TP Task 2 – Active Learning Environments

Planning activities that allow students to clarify, question, apply, and consolidate new
knowledge.
What is an active learning environment? What are its benefits? How does it link to the
inquiry cycle?
What is an active learning environment?
"Active learning" means students engage with the material, participate in the class, and
collaborate with each other. Don't expect your students simply to listen and memorize; instead,
have them help demonstrate a process, analyze an argument, or apply a concept to a real-world
situation (Promoting Active Learning, n.d.).
What are its benefits?
 Facilitate independent, critical, and creative thinking
Ask students to analyze, synthesize, or apply material, both during lectures and in assignments.
 Encourage effective collaboration
Collaborative group work can be an extremely useful addition to a large class.
 Increase student investment, motivation, and performance
When you invite students to actively participate in the learning environment, they take more
responsibility for their performance in the course. Similarly, when they have an opportunity to
make decisions about what they learn and how they use that knowledge, students see a course as
more valuable and more directly related to their goals (Promoting Active Learning, n.d.).
How does it link to the inquiry cycle?
Drawing from Dewey’s four impulses of the learner in The School and Society; the stages of
reflective action from How We Think, and the fundamental idea that learning begins with the
curiosity of the learner, we can envision a spiral path of inquiry: asking questions, investigating
solutions, creating, discussing our discoveries and experiences, and reflecting on our new-found
knowledge, and asking new questions. Each step in this process naturally leads to the next:
inspiring new questions, investigations, and opportunities for authentic “teachable moments.”
Each question leads to an exploration, which in turn leads to more questions to investigate
(Bruce, 2008).
Reference Bruce, B. C. (2008, November 11). The inquiry cycle. Retrieved from chipbruce:
https://chipbruce.net/resources/inquiry-based-learning/the-inquiry-cycle/

Promoting Active Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from stanford:

https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/resources/learning-resources/promoting-active-learning
Choose 3 lessons to observe to answer the following questions:
What was the prior
What was the impact of the
What was the activity? learning to this
activity i.e. no. of ss engaged?
lesson?
Recognizing the shape They were engaging to find all
of the letter. of them (for instant, letter P),
and the count how many they
found. After they write the
number in the box.

English
Finding the Letter
Counting and They were engaging because
recognizing the they are using the smartboard
numbers. (circle time)

Math
Count & Match
Identifying the feeling They were engaging to stand
for example, if we under the sun and under the
stand under the sun we shade to identify their feeelings.
feel hot, but if we
stand under the shade
Science
we feel cool.
Sun & Shade

Which activity engaged most students? Why do you think this happened?
In the science class, when the teacher took the students outside the class to stand under the sun
and under the shade to identify their feeling such as, hot and cool.

Record and reflect on the safety components of at least 3 lessons taught while on TP.:

What safety issues were taken into
consideration?
Were the students made aware of them?
How?
Did any safety issues arise in the lesson that
were not planned for?
Is there signage in the classroom regarding
safety?
When the students used the smartboard to
match or to choose the correct answer and they
cannot reach it because they are short, then we
put a chair for them to stand on it and we hold
them to avoid their falling.
In the science lesson, when we took the
students out to stand under the sun and under
the shade, we were aware to do not touch the
plants.
No, because the teacher gives always the
instructions.
No, but the teacher gives always the
instructions.