There are many instructional strategies teachers help students achieve learning objectives. Instructional strategies are broken into 5 categories: 1. Direct Instruction 2. Indirect Instruction 3. Experiential 4. Individual Study 5. Interactive Instruction It is important for teachers to choose wisely when implementing instructional strategies. When choosing instructional strategies teachers need evaluate the students ability and performance level. They need to think about the objective they want to assess. Many times teachers get caught up into creating big projects but forget about the objective. Using many different strategies within the classroom is key as well. The classroom is filled with many different learners; auditory, visual and kinesthetic. The teacher should try to meet all learners within teaching the same objective. How do we keep the students up to speed with 21st century skills? There are many programs out there that students can use instead of paper and pencil or to speak out loud. Students can use venn diagrams and concept maps on the computer. Students can have conversations with students in other classrooms on a topic. Having the opportunity to discuss through the computer gets shy students to share ideas. Students can take online field trips of places to add their experiences. The possibilities are endless when implementing technology within our instructional practices. Some educators may ask why do we have to implement technology? This is our future. Our society communicates through technology. They can share ideas and implement them much faster. If gives the teacher a quick way to assess an objective. It gives all students a chance to show what they learned. Take a look on how technology is being implemented into this classroom and how the teacher is benefited.
Our future is TECHNOLOGY! Let's prepare our FUTURE!
When you walk into a well behaved, engaging classroom, you might ask yourself, "What is this teacher's secret?" Over the past 7 years in my teaching experience I have grown so much as an educator. I would not been able to do so if I didn't have my co-workers. We have discussed strategies that have worked and not worked! There are a variety of strategies to use in the classroom. As new teachers you might want to focus on a few and work your way up until you feel comfortable in strengthening all areas! One of my biggest struggles teaching first grade is getting the students to work in groups. Students can learn a great deal from each but only if they are actually working and not arguing or off task. This is where technology comes in! Technology can play a huge role in group work. By assigning roles as you would in "non-technology" assignments, students will feel important in the group. Technology can eliminate moments of "off topic discussions" by keeping them engaged. Every student can feel successful using technology in the group. Students are able to display their work with talking using a computer. It allows everyone to show what they know. Another strategy is to allow students to share their own opinions and ideas. This creates a positive learning environment. Allowing students to share their own opinions and ideas is great if you have a perfect class size of 10! These days our class sizes are about 22-26. To allow everyone to share their own opinion would take forever. You could go the "turn to your neighbor" route, but then the teacher and classmates can't really hear everyones opinion. Once again this where technology can help! There are many online chat programs that can be used such as My Big Campus, Blogs, Wiki's, or even Todays Meet. These are all great ways for ALL students to voice their own opinion and to be heard by everyone in the classroom. It allows those students who are shy and normally would be passed up on in the classroom to share great ideas.
Just by incorporating technology in these two areas will make a huge impact on your classroom. Not only will it allow students to feel successful but teachers will be able to pick out those students who need more support in content areas. Technology creates a fun learning environment that students don't even realize they are learning. It gives every student a chance to share their ideas and opinions. This is setting up children for the future of technology they are facing. If you could incorporate technology in your classroom, which area would you choose?
