Mariam Mohammed's E-Portfolio

Teaching Philosophy

As a teacher I have understood that being a teacher is not just about delivering content. A teacher is a child’s role model, students tend to look up for their teachers and trust that the teacher is able to meet their needs. I have learnt in previous teaching practices about the importance of the learning environment and how the learning atmosphere affect the children and their learning. I will discuss the different strategies and techniques that I have established in the following paragraphs that I think has great impact on teaching and learning. 

Learning environment and atmosphere:

I believe that the most important aspect in teaching is to create a safe learning environment, when students first come to class they tend to look at the environment that they are in and this either intrigue or disinterest the child. In my last teaching practice I had the opportunity to construct a classroom and make it safe and appealing to the students.

The key to a positive learning environment is to have different sections that are easy to follow by both students and the teacher. I have created a word wall from the unit vocabulary since I have noticed that the students tend to not use the vocabularies that have been introduced in previous lessons. The word wall supported students writing where they have constantly looked at the wall when they needed reference.

I learnt that having visual learners means that everything should be displayed that way students would look at the wall and get reminded. A perfect example would be displaying the classroom rules explicitly, that way when students misbehave I would just point at the wall that has the rules displayed on and students would know what they are doing is inappropriate.

From my experience I found that specifying a wall for the students to personalize is an effective way to encourage learning. I have applied an activity that allowed the students to customize the wall by adding new words every day. The way that this activity was implemented is by asking the students to bring new vocabulary to class and displaying the words with their names. This is a way of showing the students that I am involving them building the students’ personalized word wall.

Other significant elements in teaching:

I recognized that in teaching a teacher should motivate the learners often because by motivating the pupils, you are exciting them about learning and that is very important for the students self-confidence. It is fairly easy to apply as well, I can motivate the children by simply praising them when they do a good deed or even if the asked a good question. I can also do that by giving them a positive feedback on their answers or even display their beautiful work somewhere in my classroom.

I learnt that being professional at all times is crucial in teaching. Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, the students’ look up to me and think of me as a role model so showing professionalism at all time in school is a positive example for the students to follow. Secondly, being professional means being punctual, attending all meeting that are ask of me, dressing properly for my job and also being organized which is important in this profession.

I have acknowledged the importance of using formative assessment in my previous experiences.  Formative assessment is extremely important in teaching because it helps me as a teacher plan for the students learning and even support and scaffold their learning. Ongoing assessment is important because it happens often which allows me to deliver the best teaching and support throughout the unit or lesson.

Finally, creating a positive learning environment and considering the other important elements in teaching allowed me to grow as a teacher and think abstractly about the context that I have put in my class. It has also shown me that being passionate is an important element in this field; I had to think about creative ideas and ways to trigger students and keep them interested. I have noticed a good change in education in the UAE in the little time I have taught in. I see a lot of amazing classroom environments and great teachers around the UAE that always inspires me to be more creative and a passionate about teaching.