Instructional Strategies

In TASC 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

I use many strategies to instruct my students. I heavily use technology in an engaging way, offer students various ways to grasp new materiel, and guiding students to organize information in a structured way. These strategies are integrated within my long rage, unit and lesson plans. These strategies are then implemented into my classroom so that students will master the standards via these strategies. Many of the instructional strategies are differentiated to meet the needs of all students that learn differently.

Students will display their understanding of the content verbally and through writing. Students display their knowledge verbally through teacher and student led discussions. To make comprehension rigorous, I ask deep questions that are text dependent. I want students to explain how they understand and prove their understanding by providing evidence. For this deep level of understanding, students must be able to communicate their ideas effectively, question ideas on a cognitive level, and be able to show their understanding in various ways. To manifest this atmosphere, I created a engaging learning environment with many avenues to grasp knowledge.

After various instructional strategies are implemented, I make sure that I assess my students in different ways. I assess my students kinesthetically, verbally and visually. For an example, students are to tell me orally the definition to words on a formative assessmtent instead of writing their answer. This allows my students a different way to express their answer than the traditional way.These three methods will abide to all of my students and give all a fair opportunity to show their understanding of the content. In addition when students do take an assessment on paper, I only require written responses. Written responses gives my students the opportunity to explain their answer thoroughly. In my opinion, multiple choice gives students a opportunity to guess rather than explain their thoughts. If students do choose during an assessment, they can choose a particular strategy to answer the question. Moreover, my engaging learning environment will provide students with various ways to retain and display content.

Implementing Technology

Implementing technology within my classroom has been very engaging for my students. I use two different types of technology in my classroom; the listening center and Moby Max. I use both types of technology to differentiate my activities for all learners in my classroom. I incorporate each student's reading level within the technology to ensure effective learning. I also assess my students through the online assessment. I use the assessments to track their progress of their reading level. Having more than one form of data is great to use as a source of development of a child's reading level.

A listening center and Moby Max are the two forms of technology I use to assess and engage my students within the content of Language Arts.

Listening Center- I use the listening center for instructional purposes to attend to my auditory learners. Some students comprehend the text when they hear it read to them. Using this method has not only increased engagement in my class, but grades have improved tremendously. In addition, I use the listening center to create my own audio CD's to record the lesson and activity. This is helpful in case a students misses class or was out due to seeing their Special Educator. This method accommodates scholars with reading disabilities and it substitutes a human reader. I also use the listening center to assess children. Children who miss their Fundations exam, can take it using the listening center and hearing the different sound blends to write out their answer.

Moby Max- I use Moby Max to engage my scholars to interactively learn. Moby Max is an online program that uses math, reading and writing content to help students grow. I use this online program to track growth and assess reading levels. Moby Max tracks reading level growth every time a student completes a reading assessment. In addition, there are reading and writing exercises I use to align with the common core standards I cover during that unit. For an example, we covered opinion writing during a lesson and I used the writing workshop activities as an exit tickets to see if students comprehend opinionated writing.

listening Center

I reinforce my lessons with the listening center to accommodate students that are auditory learners. This student is completing a book review that aligns with the opinionated writing standard.

In language arts, whenever we start writing an essay we use a method to organize our thoughts that eventually become an essay. This is an instructional strategy that is designs to make writing an essay easier through questioning and referring back to the text. These worksheets are stored into their writing folders and usually take at most a week to complete an initial essay aligned to a new writing standard. Towards the end of the year, some students continue to use this method and other branch on to write an essay using their own method.

I tried a lot of methods that assist children with organizing their thoughts for an essay, but this one has been the most beneficial. When it comes to writing a book review, students must express their opinion on a book using transition words, evidence, correct grammar and organization. I incorporate the writing process in our small group lesson to guide my students through the essay. First, students create their own topic sentence using a Did you know question. Next, students form their own opinion with reasons. In addition, students must refer to the text to support their opinions and write a conclusion. Finally, students put their answers in order on the last sheet that is the draft of the essay. Below are examples of the writing process in my classroom.

Small Group

Pre-Writing

Here a student is using the white board to write down his evidence. His evidence supports his opinion on the book. The student will use this white board to complete his writing organizer which helps with drafting.

Guided Notes, Flashcards and Graphic Organizers

Using a variety of ways to learn will keep most children engaged to learn. I use guided notes, flashcard and graphic organizers daily to reinforce information on phonics, writing tasks and language arts concepts.

Guided Notes- I use guided notes usually at the beginning of the week to introduce the new content. I display notes in an engaging way to help students retain information. Using blank sheets for students to write notes can lose the interest of students because they do not like to write a lot of information. In addition, writing a lot of information can lose a child's interest because they will be focused on writing rather than understanding the content. I incorporate these notes in a power point presentation that includes engaging gifs, video and picture students love.

Flashcards- Flashcards are used to reinforce studying a new concept. We create flashcards as a class to retain key vocabulary terms related to the unit. These flashcards are also used to review for a formative or summative assessment. For this activity to be successful, I had to model how to create the flashcard front and back. Then, I had to model how to use the flashcard to retain information. These flashcards are used at home, between other students and with me during small group instruction.

Graphic Organizers- This instructional strategy is used help my students retain information in a visual way. This method is used for challenging content such as writing and determining the main idea of a story. The graphic organizers I use are webs, venn diagrams, lists, etc.

Activity-Based Learning

Activity-based learning is beneficial to third graders because a lot of students love to learn other ways besides visual. There are three types of activity-based learning I conduct; tactile, auditory and art. I align each activity to a common core standard and pick an activity that pertains to the interests of my students.

Tactile Learning- When learning about phonics, students grasp the concept of letter-sounds correspondents when performing hands on activities. In my Fundations lesson, a learning block on phonics, student must be able to form closed syllable words using a magnet board with letters. Students are better at forming closed syllable words on their boards than verbally dictating them aloud. This activity helps students take their time and form their own words rather than be pressured to speak in front of people.

Art Activities- My student master the common core standards using art skills. There are two activities that I have instructed thao help students learn a task. My students create or draw an illustration to align with their narrative or answer. Another activity is identifying key elements in a piece of art to explain how it connects to their answer. One activity I conduct is using a illustration that connects to the theme of a story. The student must first determine the theme and then analyze the illustration. They must analyze what it looks like and the unique features.

Auditory and Speaking Activities- Listening skills are essential to learning and to being a citizen. Incorporating listening skills into instructional strategies engage students to use their listening and speaking skills. Students are to listen to a speaker and determine the main idea of the speech. In addition, students must dictate their understanding of language arts terms to me as I assess their understanding. For instance, a student must explain the meaning of sequence and theme by either providing an example or saying the definition.

Here is my student forming their own closed syllable word using the magnet phonics board and magnets. This method is used to attain mastery in phonics and word recognition.

Here is an example of a student orally describing the term cause and giving an example. This is aligned to the speaking and listening common core standard.

Performance-Based Assessments

I provide my students multiple ways to show their mastery of common core standards through various activities linked to a book we already read together. I encourage and teach multiple ways to complete a task related to language arts. This assessment is an opportunity for students to choose their own way to complete a task.

Conclusion

Student growth and learning are my intentions when I use instructional strategies. I must make these strategies engaging and fun for my students because they deserve to learn in a challenging, yet enjoyable environment. The interest of my children are the main component in these strategies because without a hook, my students are reluctant to learn. Using technology has been one of favorite strategies for my kids to use. They enjoy the freedom of Moby Max and feeling a sense off autonomy when they complete assignments at the llistening center. Organizing an essay can be a very challenging strategy to implement because my students struggle at writing. However, the worksheet associated with organizing an essay helps my students organize their ideas. Using guided notes have been enjoyable because my students are engaged because of the videos and gifs I incorporate into the presentation. In addition, the activity based strategies have been beyond beneficial. My students enjoy showing me their understanding of a topic by hand, speaking or drawing. The performance assessment has been a work in progress because most students stick to one option. I want all my students to show their understanding of the text using a variety of methods, not just one. Moreover, the opportunity to have a variety of ways to show one's knowledge foster pride in my classroom.