Tutor : Helen Scanlan.
Student : Malcolm James-Tague.
Learning can take place anywhere , in schools or colleges , in classrooms with peers or teaching on a one to one basis. As a teacher/tutor you must ensure that the learning environment that you are teaching in is safe.
At the beginning of a training session it is important to outline the housekeeping points such as explaining the location of fire exits and where assembly points are. Where the toilets are situated
, when comfort breaks will take place and the no smoking policy explained. It is also important to make sure that the learners you are teaching feel at ease. A way to make your learners feel at ease when they first come to your lesson would be to implement such strategies as ice breakers. An icebreaker is a facilitation exercise intended to help a group to begin the process of forming themselves into a team. Icebreakers are commonly presented as a warm up game helping the group members to get to know each other. They often focus on sharing personal information such as names, hobbies, etc.
As a teacher/tutor it is important to establish ground rules with the learners, a method to use to do this would be to include the group as a whole to avoid dictating your own ground rules as not all of your learners may agree with one set of rules that may make them feel uncomfortable in their learning environment. A way to create ground rules would be to allow the participants to generate a list of ground rules. Ask them to think about what they would need to ensure a safe environment. Ask them to consider respecting others, for example, not speaking over one another. Also ask the learners to bare in mind peoples cultures and opinions. Allow the group to discuss the ideas amongst themselves .
Another method to encourage the learners to use when setting ground rules would be a ballot system, where by the the learners would each write down a number of rules they would like the
Bibliography: www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm (Accessed 29/01/2013) www.geoffpetty.com/downloads Formative Teaching (Accessed 31/01/2013) Petty. G (2009) Teaching Today: A Practical Guide Word count : 814