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.
Cooperative Learning
Conference Learning
Play-based Learning
Discovery-Based Learning
Technology-Based Learning
Guided Reading Learning
As an early childhood educator, I play an integral role in a child’s development. I must build basic developmental skills by fostering intellectual and social foundations. To ensure that all my students have access to these foundational skills, I must implement several instructional strategies that challenge my students to express themselves while learning. My classroom must be based on both project and play-based learning. Young children need the opportunity to explore concepts, make inquiries, test hypotheses, and be creative.
Since my students have a large range of academic abilities, I differentiate instruction to strategically meet the individual needs of all my students. I adjust learning tasks based on individual students’ knowledge, skills, experiences, and preferences. This allows every student to engage deeply with materials. For example, if I have a verbal learner in my classroom, I will use a tape recording and hands-on material to walk my student through an activity step-by-step. Providing students with several avenues to learn will increase their chances of successful understanding material and gives them opportunities to make meaningful connections with content.
In addition to using several teaching methods to ensure that each student is learning, I also use a variety of assessments to ensure students gained the core concepts. I incorporate different types of evaluation strategies into the classroom to accommodate student’s interests and needs. Using a wide variety of assessment tools allows me to determine which instructional strategies are effective and which ones need to be modified. The assessments help me ensure that students who excel remain challenged, as well as to help me focus on students who are lagging behind and them catch up.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is an instructional strategy I use to get my students to work together on a common task. Cooperative learning helps me build my students’ social-emotional development. A student’s ability to manage emotions, relate to others, and understand emotional cues can accelerate the development of early literacy and math skills. Since cooperative learning lets students make connections with their peers it can promote positive feelings which is an important base for further success in school.
Cooperative learning allows students to increase their learning motivation by providing peer support. As part of a learning team, students can achieve more success by working well with others. Students in my classroom often feel inspired to learn the material in greater depth than they might otherwise have done and to think of creative ways to convince them that they have mastered the materials and can now play the part of the teacher in their cooperative learning teams.
Cooperative learning helps my students feel successful no matter their academic level. My cooperative learning teams are grouped heterogeneously. This allows low-achieving students to make contributions to a group and experience success, and also allows other students to increase their understanding of ideas by explaining concepts to others.
Quiz-Quiz-Trade
Quiz-Quiz-Trade is one of my favorite cooperative learning activities. I use this activity to enhance vocabulary retention. Students use Quiz-Quiz-Trade to reflect on new words they have learned. Each student will hold up his or her card and that student will have to say the vocabulary word. The one holding the quiz card can help scaffold the learning by flipping the card over to show a picture of the vocabulary word. After each student has quizzed their partner, they trade cards and find a new partner to repeat the process.
Sight Word Memory
In the game Sight Word Memory students work in a group of four. They divide themselves into two teams. One team goes first and each player turns over a card. They must say the sight words on each card. If they match they can keep the cards. If they do not match the cards are turned over and the
other team can repeat the process.
Think-Pair-Share
Think-Pair-Share is the cooperative learning technique I use the most. In Think-Pair- Share each member in a group “thinks” about a question they have from what we have just learned. On my signal, they “pair-up” with a member of the group and discuss each other questions and try and think of a response. Finally, I go around the room and students “share” each other questions and the rest of the class tries to respond.
Conference Learning
Conference learning is an instructional method I use periodically throughout the year. It allows me to have one-on-one time with each student. While other students are engaged in a learning activity, I meet with a student asks them engaging questions about their work and encouraging them to talk about their approach to the given task.
These mini-conferences provide me with a better understanding of where a student is academically and developmentally, which will help tailor lessons, activities and homework to help students thrive. During these conference-learning sessions, I try to focus on areas that I cannot observe during group instruction. I write down information collected from these conferences and use it to guide academic choices in the future.
Play-based Learning
Play-based instruction is very is specifically geared toward young learners and has a focus on play. Through play, children create, communicate, experiment, problem solve, and socialize. Through play-based instruction, my students build and extend their knowledge and skills as they interact with one their own, with partners, and in their classroom environment.
Associative Play
When students partake in associative play in my classroom they are placed in pairs. They are told to share materials in the same area. Children are working independently but interact briefly to compare ideas, share materials, or admire each other’s work. Students learn negotiation skills and cooperation skills.
Cooperative Play
Cooperative play is the most social form of group play in my classroom. During cooperative play centers, students work together to work towards a joint objective in one center in my classroom. These students are challenged to create a working road that does not have any interruptions. In this type of play, students must plan, negotiate, share responsibilities and leadership.
Dramatic Play
Dramatic play center is the most sought-after center in my classroom. During dramatic play students creating imaginary roles in which they pretend to be someone or something else. The play often draws on the first or second-hand experience and is guided by our social studies units. This play is usually between two students. Both students draw on familiar situations and the play proceeds based on the interactions between the students acting out the roles and negotiating the pretend scenarios.
Discovery Learning
Throughout the year, I provide students with many discovery-learning activities. Discovery learning encourages my students to build on prior knowledge through experience and to hunt for new information. It gives them a chance to make meaningful connections with materials and draw conclusions from the evidence that they have observed. Students are beyond engaged during discovery learning because they have a chance to conduct experiments, create theories, make predictions, and draw upon new knowledge from data they collected.
Technology-Based Learning
Technological-based learning is a vital and valuable part of my kindergarten classroom. I use technology to support a learner-centered and play-oriented curriculum. The use of tablets and computers promote relationship building among the children. I have used technology in a developmentally appropriate way to create purposeful learning experiences for my students. My Kindergarten students have short attention spans, but their interests are sparked by the technology I have in my classroom. I have three iPads and three computers in my classroom, which allow my students to work at their own pace, receiving remediation when needed or moving ahead for a challenge. Students have used iPads to take digital pictures and send reports home to their parents using Seesaw.
Guided Reading
To provide differentiated teaching that supports students reading development I group students together in a small group of four to five students for guided reading instruction. Guided reading gives me the opportunity to carefully select text to intentional teach reading strategies to specific students struggling to make gains with those strategies. During guided reading instruction, each student reads the whole text softly to himself. I help students use critical thinking to hold a discussion about the meaning of the text. We work on skills to sound out unknown word, use pictures to decode words, and take picture walks to make predictions about the text. I rearrange guided reading groups every two weeks and print of reading books from Reading A-Z weekly. When selecting books I try to give students exposure to a wide variety of text to build vocabulary and challenge existing knowledge. Observations I make during guided reading help to inform instruction.
Conclusion
All students have learning strengths and weaknesses. This helps to prevent instructions that allow every student to process education information effectively. To facilitate the learning of all students, I have to cultivate lessons in a manner that successfully challenges every child and encourage critical thinking. I incorporate different instructional strategies to teach to multiple levels in my classroom. Since my students have many types of learning styles, like visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, I try to provide meaningful learning experiences that will help students master tasks using their preferred learning style. Providing learning opportunities in this way will help students make strong connections with content. I use various tools to teach, this help prevents students from becoming unengaged and helps them interact more with their learning. It is important to me that my classroom creates a sense of wonder and excitement. These instructional strategies do just that. By providing students with choice and options, I keep my classroom thrilling and interactive for each student to experience.