Now vs a year ago

 A year ago, Covid-19 have spread  widely around the world. Education have turned online, and face to face interaction was missed. A year ago, I couldn't be able to do activities with my students, nowadays while we are back to schools, having activities with students is available. A year ago couldn't have looked at the eyes of my students to check if they understood or not now I'm much closer to them, and I can tell when they are getting the ideas or not, a year ago assessing students couldn't have been done fairly for all, nowadays we are back to the regular way of assessing students with a little bet  of online assessing we have used during online sessions.

Diversity among our classes

 

     Students in our classes can range from how do they look, the way they respond to our instructions, maturity, personality and the ability to learn. This diversity should implement differentiating instructions in our classes.

  Students in classes during a lesson can be classified as:

•       Know the lesson.
•       Learning the lesson.
•       And don’t know what we are talking about.

        On the other hand, they can be classified by their learning styles: some are good listeners who can benefit from the teacher’s presentations; others need to read or discuss and idea; and some students need to practice to accomplish understanding.

        Moreover, culture plays a big rule in the diversity of students in classes. Along with the benefits that different cultures bring to classes from altitudes, values, believes, and way of acting and interacting, it is considering as one of the important factors that divide the classes into low and high achievers.

       For this we as teachers should use diverse of instructions and methods to meet the learning needs of our students, we know that no one form of instructions can be effective with all students and no student can learn the same way and same rate as another.

       Some of the major instructional options is grouping students according to their abilities, where dividing the students into two types of groups: low ability and high ability students can benefit both types. In such groups we may assign challenging activities and some times games for the high achievers that can stimulate their critical thinking and develop their thinking and social skill. Meanwhile teachers can work with the low achievers emphasizing on the main objectives and giving them more time to complete their tasks.

       Another option that we can use is providing a strategy instruction for the low achievers. Explaining the strategy to our students, modeling it, and then practice is very helpful. For example, I ask my students to teach someone else in their family about what we learn, and I usually ask them to make a scheme for long lessons where they keep the rules and the important concepts.

        We can also use the peer tutoring, where we assign students to 1 to 1 pair, one of them will be paying the teachers role. This kind of working is motivated for both students high and low achievers.it might be good for the social interactions in the class. In order to have an effective peer tutoring work we should teach our students how to teach, explain the main objectives, and keep monitoring all the students during this work and help those who need. At last, evaluate the results.

   Many other things can be done to help diverse  classes, like building relation ship with students, encourage and motivate students in each step of the learning process, and using technology in our classes.

 

 

 

Challenges of online teaching

 The main challenge that I faced during online session was the lack of motivation among students, it is very hard for us as teachers to motivate students and get them to engage in the learning process.Moreover, we all as teachers missed the face to face interaction, we used to understand our students and their need in classes through eye contact and we knew if the have a problem in understanding the objectives through observing their interactions with us and this is not found in the online teaching, so a lot of times the zoom session ends and students haven't understood the objectives yet. Assessing students were very challenging also during the online teaching, most of the students have passed exams with the help of their parents.

Teaching online rules

At the beginning  of each school year, teachers tend to set rules to be applied by them and their students to avoid problems in the future.Like in schools online teaching requires rules that keep teaching goes smoothly. Some of the rules that I have used during online teaching are: setting real names, no students are allowed to attend a zoom session unless they are using their real names. Raising hand is a must to participate in the zoom sessions as in classes. The teacher is the one who control the screen and students are not allowed to write on it unless the teacher asks to. Microphones should be muted and unmuted only when students are allowed to talk. Students and teachers should set in a quite place and it is preferred to be alone in the room to ovoid disruptions.

How to be digital citizen?

 Generally being a good citizen requires having morals and ethics especially when dealing with others. Respecting other's ideas and differences,  honesty and loyalty, following  rules and  protecting rights are the main properties of good citizen. Concerning digital citizen, one must be a good citizen first, then one should have good morals online, that is communicate online with respect and ethics and use positive words that can't be misunderstood. One must be as clear as possible to avoid misunderstanding. As it is not good to visit people at the early morning or late at night, it is also no appropriate to call or message people at this time. A good digital citizen also posts appropriate things that don't harm the society. 

Tools that can be used in online assessments

Online teaching have been very hard for teachers all around the world.Finding tools that can be useful and easy to use was very hard.Teachers have spent a lot of time to search for the right tools or applications that will benefit their students.the Hardest section was to find tools for assessment, taking on consideration the lack of monitoring in online teaching. As a teacher for grade 3 to 6 I used google forms for the assesment besides another applications like Kahoot, poll everywhere , Mentimeter, and Quizlit. Each of the previous applications have different features that can be used by all teachers, but nothing can replace the assessment in classes and the accurate results that will be given.

Integrating technology into teaching

Technology have been an important supporter for education for several years. Educators around the word have been using technology in several ways during the teaching-learning process from planning to implementing to assessments.During my few years of teaching I have used technology in several ways especially during the pandemic time, at that time it was impossible for us to reach our students and deliver the knowledge without the help of technology and internet.After the pandemic I think we can't abandon using technology, our experiences through this two yeas have proven the importance and the positive results of technology in class. At the same time depending totally on technology will give a negative results on education, for this teachers should be aware of using technology and know when and how to integrate it in their classes.