowledge and evaluation about my micro teaching and also it familiarize me with the requirement or assessment that needed in my final micro teaching. It also improved my skills in assessing and giving constructive comments to my friends. Besides this session also enriched my knowledge about another models of instruction in which it is very good and will be useful for me as teacher. By knowing deeper about multiple intelligences, Bloom’s taxonomy, and the new models of instruction in which differentiated instruction, it makes me build a new framework in my mind that no all the students learn in the same way.  It is the teacher challenges to give the best lesson with considering that variety.

           This session has met my expectation of knowing about my micro teaching evaluation. Through this session I became aware about the aspect of my micro teaching, so I can identify the aspects and try to improve it. Besides this session also has met my expectation about knowing the differentiated instruction. I hope for the next session I can learn more about the detail or practical things of doing differentiated instruction and combining it with multiple intelligences and Bloom’s taxonomy. I think that is all that I want to say in this reflection. Thank you.