May 7th, 2013
At our last
class we got into small groups and brainstormed a list of some criteria of what
quality instructional strategies look like.
Below is our list of what we felt instructional strategies should look
like in a classroom:
- Engaging
- Hands-on
- Motivating
- Visuals
- Access different learning styles
- Cooperative learning
- Movement
- Investigating, discovering, uncovering
- Meaningful connections
- Real-life experiences
- Builds on prior knowledge, scaffolding
- Opportunity to demonstrate learning (number 4: homework & practice)
- Multiple intelligences (number 5: nonlinguistic representations)
- Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers
- Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
- Generating and Testing Hypotheses
We then looked at Marzano’s
High Yield Strategies to see how our list compared to what research tells
us is best practice. Below you will find
3 Instructional Strategies that I routinely use in my classroom.
When we began talking about instructional
strategies in class, it came as a surprise to me that there were so many
strategies that I was using in my day to day teaching that could be considered
instructional strategies. I guess that I
never took the time to really think about why
I do the things that I do in my classroom, besides the fact that I was told it
was best practices in teaching. It was
only when I really thought about why I do the things that I do is the moment
when I learned how they are important. Check
out what instructional strategies that you use in your classroom by clicking on
this link. http://www.beesburg.com/edtools/glossary.html Three instructional strategies that I use
quite a bit in my room that I am going to be really paying attention to are
Authors Chair, Balanced Literacy & Cooperative Learning.
1.) Authors Chair~ Authors Chair is when a
student is selected to share their work (during Writer’s Workshop) with the
rest of the class. Author's Chair is an
opportunity for the writer to receive positive feedback from their classmates.
The student in the author's chair reads aloud a selected piece of text or a
piece of their own writing. Peers then have an opportunity to respond to what
is read aloud.
According to Marzano’s High Yield
Strategies, Authors Chair would yield a 29% gain because it teaches students
that hard work leads to success; stimulates motivation and enhances achievement. In my classroom, Authors Chair is a huge
motivator because all of the students, no matter what their writing skill,
wants to sit in the “Share Chair” and be recognized for their work. Compared to our small group criteria, Authors
Chair is very hands-on, motivating, allows for differentiation, builds upon
prior knowledge, allows students to make meaningful connections and it definitely
allows for opportunity to demonstrate student learning. Overall, this strategy is highly effective in
my classroom.
- Modeled Reading
(Reading Aloud) and Modeled Writing
- Shared Reading
and Shared Writing
- Guided Reading
and Guided Writing
- Independent
Reading and Independent Writing
3.) Cooperative Learning~ Cooperative learning is a key strategy that teachers use to support
students learning to value and respect one another. Students must learn academically while being
a productive member of a small group.
According to Marzano’s High Yield Strategies, Cooperative Learning would
yield a 27% gain because it develops positive interdependence,
accountability, interpersonal skills and small-group skills and group
processing. Compared to our small group
criteria, Cooperative Learning in essence is the same list that we
created. It allows for hands-on work, is
motivating, engaging, it allows for movement & communication with peers,
allows for students to make meaningful connections and encourages real-life
experiences and allows opportunities for student learning. I use this in my classroom everyday and find
it to be very highly effective as my students are not only learning with each
other, they are learning from each other.
May 10th, 2013
This week one of my assignments was to
choose one new instructional strategy that I’ve never used before and try it in
my classroom. The instructional strategy
that I chose to try this week is Story Starters. We are just finishing up our
Backwards Design Unit on Living & non-Living things. I put sun shaped writing books in the writing
center and the students had to answer the question: What if there was no sun? I thought that this would be a good question
to see if any of the students would make the connection that plants need
light. It was interesting to see that
the first 6 students that went through the writing center made no connection at
all to our BD unit. However, it seemed
once one student made the connection and explained it to her partner; everyone was
writing that there would be no color, no plants, no trees, no flowers...etc. The first 3 groups didn’t seem to mind and
they cheered on the others who did make the connection. This was a good informal assessment to see
who understood that plants need light to survive.
May 13th, 2013
One of our assignments this week is to use an instructional strategy that we’ve never used before. I chose to try Admit/Exit slips. Admit/Exit slips are a way for the student to show what he/he has learned/retained. I used this strategy on Wednesday when I taught the last high-frequency word of the year. The word we learned was “are”. After showing my kids the word, we learned a song, used it in a sentence, did our movement activity with it and then on Thursday before the kids could enter the classroom they had to write it (or try to write it) on a Post-it note. It helped me quickly access who had really learned the word and who needed a little more practice. It was fairly effective as 17/21 students were able to write the word correctly. Next time I would tell the kids that they are expected to be able to read it, remember it and write it for the next day.May 20th, 2013
Again this
week our assignment was to use another new instructional strategy that we have
never used. I chose to use Turn
to Your Partner.
In this instructional strategy, the teacher gives directions to
students. Students formulate individual
response, and then turn to a partner to share their answers. Then the teacher calls on several random pairs
to share their answers with the class.
Because this is the last week of school I wanted to know what everyone’s
favorite part of the year was. As a
group we brainstormed a list of things that we experienced together this year. When it was time, I instructed the students
to turn to their partner to share what their favorite thing to do in
kindergarten was. After 1 minute or so I
told them to switch. It was fun to
listen to them in their little conversations.
It was also fun to hear what they liked most about kindergarten. After we were done, I wanted to know what
they didn’t like so we did this activity again!
This strategy reminded me of Think, Pair & Share. Not sure how highly effective this strategy
was this week considering the topic. I
think that if the topic were more educational, it would yield a higher gain of
understanding. It was more of a “fun”
activity that I threw in for the kids.
