Student ONE

Teaching Strategies

When one thinks of different strategies in teaching a mini unit, what are the ones that give the most effect? Which strategies are the ones that can give the desired outcomes, especially when a teacher works in an environment, where SOL's are important? Teaching reading is so important in today's society. Many students don't like to read, but we have to make sure that they read with understanding.

One important strategy is the read aloud strategy. This would be the first strategy in the unit. In this strategy, we ask the students to think out loud about what they are reading. The second strategy is the "K-W-L" chart. The chart helps the students to gain prior knowledge and having a personal curiosity when reading a particular subject. When this is used it is very helpful. This strategy can also be used in other courses as well, such as science and social studies. The use of graphic organizers has been proven to facilitate understanding (Kronowitz). Teaching students to read quickly and more effective could also include the strategy of skimming and scanning. This strategy is used to get a quick survey of the text main idea, or predictions. A strategy that is also effective in our mini unit is paraphrasing. This can help student s when they get to the end of a section by checking their ideas.

These would be just a sample in teaching the mini unit. Reading has so many strategies this will be my favorite in starting the unit on reading. It is important to use different strategies to train the mind to learn to think in a different way to develop critical thinking. When building a unit make sure as a teacher you use various techniques to enhance the learning.

Reference

Kronowitz, E. L. (2012). The teacher's guide to success (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Student TWO

When teaching students in the elementary grades, it is important to learn each student's individual learning styles. There needs to be a strategy to accommodate students with special needs, differing interest/learning styles, different cultural backgrounds, different languages, and different attitudes toward the school environment. As a teacher, you will find there are students who learn best with visual/spatial intelligence, verbal/linguistic intelligence, mathematical/logical intelligence, bodily/kinesthetic intelligence, musical/rhythmic intelligence, interpersonal/intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalist intelligence (Kronowitz, 2012). A strategy that has been helpful for my classroom, is allowing the students to be in groups of different skill levels. This allows all the students to have some type of input in what they are best at. This allows the students to "see how they can contribute in a variety of contexts" (Kronowitz, 2012, p.341). One student in the group might be good at writing, another good at art, even at mathematics, and science. Depending on the topic, each student has the ability to make their group work interesting by inputting their own personal skill.

Another strategy that seems to work well is the KWL. Creating a chart with the columns: What I Know, What I Want to Know, and later What I Learned can give the teacher a better insight of prior experience and knowledge of the students. It also reveals how motivated the student is about learning any new material. When given a topic about amphibians the lesson can look something like this:

K                                 W                                   L

What I Know About   What I Want to Know     What to Learned

 Amphibians              About Amphibians            About Amphibians

The KWL strategy would let the teacher know what information the students are already familiar with.

Reference:

Kronowitz, E. (2012). The teacher's guide to success (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.