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.
Introduction
Strong educators utilize a variety of instructional strategies in order to allow all students the individualized attention they require to reach content mastery. Instructional practices vary classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher. This presentation and practice of skill encourages learners to deeply comprehend lifelong practices represented by state standards. Critical thinking ability is honed through meaningful application of these skills. In my practice, I find that open communication and feedback greatly guide my instructional practices. Hearing students' wants and needs concerning in-class practices allows adjustment to accommodate and provide more engaging work.
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In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of instructional practices, students express comprehension of content in a variety of assessment aligned to our daily practices. Having a wide variety of resources, including human and technological, to engage students in learning makes class time exciting and increases student investment and joy. Daily work products are tangible pieces of evidence to show that students have grasped content and are applying it in daily life or other content areas.
Click to view slideshow about our daily content documentation.
Students document all lessons in interactive notebooks to revisit concepts throughout the school year. This student is practicing dictionary concepts and sentence creation with new vocabulary.
In order to have a quick reference of content, students begin their journals with a ToC to document their reading lessons and practice.
For students with Individual Education Plans, I provide partially filled in so this populous can pace with our general education class.
Students document all lessons in interactive notebooks to revisit concepts throughout the school year. This student is practicing dictionary concepts and sentence creation with new vocabulary.
Daily, our class block is set up with time for Word Study and Mini-Lessons for reading skills. Anchor charts are developed for Word Study content, while guided notes, copying definitions, and anchor charts are created for Mini-Lessons based on Texas reading standards.
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Word Study involves the study of spelling patterns. All anchor charts are posted around the room and used by students for reference. This posting allows students to expose themselves to repetitive patterns in reading and writing for quick reference.
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I either provide guided notes or write notes alongside for students to copy daily. This allows students to document concepts and explicit content instruction or from our mini-lesson. The mini-lesson concepts are comprehension and readiness standards for the current grade level.
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For students with Individualized Education Plans, I create filled in guided notes. Students then rewrite what is written but have all classroom information and can stay on pace with peers in our general education environment.
To provide students the lifelong skill of organization and clarity, our learning relies heavily on the use of graphic organizers. For each reading standard, we utilize a variety of organizational tools ranging from Venn Diagrams to flow charts. Each concept has a specific organizer and can be used across genres. This practice also impacts cross-disciplinary learning opportunities particularly when comprehending Social Studies content.
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View graphic organizer slideshow.
For student reference, a posted set of graphic organizers are posted with the reminder to utilize during reading.
Students utilize this graphic organizer to make learning meaningful through comparing and contrasting.
Gifted and Talented Student using graphic organizer to arrange content comprehension during independent practice. Reading skills are used to reach mastery of content in both subjects.
For student reference, a posted set of graphic organizers are posted with the reminder to utilize during reading.
In the classroom, technology serves two major purposes: differentiating and management. With regards to academics, technology allows me to provide work for students at appropriate reading levels. Technology resources provide the ability to adapt classwork to meet the needs of individuals and groups of learners. In my fourth grade class, students range from first through sixth grade reading comprehension levels. In order to provide rigorous yet reasonable work for every single one of my students, technology is key. Additionally, applications on my phone allow me to manage students efficiently. Students earn points for positive behaviors establishing a consistent and safe learning environment and have them removed when the expectation is not met.
Academic Resources
Imagine Literacy is a campus provided resource that assesses students reading levels then automatically provides skill work and problem-solving on students levels. The application varies from vocabulary games, sentence construction, listening to reading, responding to readings orally, through short answer, and multiple choice questioning. With each completed lesson, students are quizzed. If students pass, they receive the next tiered work set. If students do not meet mastery, they are provided further instruction then skill work.
MobyMax is an additional technology resource I utilize during workstations. What I prefer about this technology resource is that I am able to make work meaningful because I assign the varying skills to practice. For example, if a student is on a fifth-grade reading level but struggles with main idea, I can search the exact grade level and skill to assign the work. I receive real time communication with the application for how long students take to respond to a question and their scores for the work on my account. This has allowed me to distribute differentiated work far faster than if I searched, printed, and administered in class.
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Management
ClassDojo has been invaluable to my practice of creating a healthy and positive learning environment. I utilize this application to track student behavior through a point system. Each child has an avatar that earns them points for meeting expectations. When a student receives twenty points they earn a reward pass of their choice: an inscribed book, lunch with the teacher, or bring our talking piece for circle. When I first began teaching, I provided candy and other small trinkets as reward. Based on reflection, I wanted students to work toward intangible or academic rewards. This is how the passes came about. On the flip side, I utilize it to guide misbehavior by removing points toward their rewards.
Click to view slideshow about our daily technology.
Student practicing differentiated classwork on skills requiring support.
This resource differentiates work in interactive gaming and rewards systems for students. Student tracking of data can be viewed by both students and educator on profile reports.
In the classroom, we utilize a document camera and Smart Board to project teacher interactive notebook for students to copy. Additionally, we project exemplar student writing and name and notice positives in one another's work.
Student practicing differentiated classwork on skills requiring support.
Each day, I provide a variety of instructional methods to reach all learning styles. Our warm up and practice work time involves posing a question for students to work on independently or with table mates. Choice allows students to participate and engage with academic content however they prefer either auditory or reading/writing. Through the provision of multiple models and representations of concepts and skills with opportunities for learners to demonstrate mastery, each type of learner finds something of interest to them where they can discover success.
Each lesson, I provide kinesthetic learners the chance to be active with questioning through games like Stand Up Sit Down and Four Corners and GoNoodle videos. Visual learners are addressed with pictures in our PowerPoint and drawings on anchor charts during lessons. The conclusion of our block is individual reading with a text of their choice. Whether it is collaborating or being independent, our block engages all four learning styles.
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Routine Activities to Supporting the Styles
Kinesthetic: GoNoodle, mindfulness, and movement moments
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Auditory: Listening to read alouds, peer reading, and discussion
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Visual: images during power points, anchor chart creation, and drawings to support comprehension
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Reading and Writing: warm up writings and skill practice
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Visit my students' all time favorite movement moment for academic learning activity.
Our Daily Interactive Read Aloud, I read the mentor text for the genre of focus and document information on either a graphic organizer or anchor chart. In this case, our read aloud was Maya Angelou's Biography.
I read the text and throughout think aloud different comprehension strategies. Seeing the text and the illustrations appeals to visual learners and ELs. Students are also posed questions to turn and talk with a shoulder partner about. Posted you can see our daily questions with sentence stems to answer. Our task was to make connections about similarities and differences between the students and Maya Angelou.
Daily Vocabulary Added to Word Wall with Visuals
Posted Nonverbal Requests with Visuals
Students have been explicitly instructed on a variety of reading strategies to practice during independent reading. Strategies are posted on cabinet doors for students.
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Strategies Explained
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Book, Head, and Heart: First, students ask themselves what the book is actually telling them (facts, evidence they can refer back to). Next students use their head to make connections, draw conclusions, or make inferences. Finally, students do a heart check to see how the text has made them fell.
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Name and Notice: Students look at the physical text and notice unique aspects- text features through visuals.
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Visualize: When the author describes anything students must close eyes and practice picturing the information in their heads. This helps tremendously with narrative poetry with the use of sensory language.
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Graphic Organizers: Students document their findings from the text in logical perimeters.
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Words of the Wiser: Students notice and note older figures in the text that provide characters wisdom. This will help point to the lesson or theme of the text.
Seating
In order for students to gain the most from instructional time, seating and groupings are crucial to learning. By working in small table groups of three to four students, students are able to learn from and with one another. Turn and talks are crucial for learning. This arrangement allows discussions in which I ask questions to stimulate discussion that serves different purposes. Peer teaching fosters greater comprehension of classroom content, while students who are struggling to understand hear from peers in simpler terms. Not only does this support academic learning, but the lifelong skill of collaboration. This setting sets students up for college and career readiness with the mindset of teamwork.
With a total of 22 students per class and three blocks, our classroom seats four groups of four and two groups of three.
Lighting
I seek to create the most comfortable and warm environment for my students both emotionally and physically. One way I provide this is through natural lighting. Based on my personal experience and much research, lighting can be highly influential on productivity levels. I enjoy giving students the option to work with the florescent lights out and lamps or holiday lights in place alongside window light. Students find this as a great incentive to stay on-task during classwork time.
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Music
During work time students also enjoy listening to music. Students monthly provide a song request. I have a running playlist on Spotify for all of my classes that we continually build on throughout the year. This is another incentive for students to stay focused during class because of the expectation I have set that "all pencils must be moving to have music going."
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Natural lighting during small-group tutorials.
This is an archived playlists from one of the first classes I taught in the Spring of 2018. At the time, the groups were divided into Harry Potter Houses and Zombies was popular.
A variety of evaluation allows me to get immediate feedback on student learning and provide instructional adjustments for upcoming lessons and interactions. This comes in the form of exit tickets, reflection (both academically and behaviorally), and discussion. These check-ins create awareness and provide vision for future classwork and character building. Students have become familiarized with this process of gaining insight and willingly participate. By frequently assessing informally, students are able to goal set and foster a growth mindset in simple practical ways.
GT student reflection prior to our most recent assessment about skills in class and applying them beyond the classroom. Green filling in represents correct answers broken down by skill.
Through discussion, teacher and student had a discussion based reflection, and I transcribed the information spoken. Direct quotes were written and the student found success by copying the teachers written words.
Student wellness and safety is top priority for my practice. One question I always include is how can I make you feel more safe in class. This student commented on closing the blinds. This feedback has stuck with me in a profound way. The outside world can be daunting for students. Simple adjustments can make their learning environment more comfortable and prone to success.
GT student reflection prior to our most recent assessment about skills in class and applying them beyond the classroom. Green filling in represents correct answers broken down by skill.