Into the Classroom: A Practical Guide for Starting Student Teaching

Chapter 6: Instructional Strategies and Techniques" Introduving Variety

Chapter 6 Instructional Strategies and Techniques: Introducing Variety Later in the book, I will touch on lecture, models, and demonstrations, and on asking questions and leading discussions as well as interactive teaching. Many other instructional techniques exist. This is a good thing because the cycle of lecture, model, discussion, and worksheets gets a little boring—or monumentally so. In my own high school classroom I like to use: PowerPoint presentation and lecture with fill-in-the-blank notes, discussions, WebQuests, library scavenger hunts, reading assignments with questions, videos with short accompanying worksheets or note outlines, map making (for example, choropleth maps and other colorful mapping techniques), cooperative learning, and worksheets that teach skills and provide practice (for example, reading latitude and longitude and making graphs), simulations, and storytelling. This chapter briefly describes eight instructional strategies and techniques. Hands-on activities , games, and literature can enliven your classroom while deepening or reinforcing learning. According to Joyce, Weil, and Calhoun (2000, 6), “Models of teaching are reallymodels of learning.” Theauthorsputforth oneofthebestargumentsthat I have read for varying instruction. They go on to say: In fact, the most important long-term outcome of instruction may be the students’ increased capabilities to learn more easily and effectively in the future, both because of the knowledge and skill they have acquired and because they have mastered learning processes (6–7). Althoughtherearemanywaysofcategorizingteaching/learningmodels,Joyce, Weil,andCalhoun usethesecategories:thesocial(forexample,partneringand roleplaying),informationprocessing(forexample,inductiveandinquiry),personal (for example, student-centered learning and nondirective teaching), and behavioral systems (mastery learning and simulations). It is easy to get in a rut teaching with a few techniques that work for you, but let me encourage you to 48 Classroom Instruction experiment with a variety of other strategies as your confidence and teaching abilities grow. Hands-on Activities Hands-on activities give students the chance to “do” as they learn: to experience creating knowledge, exploring, and knowing rather than memorizing a body of knowledge or a history of accumulated facts and ideas. Hands-on activities also help students develop skills (for example, hand-eye coordination or observation skills). Hands-on activities are common in math and science classrooms to help students understand new, unfamiliar, or abstract concepts as well as reinforce concepts introduced previously. Hands-on activities are also enjoyable for many students and serve to motivate them and stimulate interest in both the subject being taught and school overall. For hands-onand discoverylearning,theteacherprovidesanenrichedand supportive learning environment in which students can observe or manipulate materials. Through their curiosity, explorations, use of the materials, questioning , and discussions, students investigate and discover the macro-world around them. Discoveries, such as noticing that bulbs burn more dimly when more than one are connected in a series circuit, have been made by thousands of students over the decades, but the discovery is a meaningful and memorable learning experience for each child. Examples of hands-on activities include: • Environmental science: building a soda-bottle compost column and observing decomposition of kitchen scraps. • Math: making obtuse and acute angles with geoboards and potholder loops or rubber bands. • Geography: mapping where the clothes in your closet come from. • Foreign languages: making an articulated paper doll and labeling the major body parts to learn a list of vocabulary words. • Family consumer science: mixing together baking soda and an acidic liquid (for example, vinegar) to see how leavening works to make quick breads (for example, biscuits and muffins) rise. Hands-on activities are most effective when the concepts are relevant to students’ lives. If students can understand the links between the concepts they studyintheclassroomandtheworldtheylivein,theyoftenaremoremotivated and have better attitudes toward learning. Improved attitude is often linked to increased achievement. Instructional Strategies and Techniques 49 Storytelling People of all generations like to hear stories—from great grandparents to toddlers . Cultures around the world use stories to pass life lessons to younger generations . Storytelling has been used for generations as entertainment. On long, winter evenings, people told stories to one another just as we tell bedtime stories to children today. Stories help one generation pass on their societal norms, consequences for inappropriate behavior, traditions, and religious beliefs to another generation. Storytelling is an effective means to pass information to students and to reinforceideastheylearnfromtheirtextbooks.Storiesmakehistorycomealive and add a human element to otherwise dry information. For example, I tell stories of my international travels. I talk about what places looked, smelled, and sounded like. “When I stepped out of the plane in...