"SLC | S21W1: Developing a Learning Contract"

Greetings and welcome to my blog. I’ve had alot the opportunity to teach at some stages of my life especially during my national youth service and teaching as much as impactful it can be has a lot of upturns and downturns and the teacher can be faced with some challenges.

Thanks for this beautiful learning opportunity for us to learn and share.

Can you explain what obstacles a teacher may face in the classroom learning process?

	My niece learning

In my experience as a teacher, I’ve encountered some obstacles in the class. Some of these obstacles includes;

• Understanding and managing different teaching methods:

The classroom is made of up different types of students, the fast learners, slow learners and the average. The teacher sometimes have to grapple with effectively using different methods of teaching to reach the students and carry them all along at different levels.

The teacher has to be flexible and combine teaching strategies to reach her students. While this can be a Herculean task, the rewards can be very encouraging.

• Inability to communicate effectively

Not all students have the ability to effectively communicate their needs and area of lack when the teacher is teaching. This is usually seen with students in lower grades. Most of the high grades students can communicate but it’s not same for the younger learners.

The teacher has to come up with other means to bridge the gap of communication for the younger learners. Lately I teach my little niece and I have to break down words to the lowest level and use lay examples upon examples just for her to understand what am trying to teach her and that can be a lot. Imagine when you have to do that to a hand full of young learners.

• Keeping abreast with the evolving learning technology

Every year new teaching technologies are introduced and teachers are often pressured to to stay up to date with the use of these evolving technologies and sometimes there are inadequate funding to keep updated with these technologies that are important to learning process.

• The creating of lesson plan that should adequately engage the students to learn well is another challenge for teachers. Those days when I was teaching, this was alot of task for me. Having to sit down and draft out my lesson plans in a way to adequately reach and educate my students was very tasking.

• Lack of adequate learning facilities and conducive environment.

In this part of the world, this is a serious challenge for teachers. I remember encountering a school were the students had to sit on the floor to learn hence they had to carry blocks of cements to sit down as chairs.

There was no single facility made available by the government for the students. The class room was dilapidated and learning and teaching was such a struggle.

• Managing the student’s behavior and classroom management is another challenging factor to teaching. I’ve had to deal with noisy and difficult students in public schools in this part of the world and sometimes they can even get violent. Maintaining decorum in the class for effective teaching atmosphere was really a lot.

What do you think is the importance of learning contracts and how have learning contracts helped your teaching process so far?

	Me teaching her

Learning contracts are really helpful to teaching and some of it’s important includes;

• Learning contracts helps to foster respect and mutual understanding between the learner and the teacher.

• Having to deal with wide varieties of learners with different differences, learning contracts can be a bridge to deal with these wide differences among the different learning groups.

• Learning contract is a means of motivating the learners to be willing to learn individually.

• Learning contract makes for a personalized mode of instruction.

• It also helps to strengthen the self-directed learning skills of the learner.

Applying learning contrasts has helped my teacher student’s learning environment generally and motivated the students to put in more effort and learn enthusiastically. I even used it on my little niece and it worked. She was excited to do her homework and we had a good teacher learner rapour.

What important components should be included in a learning contract and explain why they are helpful to you?

Some important components In a learning contract:

• The learning objectives which states the skills, attitudes, knowledge and values which the learner is meant to acquire.

• The learning strategies and resources which states how the learner is going to acquire these objectives.

• The time frame in which the learner is expected to accomplish the learning objectives.

• What the learner would show as evidence in having accomplished the objectives and lastly how the teacher will validate the evidence the learner shows.

What are your strategies for ensuring student compliance with the learning contract and how have the consequences worked so far, or do you have other ways of organizing the learning activities to remain effective?

Designed on Canva

To ensure that learning contracts are complied to, I adopt the following strategies:

• Clarifying expectations upfront: this is done by making a check list to define the standards and criteria for the learning contract thereby making it clear to the student and helping them understand the goals they should achieve and effectively track their progress through the checklist.

• Providing various options for the students by allowing them choose from the variety of options what suits their style of learning, their needs and their preferences through the different task like writing, creation, research, presentation etc that’s inline with the objectives of the curriculum.

• Organizing the resources and materials for learning and ensuring they have access to them, ensuring easy usage and returns.

• Ensuring the students are monitored and supported consistently and regularly while they work on their learning contract through the use of log books or charts to document their work and feedbacks.

• Ensure to access their performance and celebrate them and their outcomes at the completion of their learning contracts. When these are put in place, the results are encouraging and outstanding.

Thank you for those amazing class, am glad to be a part it. I ask @ngozi996, @lewas-write and @divinelife to participate in this learning challenge.