Reflection 5

Cooperative and collaborative learning are very useful learning styles. These learning style will not just help you in a classroom but they will also help you with task in everday life. These two learning styles help you prepare for working with other people for places like a big cooperation, a job/career, and also college projects,or business functions.
Collaborative learing is when a method of teaching and learning in which students team together and to explore the significant question or create a meaningful project. Students can excersise collaborative learning though discussing a lecture or joining other students from different schools on the world wide web on shared assignments. Cooperative learning is basically a specific kind of collaborative lesson plan. With coorperative learning student work on a structured activity however they are all individually responsible for their own work and the group work also. This encourages responsibility and teamwork.
Within these learning styles students learn well together. It has been argued on both sides about the specific pro's and con's with collaboartive learning. Certain teachers believe that students work well in mixed groups that it is better for more advanced students to work with lower level students becuase all students will benifit from the experience. The advanced student will benifit from the tutoring experience and the lower level students will learn from their peers. However on the other side you have teachers that believe that placing the more advance students with lower level students is harmful becuase they won't really be learning and progressing... That eventually they will get bored or either fall behind. But going of that perspective all students will have different levels of progress as opposed to the whole class understanding the lesson or assignment at hand as a whole. These are very strong points and based on the teachers objective they will be grouped accordingly. My personal opinion is that we as teacher should do both. We shouldnt group the same for every assignment. We should test our objectives and see which one works more effectively in our classes. I do believe more that the advance students should be pared together because if they are pared with lower level student they will be forced to b a lower level student in a way.

Reflection 4

There are many different ways of learning... But they type of learning style that we were pretty much born with is inquiry based learning. Inquiry based learning is based our instinctual since of curiosity the urge to ask why. However this way of learning is not that affective, especially not in the classroom. Which makes plenty of since.
In a classroom there's is suppose to be a certain structure and students are suppose to learn certain subjects at certain levels at a designated time. In the early stages inquiry based learning and spirits are high but as the grade levels go's up it is highly discourage because the material that i being taught to the students really doesn't leave mch space or time for the "why" question students are jus expected to absorb the information and repitition is highly enforced. To a certain extent I support the way our teaching environment opperates because I was taught this way but it is sommewhat unfair to the student.
For example if a student has a question they should never be affraid or discourage to ask a teacher for the answer or to even ask why something is what it is. Isn't it our jobs as teachers to answer students questions and to provide them with knowledge? I am aware that some question may be off topic and that if a student constantly ask why a proper lesson may never be completed but if we discurage students then they will eventually lose their thurst for knowledge and if a teacher doesnt have a challenge and is just teaching in front of a numb audience and or deaf ears they will lose their interest as a teacher.
Inquiry based learning should take place in every classroom no make what grade level. However to be effective for the teacher to teacher a lesson and for the sake of student learning there should be a short time frame towards the end of class for students to reflect and ask questions for the teacher to answer. It would honestly be rewarding experience for the teacher and the students if this took place in the classroom as apposed to the classic "i teach you listen" approach. It is proven that students learn more effectively when they participate and also when they can relate their lives or realo situations to what they are learning.