Instruction
I have taught in many types of learning environments, and in each one collaboration and personal innovation have helped me to improve my instructional strategies. At the same time, I have also learned that every school, every classroom and indeed every student is different, so there is no 'one size fits all' instructional strategy. Below are some of the major instructional strategies I use.
Class Work
One of the greatest problems I have observed with classwork assigned by teachers is the student perception that the work is just 'busy work' and that there is no purpose. Many times, in my opinion, the student is correct. For daily assignments where content knowledge is the primary objective, I no longer grade activities based on completion. My philosophy is that this simply encourages students to copy off their friends, ask their friends for the answers, and to make learning a secondary objective. Therefore, my approach to classwork is as follows:
- Make the learning objectives clear to the student
- Distribute the learning materials, physical or via Edmodo. I try to always make sure there are additional enrichment materials for students who would like to learn more, or students who are exceptionally bright or gifted.
- Moving around the room, I am able to clarify, check for understanding, suggest enrichment ideas and monitor that students are on task. When a student is clearly off-task, I deduct a point from their classwork grade. I make sure to immediately communicate to the student what the behavior was and what the consequence is. As the students learn the system, they almost always remain on task to the point where, by the end of the year, I almost never need to deduct points.
- When the learning activity is completed, I look over the students work, but do not collect and grade it. The assessment will come in the form of a quiz which will assess whether or not the student actually learned the material, rather than if they simply completed the task. With students understanding that learning is the objective rather than test completion, overall content mastery has improved. Of further significance, classroom management problems have become almost non-existent.