StarTeaching Features for Teachers First May 2008 Newsletter

The main psychological problem which most of the students face is an inappropriate knowledge about the fields to select from. In this article, you will not only discover yourself as your own mentor to select the best Intermediate group, but will also know your capabilities and skills with the help of a FAT (Field Assessment Test).

Remember that you will have to spend two years to achieve a HSC (Higher School Certificate). Let us first review the groups you can jump in after your matriculation.

Pre-Medical: One of the best and highly prestigious fields for all those who want to serve humanity in their future.

Biology, Chemistry, Physics are the major subjects, which will be taught to you during your Pre-Medical.

This higher certificate would lead you towards the following major fields in the future:
Bachelors in Dental Surgery (BDS)
Bachelors in Medicine, Bachelors and Surgery (MBBS)
Bachelors in Science (Bio-Technology, Nursing, Zoology, Botany, Genetic Engineering, etc.)
Doctorate in Pharmacy (D.Pharm)

Pre- Engineering: For all those, who want to be a Computer Scientist, Pilot or an Engineer, they should select Engineering group for their bright future.

Instead of Biology, you’ll have to study Mathematics. The other subjects are same.

This course would lead you towards the following major courses
Commercial Pilot License (CPL)
Bachelors in Electronics (B.E)
Bachelors in Computer Science (BCS/BS)
Bachelors of Engineering in Tele Communication
Bachelors in Architecture, Aeronautical Engineer, Mathematics, etc.

Computer Science: If you love spending most of your time on a computer, not just for chatting, but also for learning new ideas about Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Web Designing, Computer Languages, etc., then your Computer Science is waiting for you.

Instead of Biology, you’ll have to study Computer. The other main subjects are same.

After pursuing your Intermediate, you could move on to either of the following:
Bachelors in Information Technology (BIT)
Bachelors in Computer Science (BCS/BS)
Bachelors in Digital Media

Commerce (I.Com): If you like to manage your home account, or are interested in stock exchange news and reviews, then enter Commerce.

If You Choose Commerce you will have to study Economics, Accountancy, Business Mathematics, Commercial Geography and Principles of Commerce during two years of time.

After pursuing your Intermediate, you could move on to either of the following:
Bachelors in Commerce (B.Com)
Bachelors in Business Administration (BBA)
Bachelors in Public Administration (BPA)
Bachelors in Management Mathematics & Statistics
Chartered Accountant (CA)
Associate of the Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)

Humanities: Are you artistic? Do you like criticizing things around you? Do you have skill with imagination? If yes, then you should opt for Humanities group.

You will have to select any 4 subjects out of a wide range of options, including, psychology, education, Islamic studies, history, sociology, economics, etc.

After pursuing Intermediate, you can move towards either field:
Bachelor in Mass Communication
Bachelor of Arts (General Group)
Bachelor of Library and Information Sciences
Bachelors in Journalism
Bachelors in Fashion Designing (BFD)
Bachelors in Education (B.Ed)
Bachelors in Hotel Management
Bachelors in Arts (could select any subjects of your interest)

Home Economics: This group is famous among girls in our society, who like home decoration, cooking food, sewing, etc.

You will have to study Food and Nutrition and other elective subjects.

After Intermediate, you can move towards any field as of Humanities with an inclusion of fields like food and beverages degree, hair cutting or beautician degree, etc.

DBA (Diploma in Business Administration)

This diploma is equivalent to intermediate and offers a wide range of courses of Commerce. After this course, you can move towards any field as of Commerce.

DAE (Diploma in Associate Engineering)

This Diploma is also famous for those, who are technically interested rather than studying course books. You can move on to any field of Engineering afterwards.

There are many more unlimited liberal fields with unlimited opportunities for all of you after Intermediate, including: Movie Directing, Photography, Politics, Freelance Writing, E-commerce, Operators, Administrators, etc. You should concentrate on it after completion of your Higher Secondary Certification.

Centralised Admission Policy, (CAP) form will be made available soon in all the banks. Under the CAP rules, the prospective students of first year classes at the government colleges and higher secondary schools will be required to produce his/her matriculation mark sheets for obtaining the admission booklet and placement form.

Students have to fill out their relevant information about their matriculation. They have to select five best colleges of their choices and would have to write their names in respective columns.

You can also choose any of the private colleges offering Higher School Certificate, whose admission has already been started.

If you are still confused as to what to do and where to go: just consult a Student Counselor in your area. I am presenting a FAT (Field Analysis Test), which has been designed after an extensive research conducted by me. This short-term test would readily help you greatly to know your interest so that you could select the best field without being hesitant.

Answer the following questions:

1. Which one of the following would best describe your interest?

Movie and Music
Cooking
Surfing Net
Web Designing
Playing Games
Experimenting Things
Outing
Playing Mind Games
Making Creative Things
None

2. Which one is your Favorite subject?

Mathematic
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Computers
Economics
Commercial Geography
English
Urdu
Islamiat
Pakistan Studies
Home Economics
Art and Craft
None

3. Which Subject you hate the most in your school life.

Mathematic
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Computers
Economics
Commercial Geography
English
Urdu
Islamiat
Pakistan Studies
Home Economics
Art and Craft
All

4. What were your results in your Secondary school classes

Outstanding
Very Good
Good
Average
Poor

5. Select the trait that applies you the most.

Conventional
Reasonable and Reliable
Responsible, Organized and Calm
Productive
Practical
Sincere
Reserved
Hospitable
Warmhearted
Innovative
Open Minded
Short Tempered

6. Whom do you inspire the most?

Athletic coach
Hair stylist
Physical therapist
Astronomer
Banker
Politician
Doctor
Pilot
Web Designer
Counselor
Librarian
Social worker
Teacher
Engineer
Movie Director
Minister
Nurse
Food service manager
Carpenter
None

7.How many hours could you spend on studies?

Less than 1 hour

1-3 hours

3-6 hours

6-9 hours

You do not need a psychologist or a counselor to evaluate your questionnaire.

Just fill out the questionnaire and give it to your siblings or your parents to vividly know your interest, which could be revealed, if most of the answers to the questions are similar in nature.

Copy down your answers separately on a sheet and evaluate the similarities.

Here is an example to evaluate your interest:

If most of the answers are related to artistic things and creativity, with open mindedness, then Humanities or Home Economic is good for you.

In the same manner, do for the rest.

Best of luck for your future endeavors to embark upon!

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Active learning involves having students become a part of the learning process. No longer is the teacher always the center of the learning process. It is a multi-directional learning experience where learning takes place through teacher to student, student to teacher, and student to student.

Too often we as teachers think that we are the knowledgeable ones and must know all the material before we present it. At the rate that knowledge is advancing in today's world that is very hard to do. In the same way if we want to use any technology within our curriculum we think we have to know how to use it first.

It's time that we give students some credit and empower them to become self-directed learners. Our job is to set the overall goals and then become the coach on the sidelines stepping in when needed. A coach provides the direction and vision, but lets the students move forward with that vision. It's time to allow the student to take ownership of their own learning.

The following website shows how much better a learner retains what they have learned when they become active in their own learning compared to having things told to them. Last month, we highlighted the learning pyramid located at this web site:

I think you will find after looking at this pyramid and comparing it to what you have seen in the classroom, that though the percentages may differ, the order of retention is correct.

This has been an idea that I have been kicking around for a while and I think that eventually it would be worthy of some master or doctoral degree research. I know at first it seems like a silly suggestion, but I ask that you hold your skepticism while I lay out this theory – ‘what is the value of testing teachers in content?’

For anyone that is a teacher, your already familiar with what I am about to speak about, the eventual requirement of shelling out hundreds of dollars to sit down to several hours of tests that ask some of the most inane questions known to mankind. Now, I will give test writers some credit, it is genuinely hard to write an exceptionally good multiple-choice test…but honestly, I wonder if they have ever taken their own tests to see how terrible the standardized tests are? When I was in college, I always heard rumblings that the MI history test had one of the lower pass rates out of the tests that were offered…once I took the test I finally understood why – it had some of the worst questions I have ever encountered! Some of the questions were so bad, I finally asked the test proctor what to do about such a bad question and the only response I got was that I could fill out a complain form for the question that would be submitted to ETS (writer of the test). I told them to just forget it because I would spend more time filling out complaints than it would just take me to work my way through the test. Ok, so that being said…the first question I would guess that someone would ask would be, “are you just bitter because you barely passed?” Well, it is hard to say because ETS will not give out the maximum score for the test, only the minimum passing score is given along with your personal score. For that particular test, the minimum score was 220 (100 test questions). I would think that a logical assumption would be that the maximum score is 300; I scored in the 270s…so it was not that bad of a score. I am convinced that the problem with people testing bad is that the test itself is horrible, not the knowledge of those taking the test (usually). Therefore, even if I believed in standardized testing, there is, strike one against it.

Another problem is with the inherent structure of the certification system and its relationship to testing. This has particularly become an issue since No Child Left Behind and the need to have ‘highly qualified’ teachers. Each state determines its own requirements for being considered ‘highly qualified’ but a good percentage of the states use certification tests as a component. In a ‘what if’ scenario…what would happen if someone who is well rounded and educated were to take all of the certification tests? Assuming things like time and fees not being an issue and that the person passed a large portion of the tests…would that mean that they are certified to teach in all those areas? Honestly, if the emphasis is being placed so tightly on testing…by following that thinking, they should be certified? Therefore, by proxy, are these tests something that should be considered so important to the process? Personally, I do not see the value of standardized tests as professional licensure…strike two.

My last issue surrounds the historical origins of testing. Standardized tests have been around for ages in one form or another; whether it is an I.Q. test, a Standford-Binet, or a Wechsler Inventory there have been all kinds of available tests but their origins have always come from research and diagnosis instead of accountability and high-stakes. Putting these kind of parameters on standardized tests perverts the reasoning behind them and in the +30 years we have been pushing standardized testing on to kids, have we seen any reasonable improvement in the education system? This is part of the idea that Alfie Kohn proposes in his books and articles in that we have been going about this all wrong. However, instead of getting the word out as to this problem, the political realm continues to push a course of action that research is showing to be useless. From studying history/politics, my own personal conclusions point to pandering to a narrow political base and deflecting attention from real issues in education (not funding programs already in place and excessive emphasis on athletics over academics). So why should this perversion continue? Strike three.

Going back to the original question, what value is there to testing teachers in content? Well, it reminds me of a story regarding one of the best history professors I have had in a class; he told me that realistically, content knowledge is vastly secondary to methodology and thinking skills. It is easy to read content before a class but it terribly difficult to think properly on short notice. With this in mind…if we are going to test something shouldn’t it be something that is much more meaningful than the memorization of facts? It is a topic that I find fascinating to examine and I hope that there are others out there that are willing to question the conventional thinking out there, because as we have seen conventional is not cutting it.

We designed a simple set of 5 rules to start out every class. These are easy to remember and easy to keep track of. Several of our teachers use a variation of the 5 rules to start their classes, and you may feel free to adapt these to your class. These are the rules I use in English class:

Rule 1: Students must be in their seats when class begins. In some schools, classes begin (and are dismissed) by a bell. Some classes begin at a specific time. Still other classes are started by a particular signal from the teacher.

Rule 2: Students must have a writing instrument. Again, different teachers have different expectations, be it pencil or pen or whatever. For me, it doesn't matter as long as it s dark enough to read. I only balk at silver, gold, white, or any other light or fluorescent color (hot pink or yellow for example).

Rule 3: Students must have their folder out on their desk. Each of our classes requires students to keep important papers, notes, and other course artifacts. Some teachers allow students to keep these, and others provide a location in the room for folders.

Rule 4: Students must have all required materials for class that day. To reduce the number of times students ask me about what they need for the day's class, I will either write the materials list on the board or put it on the class announcements on our TV (see our website for the article on creating a class cable TV network).

Rule 5: Students must be working on the class warm up activity. In English class, students write out Daily Oral Language (DOL) sentences, practicing proofreading skills. On the edge of each day's entry are the numbers 1 through 5, making it easy to grade. All you have to do is circle the appropriate number.

Again, we give each student a daily grade of points (1-5). Some teachers have only four rules and one rule is worth 2 points. You can change up and set your own rules and create an easy to grade set of points to fit your own classroom.

After a few weeks of practice, the checking of daily points becomes a student job. One student from each group (the RECORDER) gets the weekly responsibility to check the students' daily points and circle the proper number. The teacher is freed up for other activities, and you only need to spot check through the room. This way I can record the daily points only once every two weeks and they are already tallied up for me.

Interested in FREE writing activities you can print out and use immediately in your classroom? Simply click the following link to our writing page: http://www.starteaching.com/writing.htm

Be sure to check out our website for the FREE teacher Who-I-Want-To- Be plan and other great Freebies for new teachers. Simply click the following link: http://www.starteaching.com/free.htm

		FEATURES FOR TEACHERS
Visit our Website at: www.starteaching.com		Ideas and Features For New Teachers and Veterans with Class						Volume 4, Issue 9 May 2008
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