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 access and appropriately apply information.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QzQ_xur17rvqdzzzgQ1I_8HwaLc4mmGOwR-CJyCt1Os/edit?tab=t.0
The instructional strategies booklet we collectively made as a class fits perfectly under the Maine Common Core Teaching Standard for instructional strategies. With 25 strategies that have been proven effective, I will have multiple tools I can use to teach all of my future English students with varying learning styles. Strategies are organized into 5 categories including activation tools that activate prior knowledge to build context and foster engagement. Collaboration strategies encourage social interaction to promote the sharing of ideas to learn. Metacognition teaches students to think about their thinking in an organized manner. Communication teaches students about the reading, writing, and speaking that takes place while learning. Lastly, application strategies provide a way for students to show their learning. With my own personalized notes at the bottom of the instructional strategies document, I will be able to get a quick summary of strategies I’m interested in using, then refer to the detailed explanations, and click on attached links for further information.
This assignment expanded my knowledge of the annotation strategy that I specifically focused on. Our classroom discussion sharing the other strategies increased the tools I’ll have in my back pocket as a future English teacher. I had never heard of the RAFT, academic vocabulary, or think aloud strategy but I can picture myself using them in future lessons now. I feel more confident in applying strategies I was already familiar with including socratic seminars, driving questions, and close reading practices. These instructional strategies make me even more excited and prepared to teach, as I have a list of 25 accessible tools that have been researched and proven to work. I can look at what I’m trying to teach and then decide which of the 5 categories my topic fits under. Then, I can refer to my notes, my peers’ summaries, and the provided links for further information to decide which strategies will help my students learn best. These strategies have also built onto my knowledge that every student learns differently and has different preferences. This list will help me differentiate my instruction by giving students multiple strategies to use to actively learn and show their new knowledge.
