Instructional Strategies
InTASC Standard #8: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
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Learners need to have the opportunity to engage with the content in various forms and at various levels. When content is learned in multiple representations, student's individual learning styles can be met and maximum learning can occur.
Teachers should continually be evaluating content and teaching methods to determine the most effective ways of challenging each student. The first artifact below is a strategic teaching guide which I created to teach comprehension and vocabulary skills to third-grade students using the book Anne of Green Gables. Throughout this guide, I included a variety of discussion questions which meet all six levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. In addition, the guide has a wide variety of engaging activities through which students will strengthen their vocabulary and comprehension skills. I created this guide with the various learning styles in mind in order to meet all students' needs and preferences. The second artifact is a part of my Student Academic Progress Assignment which I completed during my student teaching experience. One requirement for this assignment was to utilize three different instructional strategies within a unit. After analyzing my pre-test data for this unit, I determined that differentiated small-group instruction would be most effective. So this was one of my strategies. Another strategy which I chose was to scaffold the content by using concrete representations first and then take away support by moving to pictorial representations. My third strategy was incorporating kinesthetic movement into lessons. I feel that the Kindergarteners are highly engaged when they can use their body to learn. By integrating these various strategies into the lessons, I believe that students are much less likely to become bored during a lesson, and I am able to reach students with different learning styles and preferences by using different strategies. |