TEACHING AND LEARNING FOR UNDERSTANDING IN CLASSROOM

Teaching and Learning for Understanding (TfU) is one of learning approach used widely based on the constructivitism theory. It is a full guideline of the constructive learning process for students to develop their understanding about the topic. In this TfU method, teachers are able to access student's development of the content understanding for the lesson in the classroom. In TfU, it contains the objective that students need to achieve, interesting and generative topic of lesson for students to acquire and reach the goal of learning, and various kinds of tasks to tests students understanding about the lesson.

Teachers can apply this TfU method as it is very useful as it give lots of benefits to both teachers and students to make the learning process successful. First of all, teachers can recall student's prior knowledge and experience before relate to the learning objective. Teacher need to be flexible and creative to create this environment in the classroom. Let students feel free to draw their knowledge and experience within and beyond the subject. This will make they interested to follow the lesson as it connected with themselves. Teachers should appreciate student's points of view and do not make students feel down as it will hesitate the positive flow of the learning process.

Secondly, teachers can highlight the learning objective for students to achieve. After recall student's prior knowledge and relate to today's learning objective, teachers should explain what students should achieve and gain at the end of the lesson. It will make sure that the flow of learning process will lead to learning objective. The learning objective should be approachable for students to achive. Teachers need to be more alert and sensitive about their student's intellectual level and background because the main thing of TfU is students are able to understand the topic.

Thirdly, teachers can guide students to achieve the learning objecting. The flow of learning should be generating by students as they develop their understanding about the lesson by themselves. Teachers act as mentor to guide them to reach the learning objective. For example, teachers can create problem and ask students to solve it by using their prior knowledge and experience. Teachers will keep questioning until it reach the main content of the lesson. From here, students not just learn about the content but why they must know and how to apply it. This activity can be individually or in groups. To see the understanding performances by students, maybe teachers can ask them to come out in front of the class and present their work.

Lastly, at the end of the lesson, teachers can give some task for students to do and complete. This task is very important as it provides the feedback for teachers to evaluate either the students understand or not about the topic. Teacher can create the task according to the time needed for students to finish it. It can be like a short exercise where students need to submit their work before ending up the class or assignment that students need to continue doing at home and let teachers see the progress of the assignment from time to time. From the task result, teacher can plan the further action for the next class.

As conclusion, this TfU method by Perkins and Unger's is very useful and suitable to be use in all learning process where the understanding is a priority.