What can you do now that we were not able to do a year ago

Because of the emergency situation of corona virus that befell the country and cause the lock down of schools and universities.  This situation put us in front of large responsibilities that encourage us to work harder to adapt.  During this year I learn many new things especially the one related to online learning, and to be accurate when i start my teaching diploma.  so  I learn how to  use the Google form , Google slides , Google classroom in an efficient way , and i learn how to make  my own programs that could benefit others . Also from this course I become able to known what is blog and how make blog  where we  identify our  self , opinion ,  thoughts and  share it with others , also how to use many other applications . I think this year was transition level for all the word from teacher, students and parents and teach them all new things; also teachers learn how to use many programs that help them in their works

Basic skills that each counselor should have

Counseling is a great job. It is a mental health therapy that helps assist and guide people through their life difficulties that may include stress, relations issues, psychological Problems, depression   and anxiety, and give them the needed support to solve these problems by themselves. For successful counseling there should be a good relationship between the client and the counselor. Qualified counselor should be happy and confident that he will be the key to change someone’s life positively and also you should own a solid set of skills that you may learn or develop as you continue to grow your practice. Some basic skills that each counselor should have are:

1.         Listening :

The counselor person should be a good listener and to do that he should be good at attending and observing. For perfect attendance the counselor should show to the client that he had his total focus and his full attention, so the  client will feel that you are aware and caring.  The most important things the counselor should take care of for perfect attending are: making eye contact with the patient, don’t be busy with anything that may distracted him from focusing like thinking with other thing or looking at something on the room, show the client that he is hearing by nodding his head from one time to another, Don’t move a lot because this maybe shows to the client that he is interrupting him and also he have to encourage verbalization. Also the counselor should capture and understand all verbal and nonverbal information communicated by the client and this latest is the observing process. For making sure that the counselor understands what the clients said there are 2 sources: the content and the process. The content is listening carefully to every word or expression the client said that may give a deeper meaning, and the process which is the nonverbal actions of the client like themes and body language.

2.         Empathy

The empathy in counseling is different from the feeling of empathy that we know. It is the ability of the counselor to understand the client feeling and clarify for him his own experience using paraphrased sentences. The primary skills for empathy communications are:

a-  Paraphrasing: focusing on the important ideas the clients said, and recalling them back to the client in a shortened form.

b-  Verbal and nonverbal attending: reflecting the full attention of the counselor toward the clients

c-  Reflecting client’s emotions: the counselor should choose his words carefully while communicating feelings back to the client. So he should use similar words for the client.

3.         Open Questions :

In order to facilitate the exploration of thought and feelings of the client the counselor uses a questioning process, and his aim will be therapeutic for every question he asks, but he should take care not to ask a lot of questions. For example: the counselor may ask the client about something that happened to him in childhood, so the client  will give him more details.

4.         Interpretation:

Using this way helps the client focus on a specific point of his problem and look for it in a new way and then provide a goal to solve his problem. For example: while the counselor listens to the patient, he can choose an  idea and try to interpret it to the client so he helps him think better about things.

And much other skill that should be available on the counselor like: Genuineness: being honest and free where there should be congruence between his word and behavior.  Concreteness: counselor focuses on specific facts, takes care of getting out of topic and avoids generalization. Unconditional Positive Regard: is using expressions by the counselor that show his caring, kindness and acceptance. “Information Giving and Removing Obstacles to Change”, “flexibility”, “problem solving” and “patience” are skills that help the counselor to act professionally with his patients.

So being a counselor is not an easy thing, that the counselor should be aware of every detail during the therapy process. He should know how to deal with all types of people and all their thoughts. In my opinion it is important for all people to visit a counselor since everyone may pass during his life with things that need outside help.

Best education philosophies for designing a new curriculum

For better education a new curriculum with new philosophies should be developed. I believe that a mix between essentialism and progressivism philosophies should be taken into consideration while making this new curriculum since education should focus on both student and teacher at the same time due to the critical role of the teacher. So students should learn from their personal experience to acquire skills also teacher should support them.

 

We should look for progressivism that considered curriculum as student-centered, they focuses on their needs, experience, stresses programs of student involvement and encourage divergent thinking. And for essentialism that look for the teacher as a controller for the classroom’s rules, aspects and instructions as she use scaffolding through and providing children with right level of support

Teaching methods for helping struggling children

 

 

Most students aren't born good learners. The Personality of the individual plays a big role in a child's ability to learn. Many children may struggle to learn a concept or complete an activity. When a child is a struggling learner, it can be scary.

   There are many possible reasons for the child’s struggles. He may have physical disabilities or he maybe has not been taught in a proper way. For example, he may need the structure and logic of a phonetic approach to reading, but he is being taught with a whole language approach.

  The more able the teacher to provide a child, with respect to their learning environment, activities, and style, the more engaged and motivated a child will become to learn.

  So Teacher needs to work with specific techniques with struggling learner than others students in order to find ways to meet those children’s need. Here are some helpful teaching methods for those children.

Scaffolding

    When using scaffolding learning technique with young children, a teacher will provide students with support by making a bridge between what students already know and what they cannot do on their own.  For example they can ask probing questions like “What do you think would happen if we didn't build the school quite so big?" this kind of question will encourage a child to come up with an answer independently. Or teacher can also make suggestions: If a child is having trouble completing a project, offering hints or partial solutions or asking suggested questions can be helpful way without giving the direct answer. For example, "That block tower keeps falling down. One way we could fix it is by putting all the bigger blocks on the bottom. What other ways do you think we could help it stay up?"

 Teach Just One New Concept at a Time

   When giving much information the children’s memory can’t attend this quantity of new information. So if we give them one concept at a time this will allows concepts and skills to be more easily stored in the long-term memory. Then large amounts of meaningful learning will occur.

  Multisensory Instruction

Using senses help Children learn best. This learning happens when they use sight, sound, and touch to learn new information. When children can see the concept of what explained, hear about it, and then do activities, so it will be easier for them to understand. The combination of various activities uses sense will have multiple pathways to the brain.

 Game-based learning

   Using games provides deeper learning and develops a new skills; it helps motivate children to learn. When a child is engaged with the game, their mind will accept  learning a new things . Even if the game is a video game or military simulator, it will provide the added benefit of motivating children to want to engage in the learning process and want to learn more.

   Game-based learning is a great way for parents and teachers to introduce new ideas, grammar, concepts, and knowledge in a way that motivates children to learn

Keep Lessons Short but Frequent

  Short but frequent lessons are much better than long but not understandable lessons. In a short lesson, children will be more attention, and teacher accomplishes more. Start with 15-20 minutes per day, five days a week. Then adjust the length of the lessons up or down according to your individual child’s attention span and specific needs.

     And many other ways can be used for helping students by asking questions while giving the lesson, give the ideas by picturing it, make predictions about what will happen next, make summarization after each idea and use very simple word .

    So teaching for struggling learner is difficult, and teacher can make it a lot easier by many ways.  And then students will learn to do things in life that you never dreamed were possible!

Online teaching/learning challenges

Online learning is a new condition that we was oblige to adapt and use it under specific conditions . being something new  and emergent it did not have a studied plan to switch the studying from  face-to-face learning to computer-based learning. and due to this online learning may face many challenges: example: may some students with traditional mindset will face a difficulties  to adapt or accept online learning. Also  many students may have week internet connection or thus fail to catch up with their virtual classmates. also some students even may not own computers . also computer literacy is another problem that face students since that may not operate some programs such word or power point and will not be able to handle their files. Also time management is an important and  difficult task  of online learning, especially for adults since they face a lot of  commitments during the day so they need to make a  regular schedule planner .

Things students should be taught while learning online to avoid problems

 while learning online many challenges may be facing the students , for this purpose many things should be taught to students to avoid such problems.so we should learn the students the 12th basic skills which are the 4Cs, so he will be able to collaborate and be creative and have a critical thinking and his communication with other will be perfect . also students should be taught how to manage their time so that he will be respectful to the time of the class or any other date. also he should be self confidence ,don't be afraid to talk about his thought what ever it is . and finally the basic need is physiological needs that must e satisfied at home .  the teacher should stay in contact with the students, guide them, give them her feedback ,support and motivate them

Digital Citizen

 Digital Citizenship is knowing how to use the technology and be responsible toward his behavior. many people nowadays are using various technologies which create a digital society that afford many opportunities for learning and social interaction. For being a digital citizen one should have many element, he should respect himself and others, respect copyright and intellectual property, protect private information for himself and for others, balance the time he stay online, and carefully manage his digital footprint.

Tools that can be used in online assessment

Under distance education and teaching online teachers can use many tools to assess students. teacher can use Socrative -quiz or question, so that the teacher a group pf quick questions for a rapid feedback . Also they can use  Google form: the teacher will make an automatically graded quiz with a group of multiple choices questions or short answer questions and make an easy answer key with points for each question. also Kahoot is another tool : it is a gamed based assessment where teachers assess their student in interesting way without feeling stressed

Integrating technology into teaching

 Integrating technology into teaching  help makes learning  relatable and provides  deep and  personalized learning for each student. Technology have many advantages for classrooms, it can impact students and teachers in many way.  it can connect students to the whole word using the social media and virtual reality, which in turn increase the outcome of the students. it help  students  to understands any ideas that he didn't got it at class in by referring to google search.