It's All About Strategy

Strategy is the most common aspect when you are teaching a classroom. It is important to hit all of these different techniques when presenting a new lesson. Dr. Smirnova provided us with a link that discussed about the different strategies. As I was reading this article I highlighted certain things that really stood out to me. Once I went through each paragraph I sat back and reflected on each material. The way I did this was by writing down notes in my Goggle Docs. This really helped me distinguish between the different strategies. The one way I will remember material is to write down each component that is important to me. So below this text I will copy down some of the notes I used to help me remember each strategy.

Instructional Strategies

1. Direct
1. Teacher Directed

2. Indirect
1. Student Centered

3. Interactive
1. Sharing amongst their peers in small groups with the entire class.
1. Examples: Brainstorming, cooperative learning groups, problem solving, role playing, debates, etc.
4. Experiential

1. Inductive, learner centered, and activity oriented

5. Independent 
1. Individuals are expected to analyze problems, reflect, make decisions and take purposeful actions

Doing these small things will help me remember each specific strategy and will help me remember the differences while I'm teaching. I managed to find pictures that correlate with the different methods to help provide examples on top of the true definition. In class today, we did not have enough time to go over the different strategies, but I am really looking forward to going more into depth about these five different strategies. It is so crucial to know these different techniques because when you are teaching a lesson it is important to know the major differences. This way it is easier to know when to use each strategy. Bryanna brought up some good points in her comment towards this post and I would like to clarify certain aspects. She asked me what teaching style is the easiest and hardest in my opinion. Looking at all of these teaching styles it is really hard to pinpoint the top two, but I clearly identify two. Personally the easiest teaching style for me would be Experiential because of the intentions behind it. Students are learning on their own by teaching and discovering new attributes. I am a kinesthetic learner and I think it is important to incorporate this within your classroom. Not all students learn by lecturing because some students are more visual or even auditory learners. Teachers must accommodate everyone's needs in a classroom. Experiential is the easiest for me because I am a hands on learner and in this teaching strategy students are learning by doing. This can be through role playing, field trips, experiments, etc. This also allows the students to have social interaction with their fellow peers. I think this is an important teaching strategy and definitely should be used in a classroom setting.Overall I think the hardest teaching style would be direct. Direct is teacher centered and there are no room for errors. This sets the tone for the unit plans that you will be teaching. If the students don't understand the material, how do you expect them to proceed with the lesson. This section is called "drill" for a reason. The teacher should drill the information into the students cognitive section before moving on towards anything else. Another reason why I said direct teaching style is hard because there is little student interaction. This is directly teacher centered and sometimes teacher aren't sure of ALL the students in a classroom are understanding the material. There are a few ways that teachers can check students knowledge, but does that actually reach a part in the Bloom's Taxonomy Pyramid. This will lead me right into my next blog which is going to be strictly on Bloom's Taxonomy. Keep watching my blogs and hopefully everything will eventually connect.