Teaching and learning:My experience (2)

Another experience I have had is teaching my four year old daughter. Each day we do memorization of letters and their sound combinations, writing and coloring activities for about two hours.

Teaching a child takes more time and patience than with an adult , because the attention span of a child is much shorter than that of an adult.For the first ten minutes into the lesson my daughter is very attentive , afterwards she becomes distracted and I have to say many times to her 'keep still' or 'pay attention'. During writing activities I have to help her along and at times she writes slowly . There are times when it gets frustrating, because I feel that we can
do more in a session or that maybe she is taking a bit long to move on to the next level. I have come to realize however, that I have to be patient; because each student learns at a different pace ,and should not be pushed beyond his learning capabilities and also, bieng a child she will naturally take a little more time to work with as opposed to someone older.

Through the experience of teaching my daughter , I have found that students love to be praised for a job well done from their teacher. My daughter is very happy when I commend her on a great job and she looks forward to her fun filled activities . As a result, she hurries me each morning to begin her lessons. She has motivated me by displaying a desire to learn and displaying her enjoyment and I have motivated her through praises.

It is the responsibility of the teacher to make learning as interesting as possible for the student for this will help to make learning easier.A good teacher observes the way his/her students learn and adopt teaching methods that would appeal to the students method of learning.A student should not be pushed beyond his learning capabilities for this may lessen the student's desire to learn.

Just as teaching is difficult ,in that students on different levels have to be made to understand an idea or theory. It should be noted that learning has some difficulties as well. A student must realize his own learning method and pace and apply it to his learning, this can be a
difficult task for some students. Both teaching and learning take a great deal of motivation , patience and hard work. If you have a motivated and happy teacher ,you will have a motivated and happy student.