Strong (2002) states, “Teachers who successfully employ a range of strategies reach more students because they tap into more learning styles and student interests” (p. 43). Has this been your experience as a student? Give an example to either support or refute this statement.
Strong, J.H. (2002). Qualities of effective teachers. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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While I agree that teachers should use a variety of different instructional strategies in the classroom and one of the reasons for this is based on student's interests. I also agree about the part about learning styles. This quote says that different instructional strategies should be included to tap into more learning styles. In my learning and instruction class and my development and assessment of the young child class, we have been talking about learning styles. Students learn from all the different learning styles and not just one like popular theory suggests. The teacher should include all of the different learning styles in their teaching by using the best strategy and style for the particular lesson and content being taught. By teaching for the specific content, more students will be reached. An example of this would be learning centers where there is a book center (visual), listening center (auditory), and hands on activity like a sand table (kinesthetic).
ReplyDeleteAs a future teacher, I do agree the use of multiple strategies will benefit and reach more of my students. Not every student learns the same, therefore cannot be taught the same way. As a student in high school, a majority of my teachers only taught with one strategy. With one teacher, if you were having trouble with some material he just tried to re-teach using the same strategy as before. This always frustrated me, because if I didn't get it the first time, why would re-teaching the exact same thing help me understand the concept better? Many students would get even more frustrated and then behind. I feel if the teacher would have one, made the material more interesting to the students and two taught with a larger range of strategies; that the students wouldn't have been so frustrated in his class.
ReplyDeleteAs I have been in college I have learned about many different instructional strategies that I think could be very useful to keeping students engaged and better understand the material. As I said before not every student learns the same way, so they shouldn't be taught only one way.
I agree that using a range of teaching strategies is beneficial to the students. Like I have learned in Learning & Instruction, using multiple teaching strategies to teach a lesson will help keep the students attention and hopefully strike some of their interests. (This may include switching from quiet work to group activities to whole class discussions.)
ReplyDeleteHowever, I believe that learning styles is not as dependent on the student because they vary throughout the class. It is hard to say, I am going to teach this lesson orally so that the students who learn best by listening can get that out of it and the next lesson I will teach using kinistetic learning. It would also be hard to try to put all styles of learning into a lesson as it would be very time consuming.
Instead, I believe we should be teaching the lessons based on what teaching strategy/learning style would go best with that particular lesson so that as many students can get as much out of it as they can focussing more on the teaching strategies used throughout the lesson. Using multipe strategies in a lesson-if their is time-would be most beneficial. For example, when I tutor students from back home, I noticed that they may not learn just from taking notes and studying those, so I try to apply a different strategy. We have done practice problems related to her interests and life, we have drawn diagrams and pictures to represent different parts of her notes, and we've played out different situations hoping to find a method that will allow her to best attend to that information.
I think that using a wide range of teaching strategies is beneficial. Although it is probably never going to be possible to us every single method to cater to the needs of every student, it is a good idea to do as much that is within reason and make accommodations as needed. Not every student is going to get material the first time it is taught, so generating different ideas and ways to show the same material will be extremely beneficial, and it may help the students who got it right away to be able to look at it in a new way. Even if you can't meet everyone's needs in one lesson, it is your responsibility as a teacher to make sure that everyone learns the material.
ReplyDelete@Sydney- I like what you said you did with the students you tutor. When one strategy doesn't work, it's important to have several more prepared just in case. It also seems like you based problems off of their interests and lives, which is another good way to get students to learn information. If they can relate it to something they are familiar with, then they are more likely to learn it.
ReplyDeleteI believe that using different teaching methods and learning strategies is very beneficial in the classroom, not only because it taps into different learning styles and interests, but also because it offers variety to keep students interested. If you had to do the same thing for every lesson, that could get boring for both the students and teacher. Variety is the spice of life! I also think it is important to sometimes offer students choices and let them have a say in what works best for them. Multiple ways of thinking and means of representing thinking and expression are some key factors in getting students interested and engaged in learning. Allowing students to utilize technology whenever possible is another strategy that allows flexibility in teaching and learning.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think it these teaching who are using different learning styles to teach is necessarily more successful. I feel these teachers are using modality to teach their lessons and they are not necessarily teaching to what the child learns best but how the context would best be learned such as when teaching a foreign language teaching visually may not be the best strategy for a teacher to use but more auditory. So overall these teachers are using different strategies to reach the children, but they are not tapping into different learning styles of the student, but how the context would best be remembered by. As a student I always found it difficult in art when the teacher told us to draw an animal and then tried to describe it to us rather then show us a picture. It gave for a wide range of what the animal could look at, and although as a “auditory learner” this did not help me visualize what an animal would look like, because the meaning behind what the teacher wanted me to know was not a description, it was a picture.
ReplyDeleteI support the use of employing a range of strategies to effectively teach a topic. One thing I have learned lately that I find very interesting about teaching strategies and styles is that it is more important to focus on the content’s modality opposed to the student’s modality. Although students may have a preference to auditory or kinesthetic presentation of material, there is no reliable evidence that has been found to support that there is an actually difference that takes places within the brain. Therefore, the most important thing to focus on is making sure the content has meaning to the students. According to my classes, instead of primarily basing your implementation strategies on what you think will best suite the individual learner’s learning, it is better to create a variety of strategies that best compliments the learning of the material. I do agree with this method of strategy implementation, however, I do think it is important to know what motivates your student individually. My personal experiences while in elementary school were positive and I feel that my teacher’s created a variety of strategies that both supported the content and the learner. I think there needs to be a balance between both methods, with a lean towards the content based strategies.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone that it is important that teachers use a variety of instructional strategies in the classroom. When I was in elementary school, I remember my teachers using a variety of instructional strategies. I can remember a lot of activites that I did in elementary school that were hands on. In middle school, high school, and college, the majority of my classes have been the lecture and then test method, so a variety of instructional strategies are not used. If I am not interested in the course content, I can honestly say that I do not remember much from the class. Also, I tend to cram for the test and then forget all of that information because most of the time it was not presented in a meaningful way that I remember. I am not saying that all of my classes in college are like this, but the majority of them have been.
ReplyDelete@ Jessica, I agree that there needs to be a wide variety of activities within the classroom. Because if the same thing happens everyday then it's going to get very boring very quickly neither the students or the teacher will be excited about learning. When letting the students guide their learning and choose their own ways of doing things really lets the students learn what kind of learner they are. And that will be beneficial for them later in life, with college and future careers.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that many different strategies should be used throughout your curriculum. Each child learns differently and the way they learn varies between activities. For math, they could be hands-on learners without needing much besides experience and for writing they need visuals to understand it. A teacher has to get to know her students and their abilities. Trying to fit all types of instruction into one lesson may not be realistic for certain activities because it could be very time consuming. However, for some lessons that may be totally attainable. The way you teach will vary greatly depending on what you're teaching and how your students change as learners throughout the year.
ReplyDeleteAs a student, I have found that in some classes simply taking notes will allow me to understand the material best and in others I have to do other things like use other resources, get examples, watch someone demonstrate, etc. I know for me, personally, the most effective way of learning really depends on what I'm learning and how I will have to use that knowledge later.
Providing multiple types of instruction throughout your teaching will help students to get to know themselves better too. They will begin to understand what they need in order to comprehend to the best of their ability.
I think it is important for teachers to provide the content of their class in a multiple of different ways because I have found that one dimensional teachers, leave a lot of students behind in their learning. In school I noticed this a little bit because every teacher has a different way of teaching and every student has a different way of learning and when they don't match, it can be extremely frustrating for the student, as well as the teacher. For example, when I was in fourth grade, my teacher did a wonderful job of teaching different ways and he reached a lot more of his students that way. I want to strive to be a teacher like that.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading all the post above I feel college professors do need to work on different teaching strategies and not so much the lecture and test method that they all tend to use. However when teachers do try to make things interesting and try to be creative students tune it out and feel that it is a waste of time. One thing that is important is knowing what age level you are working with, when working with younger students it is important to use different methods of testing, not so much the typical paper pencil test. Learning how to assess children of different levels is very important.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Kayla. The age level of the children makes a HUGE difference in the way instruction should be taught. I feel that young children need a lot more diversity in the classroom than us as college students do. Young children are still figuring out what type of learner they are, what they have to do and what they need from their teacher in order to learn to the best of their ability. In college, you kind of take what your professor gives you and you do with it what you have to for you to learn it best. Of course your professors want you to succeed in their class but they're not going to cater to every student's need constantly.
ReplyDeleteI believe that using many different learning styles are beneficial in your classroom, but it is also important to tap into students interests as well. A great example of this is in the college setting. For some students it is beneficial to sit in a lecture hall and take notes while the instructor is speaking along with a power point. This helps because the student can hear what the instructor is saying, they can see what the instructor finds to be the most important material, and then the student can also write down the information and process it. For me personally, this style never seems to work. While I am taking notes I am not in tune with the speaker. I am so concerned with taking down the notes that the teacher is saying that I cannot possibly focus and remember the information. However, if a teacher shows me a video and then we use discussion I am much more likely to understand the information. In the same lecture setting it would also be better for me to sit and listen to the instructor and then discuss the information throughout the lecture. Therefore, if teachers would combine these methods they could cater to the needs of many students. However, it is well understood that hard work is entailed when you are looking to cater all students needs. In the beginning of the year assess your students to see the best way to instruct them and then go from there. This is very beneficial to everyone in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI think teachers need to teach to each students' learning style. Every student learns different. I think the only way for all students to fully understand what is going on in the classroom is for teachers to try to cater to each students learning needs. It is definitely hard to cater to each students needs because you have so many different needs in your classroom, but you need to assess your students at the beginning of the year to see how many different learning styles you have in your classroom and then you can try to structure your classroom to your class's learning styles. This would be very beneficial to everyone in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteAs a student, I feel like some teachers feel like everyone learns best by doing powerpoints so that's all they have are powerpoints, which I do well for a while but then I get distracted or I can't write fast enough. I would rather do projects than listening to powerpoints and lectures. I am a very visual learner.
I completely agree with Kayla. I feel like college professors really need to work on teaching to different learning styles. I also agree with her about the fact that we need to make sure we adjust our testing and learning styles to not only the children's styles but also the age of the children. For example, preschoolers shouldn't be taking a written test because that is too hard for them. They should be taking a test where they have to circle the correct answer.