Positive Classroom Climate in 552 Words

               Talk about positive climate, I always imagining a powerful place where everyone inside always have a big amount of positive energy and spirit to do everything that they need to do. If only this positive climate can be created in a classroom, the class might create successful learners.

                Again, let’s reflect to my past experiences in my past classes. If i highlight it, there have been a lot of teacher that have taught me, and only some of them could made me speak aloud inside their classroom. In other class, i could only sit down and even I only felt like wasting my time for listening to an endless talker machine. At that time, I thought that it was because the teacher’s personality. But after learn about Positive Classroom Climate in MMSEL class, I change my perspective toward those experiences. It’s all more than that particular teacher’s personality, it’s a more complicated than that one.

                A positive classroom climate not only affected by teacher’s personality or characteristics. Even though we cannot deny that it has a big amount of affection to the climate. It’s also about classroom management, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, individual student-teacher relationship, environment, and even first impression in the first meeting.

                According to an article from University of Delaware, there are several positive climate skills to create a positive  classroom climate. They are:

·         

• Recognize individual differences
•   Learn names
• Arrange seating
• Establish expectations
• Make yourself available
• Encourage the students

Let’s talk about those skill one by one.

Recognizing student differences could be very effective to help us delivering our lesson in a better way that our student will be easier to understand. We have to prepare some variation techniques in teaching a topic in order to facilitate our student. Well, i think it will take more time to do our preparation, but it will help you a lot in delivering the topic.

Learn names sounds like a simple thing, but noted that by remembering and calling students name, could indicate that we aware and care of them. It can build up their extrinsic motivation toward you as the teacher.

Arrange seating is one aspect of classroom management. Variation in arranging seating might lure our student to interact with other students and become more active. Just feel free to modify as what we need in teaching our topic. For example U shape seating arrangement will be useful to be applied for a small discussion session.

Establish Expectation is about stating our expectation toward our students, stating ground rules of the class. Involving students to develop this rules will be very useful to keep them being responsible i n the classroom.

Make yourself available means that as a teacher we have to be there for our students. After class session is one thing that can indicate that you are available to be asked and it might make student feel more comfortable to come to you personally. It also can help us create a good individual student-teacher relationship.

Encourage your student! yups, it also and might be the most important thing that can make your class create successful learners. Motivate them so they can build up their own intrinsic motivation.

Those all are several positive climate skills that might help us in creating our own positive classroom climate. Keep motivate to keep them fight!

                 

Reading Resource: http://cte.udel.edu/publications/handbook-graduate-assistants/getting-started/positive-classroom-climate.html

                 

Successful Learning? It's positive climate classroom

3rd - Reflection.

 

This was first class after School Experience Program. The topic that Bu Mima brought was Climate Variables: Creating a Motivating Environment. Before starting the lesson, we shared our experiences during this SEP that more or less related to the MMSEL subject. Positive classroom climate defines as atmosphere that both of teachers and students could help, study and complement each other in order to achieve learning goals. Positive classroom climate is also crucial in motivating students to learn within the classroom. In motivating students, there are others thing beside positive classroom climate such as self-regulated learners, teacher characteristics,  and instructional variables.

In order to apply positive classroom climate successfully, there are some variables that need to be had such as Order and Safety, Success, Challenge and Task Comprehension. Order and safety means the students could predict the learning, and then they also could feel secure and comfortable during the learning. Success refers to the students’ self-efficacy development. What teacher needs to be done to success the learning is questioning students before the learning (to reflect to the schemata) and provided scaffolding to the students before they do the task. Moreover, providing evaluative feedback is also helping teachers succeeding the lesson. Then, challenge is defined as the process of enhancing the feeling of students’ competence. While students could successfully finish their task also by doing scaffolding, it will indirectly increase students’ perception of competence. The last is task-comprehension which means students are aware about what they are going to learn, what they are expected to do, what benefits that they are going to get, and how important this lesson for them.

We have been provided some videos to be discussed within the classroom. I found some interesting facts from those videos. First, students really need to feel secure and comfortable because if they don’t, the learning might be failed and face some obstacles. Then, telling the learning agenda and objective are also essential to students included providing authentic materials to them and so on. I reflect to my teaching practices in my SEP. I found myself lack of challenge. It’s because of I reduce the level of difficulty then I did not provide enough examples (also scaffolding) to my students. Hope I could do better teaching in another teaching practice.

Needs and Motivation (2nd Reflection) - Gona

 2nd Reflection.

This reflection tells about topic that I got in this second meeting titled The Influence of Needs on Motivation to Learn. This topic consists of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the need of self-determination (for competence, autonomy and relatedness) and the need of preserving self-worth (self-esteem and self-handicapping). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shows 5 steps of needs for individual is divided into deficiency needs (physiological, safety, belongingness and love, and esteem) and growths need (self-actualization). Based on the discussion within the classroom, I found that each individual needs to fill stage by stage of Maslow’s hierarchy needs. It means that they will grow in order (no jumping stage). For instance, when I was kid as first stage of my life, I really needed to fill my physiological which contains food, house, drink and etc. As time goes by, I also needed to fill my secure feeling need, then belongingness and esteem of others. Moreover, self-actualization becomes a stage for individual to maximize their own potential without demanding any compliments and recognitions from others.

            Those are the needs of human. So, what is the relation between those needs and Motivation? As teacher candidate, I need to know how these needs relate to students’ motivation within the classroom. Self-determination is one of the essential things to students. It has 3 innate needs which are needs of competence, needs of autonomy and needs of relatedness. Needs of competence tells about needs to accomplish challenging task given (showing ability and potential) while needs of autonomy refers to the choices that create independence of students (in classroom rules, learning and assessment). The last is needs of relatedness. This need reflect to the students’ feeling. Students as teenagers are craving the relatedness within the classroom. They need to feel secure, comfortable, and belong to the society (could be the classroom). Other topic is preserving self-worth. This was the most interesting topic for me. It tells about how to keep image or self-worth in the surrounding. Self-worth consist of self-esteem and self-handicapping. Self-esteem as we may know tells about how individual sees himself or herself (pride or self-worth). Then self-handicapping explains how people hides purposely or subconsciously the fact of themselves in order to preserve their self-worth. I do agree that I also pretty often do both of them in order to preserve my self-worth.

            Overall, I might conclude that I need to maximize in actualizing my potentials. I do really need to guide my students to fill their needs based on Maslow’s theory. Moreover, I consider 3 innate of self-determination to be implied in my teaching and learning so it could increase their motivation in learning at school.

           

Third e-reflection

                I just have done my School Experience Progamme at Regina Pacis High school few days ago. I had a chance to teach an English class all by myself this semester. That is why teaching English there was an unforgettable memory for me.  When I stopped and tried to look back I found so many things I could learn from this experience.

            Since I had to teach different students each time I entered the class, I just need to create one lesson plan which could be applied more than once. Before starting the class I always created class rules and asked for student’s opinion about another rules that could be added. Physically all activities I did in the classroom were safe and caused no harm. I also treated all students in the class the same way, I never did any labeling or gave special treatment for some students. By doing this I thought I had included the order and safety in my classroom.

            I used a real based context examples to explain about passive voice to the students. I also asked them whether they had understood about the lesson while explaining the material. I did brainstorming to help students recall their prior knowledge about the material itself. I used the assessment to help students understood the materials given. When the students did mistakes I encourage them and did not blame them. When they answered the question right I praised them. I include the success aspect when I was teaching the students.

            I asked student to do some brainstorming about passive voice, and gave them some questions regarding to the materials. They said it was hard, so I help them by explaining what passive voice was about and gave some examples about it. This activity showed that I included challenge aspect in the classroom. I also told the student about the learning objectives, and why they had to learn about passive voice. Why passive voice used for and when they could find passive voice. By explaining the objectives of the materials to the student I fulfill the task comprehension aspect.

            

The Influence of Needs in Senior High School

I believe that every people have needs to fulfill their life as a human. According to Maslow, there are five stages of needs to fulfill our life. The first is physiological. In this stage as human we need food, water, shelter, and warmth. It can help us to survive in our life. I think I have this stage, because if I am hungry, I always eat some food, I use water to drink, take a bath, etc. I have a place for save me from rain, cold, etc. The second stage is safety. There is a law that can save me from criminalization, and I can save myself from the dangerous by use variety of ways. The third stage is self-belonging. In this stage I have parents, family and friends that love me. The fourth stage is self-esteem and the last is self-actualization needs.
In fulfill our needs in life, I believe every people have motivation to reach their needs and goals. There are four needs that can influence our motivation. There are needs of autonomy, needs of competence, needs of relatedness, and needs of self-worth.
According to Maslow needs of autonomy happen when people want to life independent. Meanwhile needs of relatedness happen when someone who are not famous in school and she/he try to be known by other people in school, such as she/he want the teacher know her/him in class so, she/he try some ways to make it happen. In the needs of self-worth there is self-handicapping. Self-handicapping itself means that an action which prevents a person from being responsible for failure (Kolditz & Arkin, 1982). Self-handicapping usually is used by someone to maintain self-esteem and self-worth in certain condition. There is the example of needs of competence based on my experience. I ever experienced that I want to solve all of the tasks that teacher give to me although I have difficulties when I did it.
Then, another experienced is when I was senior high school, I did self-handicapping to help me for maintain self-esteem and self-worth. I did it in many situations, such as when I got a bad score in the subject that I felt confident in, I said to my friends that I didn’t study well last night so, I didn’t confident in the test. Another case that when I didn’t want my friends cheated my homework, but they asked me to lend out my homework to them, and I said that I didn’t finish my homework yet so I cannot lend it to them. I think I always did self-handicapping when I was senior high school because of certain condition.

Source: retrieved 19 Oktober 2012 from www.psycwiki.com

The Influence of Needs on Motivation to Learn

The Influence of Needs on Motivation to Learn

                In this second session of MMSEL subject with Ibu Mima, we discussed about the influence of needs toward motivation in learning. Each of us is motivated by needs, and Abraham Mashlow purposes his finding on motivation as hierarchy of needs that is divided into five stages. First is a biological and psychological need, second is safety need, third is belongingness and love need, fourth is esteem need, and the last is self-actualization.

          Each of these stages is need to be reached by every individual, started from the lowest stage then higher one and so on. Let’s we relate each of these hierarchy of needs to our students. At the beginning of the first stage, student needs to be able to fulfill their biological and physical needs. Foods, drinks, home, healthiness, sleep, and etc. once they can fulfill these basic needs then they can survive to start reaching the next stage.

                In this second stage, student will start to seek for safeness from their environment, and the most important safeness come from their family protection. In the next stage where belongingness and love needs should be fulfilled, relationship with other becomes more and more important for them. They need to be loved and admitted by people around them, and it becomes a motivation to step up to the next stage. In fourth stage, they will start to reach achievements in almost the entire thing that they are dealing with. These achievements then will build up their status, reputation and also awareness of their responsibility and once they can reach them all, it means that they have been fulfilled the esteem needs.

               

           Finally, after those four stages that our students go through, they come to the highest stage of hierarchy of needs. This is self-actualization stage, where they will develop themselves completely, because there’s nothing else that they have to worry about.

                Actually as a teacher candidate, we have to be able to identify where our students’ stage is. Then it will create a better opportunity to help them to fulfill what they need in their stages and also build up their motivation toward learning.

               

The Influence of Needs on Motivation

In this session I have learned about the influence of need on motivation. I believe that everybody have different needs to achieve the goal in their life.    According to the material that I have learned in this session, there are three theories based on needs that are Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, the need for self-determination, and the need to preserve self-worth.

Maslow’s Hierarchy theory pointed that there are two needs that should be filled, that are deficiency needs and growth needs. According to my understanding deficiency needs is the need that should be fulfilled to achieve growth need. When someone has to full the deficiency need then they will achieve their growth needs. In other, when someone has good experience which is increase their motivation to be better such as appreciation, achievement, etc. based on Maslow’s theory it is called growth needs.

In addition, there are five levels of Hierarchy needs that are self-actualization, esteem needs, belongingness and love needs, safety needs and physiological needs. All of these have to achieve for everybody including me to complete the needs. When somebody has packed all of these levels then he/she will feel satisfied of her/his life.  

Furthermore, besides that as a human we also need for self-determination. Self-determination is the need or the motivational to take action and control one’s environment (R. Riyan & Deci, 2000). Self-determination assumes that people have three intrinsic psychological needs that are competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

The need for competence is the need where someone wants to be success in environment. Sometimes people want to look “smart” in some case. In hence, it is because they want to show how much they master the topic and how good they are in some skills.

Moreover, the need for autonomy is the need for individuality which is source from intrinsic motivation to change the environment when necessary by owns self (Lepper & Hodell, 1989). Then, the need for relatedness is the feeling of being related to others in social, love and respect.  According to Urdan & Maehr (1995) the need for relatedness can build students’ developing the desire to be accepted and judged positively by others. Teacher can help students for meet their relatedness by having communicate unconditional positive regard and a genuine commitment to students and their learning (Cornelius White, 2007).

                Everybody have needs. As a human those needs are important to be filled I think. If the needs are completed so then we will feel satisfied of this life and it will easy to achieve the goal. So then to achieve the goal we should complete those needs.

Source: Reading Material for Theories of Motivation chapter 10