Tasha's+space

27th July Question 1: I think that the NZC is trying to convey that although we may understand pedagogy and what it implies, we must use it effectively to allow our students the best opportunities to learn. We have a wide range of cultural, ethnic, religious, socio-economic, etc backgrounds and a massive array of prior knowledge and misconceptions so we, as teachers, need to use methods of teaching which allow the maximum amount of students to have a positive learning experience. Question 2 - 5: I am attempting to create a safe learning environment by ensuring that no bullying or swearing occurs when I am teaching. I am also attempting to keep the atmosphere of the classroom ‘light’ and relaxed. I think I will find encouraging reflective thought and action a challenge as I don’t understand how to undertake this. What activities or learning methods can we use to do this? At least once during most lessons I try and relate what they are learning with a real world application to enhance the relevance of new learning. This is quite easy in Agriculture and Horticulture but slightly more difficult in chemistry. I try and incorporate as much group learning as possible to facilitate shared learning, although I do probably need to extend this to the wider community. I try and help to students to make connections to prior learning by using old textbooks etc to determine what they already know and to use as pre-tests as well. I am finding providing sufficient opportunities to learn quite difficult, especially with chemistry and it is just on of those subjects that requires students to do the textbook problems to cement their learning, the same as maths. I think that teaching as inquiry would be something that a teacher would begin to do seriously once they are in their 2nd or 3rd year of teaching, but would be done minorly before that. From what we have been told the first year is quite difficult and stressful so wouldn’t allow much time for inquiry although some feedback would be monitored.
 * Effective Pedagogy**

22nd July Below is my activities for assignment two. They are for level 7 of the curriculum (Year 12 Chemistry) for the topic of Quantitative Chemistry.

Avogadro project Titration for Volumetric analysis



Here is a link for a very cool demonstration which I observed that the teacher used to introduce Redox to year 13's. It's called an Upside Down Thunderstorm and I hopw all you guys can access this vid as it is awesome. Conc sulfuric acid with ethanol layered slowely on top. Potassium Permanganate chips are added and you then see the clouds form, rain bubbling upwards, lightening and you can hear thunder!!! Awesome intro to Redox and got the kids asking heaps of questions. If you lucky when you pour the studd out of the test tube the ethanol catches on fire which the kids love.

[]

Power point on my reading on co-operative learning