1. Morro Camara: Official Letter Head
PGCE, QTS (England), BA, MA
Address: Contacts: Expertise:
18 Chichester Close Mobile: +44 7500659369 Teaching & Learning
Crawley House: +44 1293 200741 Poverty, Education & Research
RH10 5HA, UK Email: morrosky@yahoo.com Community Development
MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
My teaching philosophy rests on fundamental human values – treating all
people with dignity and respect, irrespective of their background. Thus, the
first thing I do is create a positive learning environment where there is
strong respect and discipline in the classroom and all students are engaged.
As a teacher, I believe that every child has a potential that should be
nurtured to make them achieve. I plan my lessons to meet the needs of all
learners; challenging myself to know my learners individually and be aware
of their data. My lessons are delivered in three parts – testing prior
knowledge and skills; building on these to developing new knowledge and
skills; and testing students’ learning – the diagnosis, therapy and testing
approach. I found this approach to teaching quite useful for differentiation
and monitoring student progress.
Although I teach maths, but I try as much as possible to develop children’s
literacy and numeracy skills and bring in real life situations where they can
apply the area of maths we are learning. This gets their attention into liking
the subject and dismisses the myth that mathematics is all about numbers.
I also believe that as a teacher, my responsibility is not to do the learning for
students but rather to guide them in their learning. Thus, I ensure that
every student develops independent learning skills and is able to evaluate
their own learning, as well as engage in peer assessment. Vygotsky, the
Russian educational psychologist said that learning is ‘socially constructed.’
Thus, I apply strategies that encourage my students to collaborate with each
other and with me, to learn and gain the skills they need.
Assessment for learning (AfL) is perhaps the most important concept every
teacher learns in their training. AfL was famously defined by the Assessment
Group (2002) as ‘the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by
learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their
learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.’ I simplified this
into a question: how do I know what the pupils know? I ensure that this is
practised in every lesson I deliver – sharing learning objectives with
students, delivering good questioning, going round to check students’ work,
and using mini-white boards and traffic lights, among others. I use AfL to
pace and reshape my lesson to meet the changing needs of the students.
Finally, I also believe that students should be rewarded for their efforts
and/or achievements. Thus, I give reward points and praises for good work
and behaviour, participation, and attendance; as well as provide formative
comments on students’ classwork, homework and tests. It is also my
philosophy to involve parents in children’s learning and discuss their
progress and attitude to learning. Learning is all about gaining experience
and I ensure that my students gain good experience in their learning.