Active Learning Technique Analysis

The fundamental essence of teaching strategies is to implement various teaching methods and adopt various techniques more easily in our teaching. A teaching strategy denotes the planning, the means and ways devised and employed by the educator to guide and direct the learner for accomplishment of the learning objectives. This plan includes the structure, the desired learning behaviour of the students, the ways to implement the strategy in the classroom which is crucial for teaching and learning to take place.

Teaching strategies encourages our learners to take more responsibility for their own learning thereby improves the teaching and learning process in our classrooms. There are various teaching strategies which can be of great use

Active Learning Technique (ALT) is an “instructional technique which focuses on the learner’s interaction with the subject matter through active participation by generating ideas instead of being a passive learner and a receiver of knowledge” (Githua and Mwangi, 2013; Japalal Singh, 2013). In the learning process from the learning pyramid, the student’s ability to teach others and practice by doing is more that 50% (Petty, 2004). In this technique, the educator will only guide the learners on how to achieve the task given through brainstorming and thus the constructivist behaviour is adopted. As in Mathematics, there are certain topics that need a lot of practice, I have discovered that it will be mostly activity oriented as it will make the students’ participation become more active and their learning process will become more meaningful. In addition to this, Hattie (2004) defined ALT as a means of involving students in practicing important skills and applying new knowledge. In this context, the activities that are to be designed needs to be more interactive by involving learners to participate and also apply their new knowledge. These activities can be the use of PowerPoint presentation that can been included to attract the students’ interests by showing them animations and stimulate students to think and also the use of Activity Sheets and Worksheets that the teacher

Hence, each student will participate and contribute equally to the success of the group. Moreover, each of them will be given a responsibility in the group. This will help the shy students to feel important and give more of themselves in the group. They can be more motivated to learn better resulting in effective teaching and learning. This approach might decrease the problems related to discipline, laziness and awkwardness of students. there are some important benefits that the students gain from this cooperative learning such as learning a variety of approaches for solving a problem, opportunity to discuss and clarify ideas, improve communication and social skills, more enjoyable teaching environment than conventional lectures, increasing confidence and finally an opportunity to communicate. However, there are classroom management issues emanating from discipline problems such as noise, lack of participation from students, laziness and dependency on their friends, managing noise levels, resolving conflicts, and assessing student learning. It is difficult for the teacher to be sure that the groups are discussing the academic content rather than something else. Finally, cooperative learning encourages achievement, student discussion, active learning, student confidence, and motivation though. The skills students develop while collaborating