Nowadays, waking up early in the morning and going to school for five consecutive days a week is a major problem for most of the students. They find it boring to come to school just to do the same things everyday like sitting the whole day, copying a lot of lectures, listening to their teachers. Sometimes teachers forget that the generation today is different yesterday especially to those who are veterans since they are used to the old teaching strategies. For some reasons, students now are more adventurous and exciting. They communicate when there is interaction. They listen when they are also heard because they also have a lot of opinions and knowledge to share.

Actually teachers are also learning from their students. We teachers are always looking to innovate, so, yes, it’s essential that we try new things to add to our bag of tricks. But it’s important to focus on purpose and intentionality and not on quantity. So what really matters more than “always trying something new” is the reason behind why we do what we do.

According to the Principle of Teaching by Corpuz and Salandanan (2007) there is some Guiding Principles in the Selection and Use of Teaching Strategies:

1. Learning is an active process. No one can learn for us in the same way that nobody can eat for us, nor live for us, nor die for us. If it is my brother who solves my assignment in algebra then it is my brother not me who will master the skill of solving problems in algebra. This means that we have to actively engage the learners in learning activities if we want them to learn what we intend to teach. We have to give our students opportunities to participate in classroom activities. This quote serves as a summary of the first principle: “ What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.”
2. 2. The more senses that are involved in learning, the more and the better the learning. What is seen and heard more than what are just seen and just are heard. One research findings confirm this: “Humans are intensively visual animal. The eyes contain nearly 70 percent of the body’s receptors and send millions of signals along the optic nerves to the visual processing centers of the brain… We take in more information visually than through any of the other senses” (Wolfe, 2001). This implies the use of a teaching strategies that makes use of more visual aids than mere audio aids.
3. A non – threatening atmosphere enhances learning. A conducive classroom atmosphere is not only a function of the physical condition of the classroom but more a function of the psychological climate that prevails in the classroom
4. Emotion has the power to increase retention and learning. We tend to remember and learn more if there is an emotion involved in every learning. In fact, the more emotionally involved our students become in our lesson the greater impact. Wolfe states that “our own experience validates that we remember for a longer time events that elicit emotion in us.”

 

1. 5. Learning is meaningful when it is connected to students’ everyday life. Abstract concepts are made understandable when we give sufficient examples relating to the students’ experiences. The meaningfulness and relevance of what we teach is considerably reduced by our practice of teaching simply for testing. For meaning, connect your teaching to your students’ everyday life.

 

1. 6. Good teaching goes beyond recall of information. Good thinking concerns itself with higher – order – thinking skills (HOTS) to develop creative and critical thinking. Most teachings are confined to recall of information and comprehension. Ideally, our teaching should reach the levels of application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation to hone our students’ thinking skills.

 

1. An integrated teaching approach is far more effective than teaching isolated bits of information. Corpuz and Salandanan (2003) claim that an instructional approach in integrated when it considers the multiple intelligences (MI)  which contains Verbal – Linguistic , Logical– Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily – Kinesthetic, Musical, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and Naturalist, and varied learning styles (LS) of the students contains Mastery, Interpersonal, Understanding and Self – Expressive.

Teaching is not a job. We, teachers, are called not to only to instruct students in our subject but to be good influences on them. Henry Adams once said: “ A teacher affects eternity; no one knows where his influence stops.”

By: Jacqueline A. Tasic | Guro sa Flipino | Academy of Queen Mary | Orani, Bataan