2.1.4: AUTHENTIC LEARNING

CREATING LEARNING EXPERIENCES

As a teacher, I have created learning experiences for my students in the following ways:

1. Making the learning environment as friendly and emotionally free as possible by cultivating a sense of humor.
2. Preparing excerpts inform of stories, science poems etc, to be read by students during lesson introduction. 
3. Tapping into students' experiences and making use of their prior knowledge to explain more abstract issues.
4. Using methodologies e.g. Socratic inquiry and problem solving, that call for higher order thinking among students.
5. Creating a culture of explanations instead of just right answers from students.
6. Planning hands-on practical exercises and experiences in form of projects.
7. Creating appropriate intermediate steps in a hard task so that students can navigate through the task at reasonable paces.
8. Using question strategies that make all students think answer.
9. Flipping the class using online videos accompanied by challenging questions and integrating it all with out of class experiences.
10. Linking material content with needs of the society in order to show its relevance to the learners.
11. Use of supervised occupational experience programs (SOEPs). 
12. Choosing real life problems and engaging students in projects to address them e.g. problems of accessing clean water in the community.

THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT I DO TO MAKE MY LESSONS MORE AUTHENTIC   

1. Setting challenging tasks to them.
2. Grouping students so that they can collaborate on a task.
3. Providing immediate response to their questions and their practical work.
4. Allowing a time of reflection during and after class activities to consolidate what has been done.