A two-period lesson construction (the activities during the first period: explaining the theme, clarifying the students’ questions and beginning to fulfill classroom tasks; the second period: finishing classroom tasks and assessing the students’ work with a 6-point system), a one-month period for home assignments and highlighting the project based and research activities have become habitual for the students, and it seems to many of them that it has always been like that.
Now it is important for us to reveal the positive and negative aspects of the system being used, and we are doing it from the viewpoints of the two parties of the educational process: the teacher and the student.
The teacher’s point of view
Positive aspects
1. Creating the learner’s educational respondent conditioning through delivering a new topic and fulfilling tasks on one and the same day of the week and at the same time.
2. Assigning classroom and home tasks according to clearly defined levels.
3. All the learners in class participate in the fulfillment of classroom tasks.
4. Assessment clearness: a low, easy to overcome, threshold for a satisfactory mark and a high one for an excellent mark.
5. The learners have the right to choose the material they want to study and the threshold level they want to overcome.
6. There is a possibility to reveal the learners’ potentials.
Negative aspects
1. Violation of oral and written speech usage proportion.
2. Possibility of forgery during group work.
3. Difference in possibilities for the learners who are present and for those who are absent.
4. The level choice while explaining a new material is vulnerable because of the learners’ mixed abilities.
The learner’s point of view
Areg Galoyan, Grade 9
Positive aspects
1. The learners who are not able or not willing to get a specialized education at least get minimal knowledge.
2. Learners learn to perform group or individual work in the right way.
3. Learners begin using the Internet in the right way.
4. Learners learn to find necessary information quickly.
Negative aspect
Class-assignment subconsciously seems to the learner an easy task to fulfill, therefore, it results in making a decision to do the home-assignment although doing home-assignments is not obligatory.
Huri Iskanyan, Grade 9
Positive aspects
1. The teacher’s explanation is immediately followed by classwork.
2. The deadline for doing home-assignments.
3. Possibility for choosing versions of home-assignments.
Negative aspect
1. Explanation of difficult topics lasts one hour, which significantly reduces the possibility for us to give full answers to class-assignments.
Albert Ghazaryan, Grade 8
Positive aspects
1. Assessment of home-assignments at the end of the month which gives us a chance to correct our mistakes during the month.
2. Allocating much time for explanations of new lessons.
Negative aspects
1. Sometimes the time allocated for class-assignments is not enough.
2. Historical films or other video materials aren’t shown during the lesson.
Harutyun Ghazaryan, Grade 8
Positive aspects
1. Week students understand the teacher’s explanations of the new material better, as forty-five minutes is enough to understand it according to his/her own academic level.
2. There is a possibility to answer all the learners’ questions using an individual approach
3. The learners have a chance to make an abridgment of the lesson and learn it at home to give a good answer at the next lesson.
Negative aspect
1. If a learner missed the first lesson he/she automatically misses the teacher’s explanation.
Samvel Balakhchyan, Grade 7
Positive aspects
1. We learn to find information by ourselves.
2. We are allowed to do the class-assignment during the first lesson.
3. We can anser all the questions orally.
4. The teacher’s explanations are interesting.
5. We are allowed to listen to music.
Negative aspects
1. We are not allowed to work in pairs.
2. We need the Internet access for information.
Conclusion
If we make steps in eliminating the above mentioned negative aspects, this way of organizing lessons can be implemented at the lessons of school subjects on social studies in all the grades, especially Grades 7-8, 10-11.
Translator: Yura Ganjalyan