Instructional Techniques - Overview
Marzano's strategy:
- Set goals;
- Check for understanding;
- Provide positive feedback for sucesses;
- Re-teach concepts if understanding is lacking;
- Aid interactions with new knowledge, chunking down, making use of media, soliciting predictions and written responses;
- Utilise simulations and low-stakes competition;
- Establish and uphold class rules;
- Establish and maintain positive relationships with students;
- Communicate high expectations to students;
- Increased engagement with and ownership of new information will increase retention.
Simulation and games:
- Increase student interest;
- Incorporate physical activity;
- Encounter friendly controversy;
- Relate information to own lives / self;
- Encourage practice of academic vocabulary;
- Use of tech to increase relevance and engagement;
- Practice of adherance to sets of rules.
TEACHERS MATTER!
Marzano's 9 instructional strategies:
- Creating an environment for learning:
- Goal setting and feedback;
- Reinforcement / recognition of effort;
- Cooperative / collaborative learning;
- Helping students develop understanding:
- Cues and questions and 'advance organisers'.
- Nonlinguistic representations / tapping into other intelligences;
- Summarising, note taking;
- Help students extend and apply knowledge:
- Homework, practice;
- Identifying similarities and difference;
- Generation of and testing of hypotheses;
- New learning must be relevant, useful and meaningful;
- Common mistakes:
- 9 not the totality of effective teaching practive, simply tools in teacher's set of resources;
- Teachers must be cautious, context specific: specific instructional strategy only useful in the context that it fits!'
- Use of high yield strategies alone does not guarantee outcomes;
- Use systematically, intentionally;
- Use of technology must also be appropriate.
Instructional Strategies That Facilitate Learning Across Content Areas
- "Variety is key";
- Literacy related;
- Strategies requiring explicit instruction, modelling, scafolding and coaching;
- Directed Reading-Thinking Activity:
- Divide reading into meaningful segments and plan around these;
- Intro aids student recall of known relevant information;
- Students to preview content of reading by attending to prior knowledge, graphics and headings;
- Ask for student predictions of the learning (think/pair/share? individual written?);
- Read the material;
- Reflect on predictions, accuracy, where did they get it right and why? Where did they get lead astray?
- Student discussions of reading material and predictions.
- Discuss significance of the approach and how it can be used independently;
- Go on to next chunk(s) of reading material, repeating the process;
- Closing with teacher summation/review of reading content and of prediction & critical reflection
- Two-column table can be used: Column 1 predictions; column 2 actual text content.
- Question Answer Relationship:
- Questions designed around "Where is the answer?";
- First level "Right There" answers in the text;
- Second Level "Think and Search" requires putting together information from the text and making inferences;
- Third Level "You and the Author" draws together reading content and student's real life experiences and understandings/background knowledge;
- Fourth Level "On Your Own" engages students in creating something of their own as a natural stepping stone from the content of the material ("must come from the students' own background knowledge").
- Procedure:
- Teacher chooses reading material (simplistic, familiar to make introduction to QAR technique) and makes up QAR relevant to reading material;
- Introduces QAR technique and the idea that there are two types of information in texts, explicit and implicit;
- Explain levels of questions and where answers are found;
- Introduce the reading material and teacher's QAR questions;
- Students read, answer, discuss;
- Repeat process until students are ready to implement the method themselves by devising QAR in response to texts;
- Discussion with students regarding how independent use of this technique can aid their reading and learning.
- KWL - Know / Want to know / Learned:
- Students identify in a 3-column table as they read;
- Comparison Marix:
- Creating matrix (table) using categories across top, details down side, to develop understandings of similarities and differences;
- Response notebooks:
- Students clarify their thinking and understanding by writing down points that are confusing or need clarifying, can then generate a personal response, and can deepen this by discussin with others and making further notations;
- Dialectical notebook asks students to note what they find interesting, boring, scary, funny, confusing, then analyse why that might be and what life experiences might contribute to their experience of the text.
- SO MANY MORE great resource for further reading when relevant.
Tate, M.L. (2003). Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites: 20 instructional strategies that engage the brain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
- Brainstorming and discussion;
- Reciprocal teaching (students teaching each other);
- Drawing and artwork;
- Writing;
- Excursions;
- Project based / problem based instruction;
- Work study (apprenticeship / internship) - learning relevant through real world experience, learning under a master;
- Graphic organisers allow students to organise ideas, see relationships, retain information - mind maps, story maps, concept diagram - sequencing/flow charts, compare/contrast organiser (eg/venn diagrams);
- Visual / pictoral prompts for association;
- Humour;
- Games;
- Manipulatives - hands on learning materials;
- Technology;
- Movement;
- Role play;
- Metaphor, Analogy, Similie - connect unfamiliar concepts to those already known/understood;
- Mnemonic Devices - connecting content together using acronyms, increases retention/recall;
- Music "music soothes the savage beast" adds to the mood/comfort of the environment, musical learning also seems to paralell increased academic performance;
- Storytelling - stories help the brain relax, they also have a beginning, middle and end structure which tiescontent together and aids remembering, also calls upon visualisation;
- Visualisation - when engaging with visualisation the brain's generative abilities must engage the visual cortex as well as the frontal lobes, increasing mental engagement and therefore retention.
What strategies for teaching later years students appeal to you ? Why these ones - is it because of your preferred style of learning?
I can absolutely see that the use of music, storytelling and visualisation are natural elements for myself to be inclined to work with. Also the use of manipulatives, though in an arts context this seems inevitable? I think humour and games are also important, though not so natural for me to tap into, so I would like to build my repertiore and confidence in using these. In fact I can see the usefulness of almost all of these strategies in different contexts and look forward to experimenting with them. I can see that some of the literary investigation techniques could be very interesting for students, with different styles of investigation relevant to different types of information/text format.
Effective Note Taking
Video - 5 methods:
- Outline method:
- straightforward;
- based on heirarchy;
- bullet points, layers;
- tech friendly.
- Cornell methid:
- Paper into 3 sections:
- L (2.5") Cue column - ASAP after session review and note in questions/cues to aid review later;
- R (6") Note taking collumn - for taking notes during session;
- Bottom page summary - ASAP after session sumarise content.
- Designed to create reviewable notes.
- Mind Mapping:
- Main topic of lecture central on blank page;
- Branching out into subtopics, details, links etc;
- Organisational strategy.
- Flow Method:
- Holistic learning;
- Aid learning while sitting in class (learn it once!);
- Not transcribing;
- Goal to create an original document that represents your mental image of the subject, go nback to earlier points, make details, arrows, connections.
- "Ride on the Slides Method":
- Lecture slides print out prior to class, take notes directly on them;
- Not as much to write;
- Timeline view for notes.
Other sources:
Class Discussions:
Video:
- How to manage and monitor and sustain class discussion for an entire session;
- Establish learning goal;
- Reflection (question, inference, quote, centre their thinking);
- Ask for general group feedback;
- Find questions from the group to work with;
- Grab hold of ideas and get contributions from class members;
- Their discussion!;
- Specific examples;
- Some students always have their hands up, others more reserved;
- Want students building on each other's ideas, not constantly bouncing off the teacher;
- "I'll agree with..." "I take exception to..";
- Recognise "fulcrum" point for embedding key learning material, asking key questions;
- Teacher gets to learn along with the student;
- Prepare as if you are going along to be a participant;
- Still talking as leave, still asking questions, come in saying "I was thinking about..." = great success!
- Skillful facilitator/facilitation as key element;
- Facilitator knowledgeable;
- NOT a quiz-show call/response/critique;
- Distribute opportunities to talk;
- Ensure that participants can see one another;
- Ask questions that may not have clear cut answers;
- Encourage direct engagement with one another;
- Encourage students to back-up responses/claims/opinions;
- Vary the types of questions (document above on learning strategies provides ideas for types of questions and discussions);
- "Over reliance on question heirarchies can result in conversatiuons that are irrelevant to the content and context of the learning environment, and invite answers that nobody cares about." In relation to Bloom's Taxonomy;
- 'Questioning circles' which integrate the work, the reader and the world;
- Model inquiry, encourage divergent over convergent thinking/questioning;
- Authentic follow-up questions provoked by student responses;
- Allow adequate wait-time (minimum 3-5 seconds);
- Avoid lectures disguised as questions, rhetorical questions, sarcasm;
- Have clear objectives, and expectations;
- Instruct in / provide cues for positive dialogue for engaging one another:
- "Could you tell me more about ... ?"
- "I agree that ...";
- "We can agree that ...";
- "I see that differently, let me explain why ...";
- "While I agree that ..., I see ... differently, as ...";
- "Have you considered ... ?"
- Allow time/opportunity/scaffolding for students to prepare input:
- Think/Pair/Share;
- Mind-mapping;
- Quickwriting;
- Making annotations to texts.
- Varying class/discussion formats:
- Fishbowl - small group discussion in centre of circle;
- Socratic Seminar:
- inner and outer circle;
- discussions most effective with critical mass of 8-13 participants;
- partner on outside circle giving input on ideas of input & where to go next;
- Identify core standards and how to meet these in the interaction;
- rubrics designed for progress across the duration of the year;
- teacher withdraws and only as outside facilitator;
- commit to students carrying conversation.
- Futures Wheel:
- Like mind-mapping for planning out consequences to decisions/changes.
- Roundtable Brainstorming:
- Discussion rubrics for assessment after the fact.
Vocabulary
- Wide reading - sustained silent reading:
- long term commitment, over multiple years;
- 2 or 3 days a week, 20 minutes a day;
- Read, write about what they read, talk about what they read;
- Encourage students to read things that they are interestes, abundance of variety of texts;
- Experiences for them that they can't get first hand;
- Helps them to know more about their world;
- Recognise progressions in understanding;
- Comparisons, venn diagrams!
- Read and PROCESS their reading;
- Direct instruction of Vocabulary terms:
- Most useful when classroom practices are brain based:
- Learn best what we choose to pay attention to - how to we capture attention?
- Form memories, be able to retrieve memories and associate new material;
- New words = new conceptual information;
- Multiple exposure;
- Depth of processing / detail;
- Degree of elaboration / association;
- Richer, more varied the memory representations / associations, the more likelihood that memory will be able to be triggered;
- Words are only the upper part of a concept;
- Visual dictionary (collections of images related to words; mind-mapping of interrelated words);
- Instead of using a definitioanal approach, describe the word and have studdnts create their own example/explanation/definition, play with the word, draw pictures of the word, loop through information many times;
- The more brain areas we can involve in the learning experience, the stronger the learning will be as increased brain circuitry is involved;
- Language / visual / complex perceptual.
Strategies to Encourage Deep Learning
- Students may have surface / deep / achievement approaches to learning;
- A deep approach involves students:
- developing their own understanding;
- investigate meaning;
- develop meaning in the learning that is specific to them;
- find relationships, create connections;
- explore beyond immediate requirements;
- have positive emotions towards learning.
- Deep approach can be encouraged by:
- Designing assessment to reward understanding andinterplay of elements;
- encouraging active participation in learning activities;
- providing opportunities for discussion and debate;
- providing qualitative feedback;
- providing reasonable choice;
- assisting students in identifying / clarifying goals;
- aligning objectives and approaches that assist students in achieving their own goals;
- working effectively from a base of students' prior knowledge & skills;
- building students' intrinsic interest;
- authentic engagement with the students, learning materials and activities by the teacher;
- effective use of and encouragement of questioning.
Reading for Meaning
- Edutopia article:
- Identify purpose;
- Give targeted tasks which enhance engagement and which have follow up;
- Provide students with scaffolding to empower them to monitor and improve their own understanding.
- BOSTES Brochure:
- Preparation for understanding of the reading;
- Encourage identification of key details;
- Provide students with note-taking options;
- Joint construction of meaning - with teacner and classmates.
- Improving literacy in Secondary Schools paper:
- Teachers need to work with students to get them to:
- Prepare by identifying their existing knowledge of topic;
- Prepare by identifying and familiarising themselves with 5 to 10 key vocabulary words that will assist them with the task;
- Read alloud short portions of significant text;
- Visualise &/or paraphrase each sentence of the text;
- Find questions that the text is answering;
- Summarise the information presented, paragraph by paraghaph;
- Make predictions;
- Review and consolidate with a written summary of teh content covered.
- Marking the text:
- Active reading strategy;
- Identifying relevant / meaningful information within a text;
- Students are actively engaged with making meaning of the text;
- Enables efficient revision of the material;
- Methods:
- Numbering paragraphs;
- Circling key terms, names, dates etc;
- Underlining key claims of the literature;
- Underline particularly relevant information.
Active Listening
- Paying attention when people are speaking to you;
- Conscious effort to hear and understand people so that you get the whole picture;
- Make eye contact;
- Ignore outside factors;
- Put your own thoughts on hold;
- Show the other person that you are listening to them;
- Provide feedback on what the other person ahs jsut said;
- Paraphrase, repeat back, ask questions;
- Listen first, then formulate response.
Strategies to encourage active listening:
- Get to know your students and let them get to know you - more likely to listen if you take the time to get to know them as individuals;
- Talk less:
- encourage students to provide feedback including paraphrasing and asking questions;
- create 'mini lectures' on complex material that students can follow on to unpack further;
- Break up longer lectures with opportunities for group or paired discussions and activities;
- Let others do the talking - including student discussions, guest speakers and carefully selected audio / video clips;
- Hold students accountable for their listening - give them good reason to do it!
- Model good listening behaviour - paraphrase their responses and encourage them to restate / paraphrase yours &/or each other's contributions to the class also;
- Let them help each other to listen - allow them to cross-check notes and understandings;
- Keep them on their toes - nothing predisposes one to drifting away than monotony - call on them regularly to engage with presented material.
Wait Time:
Kaizen Teaching - Wait Time
- Strategic delaying techniuque;
- Wait a few seconds after you ask a question before you expect a student to respond;
- 1.5-2sec reflection time;
- Generative time;
- Encourages students to raise their hand with their best answer, instead of just the first one they come up with;
- 3-5 seconds of wait time increases the length and correctness of answers, decreases failure to respond / engage;
- More comprehensive answers;
- Use of evidence in answers;
- Narrated wait time:
- "Ok, I'm waiting for more hands";
- "I am waiting for someone who can connect ... to ...";
- "I can see a few peopel thinking really deeply about this and making some notes, I'll give everyone a few more seconds to do that";
- "I can see more hands! Great!";
- "It looks like more of you are ready to take a risk on this, great!";
- "Ok, I can see a few people are checking the text, that seems like a great idea...";
- Narrate the things that are gong to be most productive / supportive for the students to participate with at that time.
Identify the key features of wait time that you could use in your teaching.
Key features of wait time include firstly not pressuring students into answering at great speed, but instead allowing a short time of anywhere from at least 1.5 up to maybe even 10 seconds before taking answers from the class. In this time we can be encouraging students to deepen their thinking by reflecting on vocal prompts / narrations which may include such things as re-checking lesson materials, taking notes, and allowing students to come up with their best possible answer to share with the group.
Active Learning Strategies:
Artistic practice would seem to lend itself naturally in some ways to being an active learning strategy in and of itself, as the students must engage in order to participate in creating something out of nothing! However, it can take significant strategy to bring students to that generative point where they are ready to commence work. Also, there is more to the study of art than simply producing it...
In putting together a History of Art unit for placement, active learning strategies that I am working towards incorporating include:
- Exploration of students' existing knowledge and understanding of the historical period of reference: religion, politics, social conditions, living conditions and physical comfort (this will requre group discussions, brainstorming, mindmapping, graphic representation of symbols and typical features of the work of the time);
- Introduction of historically relevant music to the classroom, both for group singing and as background music whilst working on artistic endeavours;
- Experimentation with novel tools and techniques relevant to the period of the work, such as painting lying down with paper taped to a desk above to simulate the work of artists such as Michelangelo on cathedral ceilings, the use of ink with feather quills and gold leaf for the production of illuminated manuscript pieces;
- In examination of artwork from the periods in chronological order, we will use venn diagrams to explore the similarities and differences between the periods;
- There will be some scope of chioce regarding their major assessment piece, where students may have choice to engage in one of the studied domains that most closely fits their intelligences;
Graphic Organisers
