Instructional Variables :)

            In this meeting, we learned about Instructional Variables: Developing Interest in Learning Activity. Instructional variables consist of Introductory Focus, Personalization, Involvement, and Feedback. In general, this topic will tell about how the teacher wakes up students’ interest in the learning.  So that’s why Mrs. Mima asked us to do very short and brief opening after our presentation. Introductory focus tells about how teacher attracts attention and creates conceptual framework for student in the beginning of the lesson. Personalization stands for the process of linking students’ emotional and intelligent to the students’ life. Then, next topics are involvement and feedback. Involvement means students need to actively get involved to their own learning. The last is feedback which refers to comment or opinion of teacher toward students’ work could be evaluative and descriptive feedback.

            If I do flashback to my teaching experience in SEP, I was trying to do those 4 principles of instructional variables subconsciously. In the beginning of the lesson, after doing roll call and explaining about learning objectives and agenda, I did an introductory focus. I taught narrative text at that time. I started the lesson by showing them a picture of Cinderella and Malin Kundang then asked them “what comes to your mind when seeing this picture?” Almost most of them answered “story, fictive, past, fairy tale and etc.” Then, I was asking about the story and what happened to the character. Then, my students and I were discussing and trying to relate and take moral message of the story toward their real life (it belongs to the personalization). Moreover, I gave them some tasks need to be done by them. I applied guided discovery and group discussion to handle the tasks. Then, I scored them and collect the assessment. In the next meeting, I gave the papers back to them. I wrote evaluative and descriptive feedback for all of the students (customized for each person).

            In my opinion, instructional variables are really crucial to the teaching and learning. It provides teacher complete stages start from the beginning (hook attention) till giving feedback in the end of the task or lesson. These variables will benefit not only for teachers but also for students.