Reaching all students and all minds
To properly reach a wide spectrum of individual learners, teachers must be prepared to implement an array of instructional strategies. They must understand a variety of strategies, as well as contemplating and assessing the effectiveness of those strategies. Furthermore, it is essential to recognize the nature of differentiated learner styles and vary strategies to meet the needs of all learners. To implement these strategies, teachers should actively engage and work with colleagues to expand upon ideas and techniques. Another key aspect is crafting strategies to monitor student progress while allowing for flourishing of student growth.
As a student teacher, I sought new and exciting strategies to engage students throughout the lesson and unit. As a prospective teacher, I will continually modify, adapt, and implement new strategies throughout the school year to keep students intellectually involved and learning. One of the ways I have modified and adapting instruction is by turning teacher-driven instruction into student-driven learning. Rather than simply teaching the content, I attempt to use project-based learning and hands-on experiences to enhance content understanding among students. One of the more successful student-driven experiences was utilizing a game to learn about the Himalayan Mountains. Students explored the mountains on Google Earth and followed along on a worksheet to learn important facts and information about the tallest mountains in the world. Students were excited about playing a game and absorbed more information by playing, rather than simply listening or reading.
Through my instruction, I attempt to model strategies and properly explain how students can strengthen a variety of knowledge and skills. During lectures or teacher-driven instruction, I try to model my thinking strategies by pointing out aspects that I find interesting or using “think aloud” to inform students of my thought process. With student-driven instruction, such as projects, I try to model and teach correct techniques, while allowing students freedom to express creativity and learn necessary skills and content. These strategies can be spontaneous, but I try to anticipate and plan modeling activities into my lesson plans. Examples are found throughout the questioning section of my Pre-AP Geography lesson plan for South, East, and Southeast Asia.
I constantly seek knowledge about my students’ ability to adapt strategies that promote progress and growth. Questioning techniques are an effective, time-efficient way of monitoring student progress. However, I think the best technique is through utilizing both formative and summative assessments. Through these assessments, I am able to observe areas where my instruction has been successful and able to adjust my instruction to meet areas of need. In my student teaching unit, I assigned a map quiz for South, East, and Southeast Asia. The results of this quiz gave me the opportunity to change focus and strategy to help students better prepare for the unit test.
For more detailed information on my ideas regarding instructional strategies, please see my essay on Virginia Professional Practice Standard (PPS) #3: Instructional Delivery.