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The Kiribati National Curriculum and Assessment Framework (NCAF) is designed as a framework which contains guidelines and policies for the content, structure and delivery of the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools in Kiribati. It is a framework which gives important stages for accomplishing the first goal of the Ministry of Education (MOE) strategic plan 2008-2011, that is to “deliver a high quality, coherent and relevant curriculum for Kiribati children”. In addition, the framework highlights the roles of committed teachers, parents and communities in assisting children in their long-life learning. As a teacher has an essential role task, it is important for teachers to implement the roles highlighted in this framework. However, the discussion will elaborate and portrays more on this by reflecting on my teaching experience at the one the junior secondary level, TUC 1 JSS. The discussion will also show the strengths and weaknesses of this delivery toward this competency, implementing the NCAF.
Specifically, I will discuss on three of the indicators of implementing the NCAF. That is ‘how to effectively explain subject concepts and skills to pupils’, ‘recognizing common problems and misconceptions’, and ‘how to relate the subject content to real life situations.’
To start with, the explanation part of teaching and learning is very important as it is the first step of pupils’ acquisition in learning. While teaching the English at the Year 7 level, the topic we learned about was ‘proper nouns.’ To make the explanation more effective to students, I used some resources like charts, and plain papers instead of using the blackboard and some chalk itself (fig.1). In addition, I clung to the speaking policy where students make most of the time participating and spoke out of themselves at a ratio of 1:4 (fig.4) According to Sun (2008), his article also mentioned about the importance of being like ‘listening and responding to questions.’ – that when somebody ask questions, there’s interest take place. Thus, in this case, our communication and interaction with students also impact a child’s learning positively.
Moreover, Professor Taylor says that all we want to do as teachers is to produce students with accurate information. Unfortunately, misconceptions exist in every field of study, but, as teachers we should not ignore them (2022). Honestly, I agree with this statement as there is misconceptions I encountered while having a lesson (fig.2). Throughout the lesson I can definitely found that some students need more assistance in learning this topic. Although, at this year level they should probably have those skills from the primary level. Thus, all I have to do is to cope with this issue using effective teaching strategies like using game learning (fig.3) and checking their work individually and assisting them at a meantime. Previously, I had seen the effectiveness of this kind of strategy as it probably work and assist slow-learners while struggling or having misconceptions (refer to block-teaching journal). In addition, I found that by applying this strategy, a combination of different forms of learning took place, and this is one of the factors that promotes a quality learning environment (refer to Moodle).
Furthermore, the content of a subject is what teachers assigned to deliver and what we aimed students to acquire. So, in the lesson I tried to incorporate our real-life context into a lesson plan to make it meaningful. For instance, replacing suggested names as an example of proper nouns in the activity (fig.5), like ‘Meere’ instead of ‘Mary.’ However, there is a great perspective of these contents to be understandable and make sense to real life experiences as well as preparing students to life is the main purpose of education. In addition, incorporating real world connections into a lesson plan helps students understand why what they’re learning at is useful beyond school (Digital Newspaper Replicas, 2017).
To conclude, implementing the NCAF also act its role as one of the competencies of the national curriculum that teachers of Kiribati should cling themselves with. It also positively impacts students learning to their unique needs accordingly. However, this competency should be essentially preferred by teachers for its contribution to the best experience of a teaching career as well as a child’s learning.
References:
Sun, C. T. (2008). 10 ways to explain things more effectively. TechRepublic. Retrieved from: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-ways-to-explain-things-more-effectively/
Taylor, A. (2022). GUEST POST: How to Help Students Overcome Misconceptions — The Learning Scientists. Retrieved from: https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/7/25-1
Digital Newspaper Replicas. (2017). The importance of connecting classrooms to the real world. Financial Review. Retrieved from: https://schoolsubscription.com.au/the-importance-of-connecting-classrooms-to-the-real-world/
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