The topic for this week is about instructional variable. This topic present by Vany, Daen,Shopia and teh Ulpah.  I know about many things in this week. I learn about Hands-on activity, open-ended question, descriptive and evaluative feedback, eye catching, paradoxical questions, etc.

I will share that topic with you, let see…. :p

Strategies for increasing students’ involvement are open-ended questioning and hands-on activities. A hands-on approach requires students to become active participants instead of passive learners who listen to lectures. I remembered when I learn about statistic. The lecturer made learning process more interesting. He made hands on activity in class when he taught us about statistics. He asked us to measure our thumb, it made each students Involved with learning activities in class. After that we compared the result with others, we found the hypothesis, variable, etc.  It’s related with what we learn today and also meaningful learning. Hands-on activity is not just for fun because it enables students to become critical thinkers but more importantly, the process of learning, to various life situations.

An open-ended question is designed to encourage a meaningful answer using the subject’s own knowledge and/or feelings.  I think math teacher should give open ended question when explain the material, so it can make students think more critical. For example: What do you think about three dimensions? What example can you give me? Open ended question can helped involve a large number of students during a single lesson.

A paradoxical question is cannot be answer correctly. I remember with my social teacher question in high school, his question is “Indonesia is a fertile country, but why so many people are poor?” No one can answer this question appropriately, any possible answer to this question will be correct. It called paradoxical question.

The group of this week did eye catching. They bought a big bag that makes us curious with that. It’s a simple example that this group show us about eye catching definition.

Descriptive Feedback is specific information in the form of written comments or conversations that help the learner understand what he or she needs to do in order to improve. However, to make descriptive feedback useful for our students, we must give them opportunity to revise their work.

Evaluative feedback will come as some sort of grade or marking. This can include numbers, happy faces, letter grades, stars, verbal descriptions such as “secure,” etc. Evaluative feedback itself will not truly help students, if the students can achieve B+, there is no true motivation to either improve or learn what could have been done to earn a higher grade. It’s just over. However, evaluative Feedback can help the teacher to give simple feedback for students’ works.

Last activity in this session is “tebak gaya” games. It reminds us about topic from last week and the topic that we learn today. We feel enthusiasm to involve in this game, but I think its not running well. The rule for this game is much change. In fact it needs much time to fix the rule for the games and the facilitator is not consistent when she chooses the group who must answer. Actually it’s very interesting activity, good job!!.

Anugrah Meti Suryani 2009110021