Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is very important in each class. Cooperative learning is the process in which the students work together in the classroom. It is essential because it builds a good relationship between the students. There are many characteristics of the cooperative learning, some of them are that the cooperative learning is more productive. When all of the students learn together they will produce more. Also it provides creativity because when there is more than one thought and more than one mind creativity would occur. Besides it is a kind of helping each other. When there is a cooperative learning the students would help each other and explain for each other the points that are not clear. One more thing is that the cooperative learning is funny. When the students work together they feel that they are having fun at the same time they are learning, while when the students are learning each one alone they would be bored and they will not have fun while learning and they wouldn't be interested. Motivation occurs when there is cooperative learning because they will motivate each other to do the work and they will be more motivated and challenged in other way. Finally, cooperative learning would provide for the students support. In each group you will find that the students are supporting each other, helping each other, interacting with each other and motivating each other. It provides a unity between the students.

Cooperative learning is very beneficial for the process of learning, for the relations between the students and for the students themselves.  It provides a positive feelings in the class. 

Routines in Classrooms

Routines are needed in every class especially with the younger students. Routines in the classrooms help the teacher more to manage the students and to make the students more calm inside the class. Also it is a main thing to help the students to learn in a better way. 

The presence of routines is essential. They may help the teacher to be faster in the lesson and explaining it rather than stopping from time to time to give the students instructions. 

Routines may help in behavioral management. For example, if there is nothing in the class to do around the students, so some students will make their own activities. In this case routines may help them to minimize their misbehavior. If there are routines in this case, the students will know what is expected from them and they would follow it.

Besides, routines could be funny. For example, have the students clean their desks every morning by singing a song. In this way the students may be interested in the routines rather than being bored from them. 
There are four main types of routines to manage the classroom: 

1. Housekeeping: It is about the routines that are usually done in the classes. For example, How to enter the classroom, taking attendance, erasing the board between two classes and to clean the classroom. They are happened unconsciously. 
2. Operational teaching: It is called also operational features. They are the routines that are somehow basics like where to sit, making announcements, and showing the homework, if you want your homework to be checked just put it on the right side of the table. 
3. Work habits and procedures: They are routines that are related to the work that is done in the class. For example in my class i put for the students a poster about the copy rules. They should write their names, title, date, leave space between the words, and write between the small lines. Also it is used to tell the students how to work in groups and the rules of working in groups.
4. Interpersonal: They are more about the relations in the class. If the students enter the classroom they should say "Good Morning", also it is about the politeness and saying please when you want something. 

The presence of routines in the classrooms are very important. The process of learning would be much faster and better when there are routines. 

Six Types of Professional Knowledge

If you want to be a good and professional teacher you have to be skillful teacher. What is a skillful teacher? 

A skillful teacher is a teacher that has a wide knowledge about everything that is happening in the school and inside the class. To be a skillful teacher you have to acquire many traits like patience, you have to make good relationships with the students, also it is very important to have a good personality. Besides, a skillful teacher should have a knowledge as we said previously about everything in the school and in the class. 

There are 6 main types of knowledge: 

1. Content knowledge: To be a good and professional teacher you have to be aware of the content that you are teaching. If you are teaching English Language, you have to be aware of everything that is required from you in the English language. It is important to know the subject that you are delivering to the students. 
2. Pedagogical content language: It is about the knowledge that you should have about how to teach particular subject to your students. It is essential to know some techniques of how you should teach the subject that you are teaching to your students. For example, the way the teacher explains an English Language lesson differs from the way the teacher is explaining a math lesson. 
3. General pedagogical knowledge: It is very essential. It is about how to deal with general teaching. In other words, it is about issues related to teaching in general. For example, how to manage the students in the classroom. 
4. Knowledge of the students:  To know your students is very important thing that each teacher should have. It is important to know the students' cognitive levels, their backgrounds, and many other things about the students. If you know your students you will be able to build a good relation with the students. 
5. Knowledge of the parents:  The teachers should know the students' parents in order to be partners with each other and build a bridge between them to help the students. If the teachers know the parents of the students they would be able to know more about the students and how they would deal with them. 
6. Knowledge of the curriculum:  A good teacher should know the curriculum, how it is designed, what the students learnt before, what they should learn now, and what they will learn after.

These are the 6 types of knowledge. Each teacher should have them, if you have them you have a high confidence. 

Dealing With Misbehavior Inside The Classroom

In each class there are plenty and plenty of misbehavior that the students may do. Dealing with misbehavior is not easy task. Some of the teachers deal with them in a way that is not logical. When the teacher wants to deal with the misbehavior, she should know how to deal with it and when to deal with it. 

It is hard for the teachers to deal with misbehavior in a way that makes the students learn from it. Teachers should be aware of the students inside the class and they should know each student. Also they should know why students may misbehave inside the class. Every misbehavior has a cause. First of all teachers should know the cause of misbehaving, then providing a logical consequence for that misbehave. The logical consequence should be accurate and the students should benefit from it. 

For example, if a student changes his seat without permission, any teacher may scream or ask him to go outside the classroom. But if you want to give a logical consequence so simply the teacher may remove a smiley face that he took previously. 

Here are some misbehaviors and the logical consequence of each misbehavior. 

 -Scratch on his friend's book: Apologize to his friend. Help his friend in repairing the paper.

 -Cheating: Take the exam from the student for five minutes. Minus 5 marks. 

 -Being disrespectful: Write a letter to apologize to the one he disrespect. 

 -Sleeping in the class: Ask him to go and wash his face. 

 -Interrupting the teacher: Don't allow him to talk a whole session. 

Vygotsky's Theory

Lev Vygotsky is the most famous theorist that talks about sociocultural theory.  Vygotsky’s theory was useful for describing children’s mental, language and social development.

Vygotsky talks about the social interaction. He believed that the mental and language and social development is acquired by the interaction with the others. Also he said that interaction lead the child to develop because whenever the child interacts so he will be able to communicate and in this way he will learn. Also Vygotsky talks about peer pressure, and what is meant by peer pressure that the child help his/her peer, in this way there is an interaction between the two children and this lead to learn and develop.

Besides he talks about the zone of proximal development is the stage that the child is able to perform tasks with help or not. So the tasks above ZPD are those the children not able to do them by themselves, while the tasks that are below ZPD they are tasks that children can make them by themselves. Also he believed that the interaction between the child and the teacher in the class is very important for the children because in this way the teacher will scaffold the child and in this way the teacher is helping the child to acquire knowledge and information. Scaffolding is a very important according to Vygotsky because it is a kind of help that gave to the child to complete a specific task that he is not able to make it.

Characteristics Of A Good Teacher

Every teacher likes to be a great and professional in her classroom. It is somehow difficult for the teachers to be good teachers all the times in the classes because being perfect all the times is not something that is easy. Perfection comes when the teacher is highly educated and love what she is and the position that she has. To be a great and perfect teacher you should have some characteristics that allow you to be great in your classrooms. 

Some of the characteristics that the teacher should have are:

• Friendliness and congeniality: as a teacher you should show your students love and always care for them and show them that you are friends with them. 
• A good personality: when the teacher has a good personality, the students will feel that they are safe and not afraid. Having a teacher that has a good personality which means the teacher may listen to the students, and she may feel with them, this may help the students and the teachers to interact in a good way in the class. 
• Good listener: in order to be a good teacher, you have to be a good listener. If the teacher listens for the students so she is showing that they are important according to her. 
• The teacher should be kind as much as she can with the students. Kindness is a characteristic that all of the teachers should have. If the teacher is kind, she would be beloved form the students. 
• The teacher should have high expectations for all of the students.
• The teacher should be good communicator which means that she knows when she speak and knows when she let the students speak. She should give time for the students to speak in the class.

If the teacher has at least two of these characteristics, she would be a great teacher inside the classroom. 

Regaining Students' Attention.

One of the biggest problems that the teachers face in the schools is regaining student’s attention. This issue had been suggested previously with many ways to regain the student’s attention. Regaining student’s attention is not an easy issue; it is very difficult for most of the teachers. Many students lose their attention for several reasons, and these reasons maybe caused by the teachers, parents, or from the student himself. This problem can cause many obstacles that he/she would face. For example, the student who loses his/her attention in the class may have low marks; stop studying or many other difficulties. Besides this problem may cause difficulties in the teacher’s career, it may cause them to lose their jobs or maybe to lose their self-confidence. So it is important to solve this problem in each and every class.There are many students in the classes that lose their attention; they may lose it for different reasons.
There are several ways in order to regain students' attention. Some of them are:

1. Make a sign whenever you want the students to pay attention. 
2. Follow the rules.
3. Praise the attentive students. 
4. Find what helps each student to be interested. 
5. let them make choices. 
6. Ask the inattentive students to tell something for the students like a joke...
7. Be creative, because creativity lead the students to pay attention. 
8. Give a break from time to time.