essay about teaching strategy

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Four Strategies for Effective Writing Instruction

(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is the single most effective instructional strategy you have used to teach writing?

Teaching and learning good writing can be a challenge to educators and students alike.

The topic is no stranger to this column—you can see many previous related posts at Writing Instruction .

But I don’t think any of us can get too much good instructional advice in this area.

Today, Jenny Vo, Michele Morgan, and Joy Hamm share wisdom gained from their teaching experience.

Before I turn over the column to them, though, I’d like to share my favorite tool(s).

Graphic organizers, including writing frames (which are basically more expansive sentence starters) and writing structures (which function more as guides and less as “fill-in-the-blanks”) are critical elements of my writing instruction.

You can see an example of how I incorporate them in my seven-week story-writing unit and in the adaptations I made in it for concurrent teaching.

You might also be interested in The Best Scaffolded Writing Frames For Students .

Now, to today’s guests:

‘Shared Writing’

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 24 years in education and is currently an ESL ISST in Katy ISD in Katy, Texas. Jenny is the president-elect of TexTESOL IV and works to advocate for all ELs:

The single most effective instructional strategy that I have used to teach writing is shared writing. Shared writing is when the teacher and students write collaboratively. In shared writing, the teacher is the primary holder of the pen, even though the process is a collaborative one. The teacher serves as the scribe, while also questioning and prompting the students.

The students engage in discussions with the teacher and their peers on what should be included in the text. Shared writing can be done with the whole class or as a small-group activity.

There are two reasons why I love using shared writing. One, it is a great opportunity for the teacher to model the structures and functions of different types of writing while also weaving in lessons on spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

It is a perfect activity to do at the beginning of the unit for a new genre. Use shared writing to introduce the students to the purpose of the genre. Model the writing process from beginning to end, taking the students from idea generation to planning to drafting to revising to publishing. As you are writing, make sure you refrain from making errors, as you want your finished product to serve as a high-quality model for the students to refer back to as they write independently.

Another reason why I love using shared writing is that it connects the writing process with oral language. As the students co-construct the writing piece with the teacher, they are orally expressing their ideas and listening to the ideas of their classmates. It gives them the opportunity to practice rehearsing what they are going to say before it is written down on paper. Shared writing gives the teacher many opportunities to encourage their quieter or more reluctant students to engage in the discussion with the types of questions the teacher asks.

Writing well is a skill that is developed over time with much practice. Shared writing allows students to engage in the writing process while observing the construction of a high-quality sample. It is a very effective instructional strategy used to teach writing.

‘Four Square’

Michele Morgan has been writing IEPs and behavior plans to help students be more successful for 17 years. She is a national-board-certified teacher, Utah Teacher Fellow with Hope Street Group, and a special education elementary new-teacher specialist with the Granite school district. Follow her @MicheleTMorgan1:

For many students, writing is the most dreaded part of the school day. Writing involves many complex processes that students have to engage in before they produce a product—they must determine what they will write about, they must organize their thoughts into a logical sequence, and they must do the actual writing, whether on a computer or by hand. Still they are not done—they must edit their writing and revise mistakes. With all of that, it’s no wonder that students struggle with writing assignments.

In my years working with elementary special education students, I have found that writing is the most difficult subject to teach. Not only do my students struggle with the writing process, but they often have the added difficulties of not knowing how to spell words and not understanding how to use punctuation correctly. That is why the single most effective strategy I use when teaching writing is the Four Square graphic organizer.

The Four Square instructional strategy was developed in 1999 by Judith S. Gould and Evan Jay Gould. When I first started teaching, a colleague allowed me to borrow the Goulds’ book about using the Four Square method, and I have used it ever since. The Four Square is a graphic organizer that students can make themselves when given a blank sheet of paper. They fold it into four squares and draw a box in the middle of the page. The genius of this instructional strategy is that it can be used by any student, in any grade level, for any writing assignment. These are some of the ways I have used this strategy successfully with my students:

* Writing sentences: Students can write the topic for the sentence in the middle box, and in each square, they can draw pictures of details they want to add to their writing.

* Writing paragraphs: Students write the topic sentence in the middle box. They write a sentence containing a supporting detail in three of the squares and they write a concluding sentence in the last square.

* Writing short essays: Students write what information goes in the topic paragraph in the middle box, then list details to include in supporting paragraphs in the squares.

When I gave students writing assignments, the first thing I had them do was create a Four Square. We did this so often that it became automatic. After filling in the Four Square, they wrote rough drafts by copying their work off of the graphic organizer and into the correct format, either on lined paper or in a Word document. This worked for all of my special education students!

I was able to modify tasks using the Four Square so that all of my students could participate, regardless of their disabilities. Even if they did not know what to write about, they knew how to start the assignment (which is often the hardest part of getting it done!) and they grew to be more confident in their writing abilities.

In addition, when it was time to take the high-stakes state writing tests at the end of the year, this was a strategy my students could use to help them do well on the tests. I was able to give them a sheet of blank paper, and they knew what to do with it. I have used many different curriculum materials and programs to teach writing in the last 16 years, but the Four Square is the one strategy that I have used with every writing assignment, no matter the grade level, because it is so effective.

‘Swift Structures’

Joy Hamm has taught 11 years in a variety of English-language settings, ranging from kindergarten to adult learners. The last few years working with middle and high school Newcomers and completing her M.Ed in TESOL have fostered stronger advocacy in her district and beyond:

A majority of secondary content assessments include open-ended essay questions. Many students falter (not just ELs) because they are unaware of how to quickly organize their thoughts into a cohesive argument. In fact, the WIDA CAN DO Descriptors list level 5 writing proficiency as “organizing details logically and cohesively.” Thus, the most effective cross-curricular secondary writing strategy I use with my intermediate LTELs (long-term English-learners) is what I call “Swift Structures.” This term simply means reading a prompt across any content area and quickly jotting down an outline to organize a strong response.

To implement Swift Structures, begin by displaying a prompt and modeling how to swiftly create a bubble map or outline beginning with a thesis/opinion, then connecting the three main topics, which are each supported by at least three details. Emphasize this is NOT the time for complete sentences, just bulleted words or phrases.

Once the outline is completed, show your ELs how easy it is to plug in transitions, expand the bullets into detailed sentences, and add a brief introduction and conclusion. After modeling and guided practice, set a 5-10 minute timer and have students practice independently. Swift Structures is one of my weekly bell ringers, so students build confidence and skill over time. It is best to start with easy prompts where students have preformed opinions and knowledge in order to focus their attention on the thesis-topics-supporting-details outline, not struggling with the rigor of a content prompt.

Here is one easy prompt example: “Should students be allowed to use their cellphones in class?”

Swift Structure outline:

Thesis - Students should be allowed to use cellphones because (1) higher engagement (2) learning tools/apps (3) gain 21st-century skills

Topic 1. Cellphones create higher engagement in students...

Details A. interactive (Flipgrid, Kahoot)

B. less tempted by distractions

C. teaches responsibility

Topic 2. Furthermore,...access to learning tools...

A. Google Translate description

B. language practice (Duolingo)

C. content tutorials (Kahn Academy)

Topic 3. In addition,...practice 21st-century skills…

Details A. prep for workforce

B. access to information

C. time-management support

This bare-bones outline is like the frame of a house. Get the structure right, and it’s easier to fill in the interior decorating (style, grammar), roof (introduction) and driveway (conclusion). Without the frame, the roof and walls will fall apart, and the reader is left confused by circuitous rubble.

Once LTELs have mastered creating simple Swift Structures in less than 10 minutes, it is time to introduce complex questions similar to prompts found on content assessments or essays. Students need to gain assurance that they can quickly and logically explain and justify their opinions on multiple content essays without freezing under pressure.

Thanks to Jenny, Michele, and Joy for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

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Effective Teaching Strategies’ Implementing to the Classroom Case Study

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Developing higher-order thinking, promoting collaboration.

The world today is riddled with information of all sorts, and it is important for any person to learn to “filter out” the low-quality information, as well as to be able to process more valuable data and provide meaningful and adequate interpretations of it. In addition, it might be argued that critical thinking skills may even sometimes be more essential than concrete material knowledge due to the pace of changes in the humanity’s pool of knowledge (Zohar, 2013). This creates an urgent need to develop higher-order thinking skills in students, which requires the implementation of more complicated teaching strategies. In this paper, we will discuss the implementation of such strategies that took place in a hypothetical history classroom for high-school students.

In a history classroom for high-school learners, it is possible to implement various strategies for developing higher-order thinking. The latter may be viewed according to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Krathwohl, 2002, p. 215); therefore, the students are taught not only to remember and understand the materials but also to analyze, evaluate (make judgments about the events), and create (provide their own interpretations). To do this, in our lessons the students were engaged in discussions where they were asked questions that brought them closer and closer to building their own interpretation of events.

The implementation of the strategy can be assessed in the following way:

The strategy was rather hard to implement at first, for the students who were not used to discussions in the classrooms were initially shy. However, with time, the learners became accustomed to discussing and ceased being afraid of giving their opinion.
Asking concrete students direct and particular questions and providing them with tips on how to build an answer was especially useful at the beginning. Of course, some students were not able to answer the questions, and it was necessary to explain to them that it is quite normal, and that they will learn with time. After a while, the students learned to answer the questions, and there appeared more volunteers in the lessons.
It was hard to make the students read all the necessary materials; however, they needed to be read in order for the learners to have at least minimal grounds to build interpretations on. Because not all students completely read the assignments, some of them benefited less from the lessons. However, they still appeared to have caught the gist of the discussion.
The students were rather interested in the lessons, and grew more engaged with time. Even those who did not read all the materials appeared interested in listening to what their classmates had to say.
It is possible to enhance this strategy by encouraging students to ask their own questions about the materials they have read before the lesson. Some of these questions may also be discussed during the lesson. Students who ask such questions may be rewarded with better grades.
The strategy is somewhat similar to the Socratic maieutics and is rather effective. It requires the teacher to spend some additional time to develop the questions, but proves valuable in teaching higher-order thinking skills by not providing students with direct answers but pushing them towards building their own interpretations. Because the students take part in creating the interpretation, they are more engaged in the learning process, and, even though the coverage of material may be lower than what the methods of direct instruction allow, the outcome is better due to the fact that students retain much more in their memory, as well as learn to think critically.

It is clear that achievements of some teaching theories were employed in the process. For instance, the process of teaching included some elements of the model of cognitive apprenticeship, one that can be used as a method of implementation of achievements of cognitivism (Yilmaz, 2011, p. 209). Also, the method of asking students questions in order to have them construct their own meaning of the discussed events on the basis of the provided data and their own knowledge and experience can be viewed as a part of the constructivist perspective, according to which knowledge is “something that is constructed within a social context in a collaborative way” (Gaytan, 2013, p. 1).

It is considered that one of the best-practice strategies for classrooms is collaboration. The collaboration may take place between the teacher and students; it can also occur among the teaching staff, for instance, by using co-teaching methods. (Clearly, these approaches can be combined.) It is stated that co-teaching provides numerous benefits, such as varying the content of the curriculum, monitoring the students’ comprehension (Graziano & Navarrete, 2012), developing new ideas, and creating better relationships (Wilson, 2011). In some of the discussions with students of the type that was described before, we also implemented collaboration strategies by inviting another history teacher, our colleague, to a number of lessons. The results may be assessed as follows:

The students were initially surprised to see a new teacher they had not known before in the classroom, but after the least shy ones started participating in the discussion, the rest of the learners also began taking part. In the following collaborative lessons, students seemed to feel comfortable, so the strategy was implemented rather smoothly.
The most effective aspect was the fact that the two teachers had somewhat different views on the problem and debated it in the lesson to a certain extent (which was planned). This allowed the students to better understand the possibility of conflicting interpretations.
It was difficult to moderate the lesson, for students needed to be asked questions, the teachers had conflicting interpretations, and certain learners also wanted to participate. However, most people who desired to say something had their say. It also made students attempt to be brief.
The students were highly engaged in the lesson.
It is possible to modify the lesson and further promote collaboration by assigning the role of the moderator to a student. Clearly, the student needs to be additionally prepared for this.
The strategy proved to be effective and engaging, and let the learners see the conflict of interpretations. The disagreements between the teachers’ interpretations added some “spice” to the students’ learning experience. We would recommend using the strategy in the future, but perhaps not in all the lessons, so that it remains more unusual and engaging.

To sum up, it should be stressed that critical thinking skills are of crucial importance today, and more advanced teaching strategies are needed to develop such skills in learners. The implementation of some of such strategies, as it was shown, proves to be effective in high-school history lessons. These strategies allow the students to learn to use higher-order thinking, also making them more engaged in the lesson and allowing them to retain more materials in their memory.

Gaytan, J. (2013). Integrating social media into the learning environment of the classroom: Following social constructivism principles. Journal of Applied Research for Business Instruction, 11 (1), 1-6. Web.

Graziano, K. J., & Navarrete, L. A. (2012). Co-teaching in a teacher education classroom: Collaboration, compromise, and creativity. Issues in Teacher Education, 21 (1), 109-126. Web.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41 (4), 212-218. Web.

Wilson, D. E., M.A. (2014). Ten reasons why classroom collaboration is worth the time: A teacher’s perspective. Early Intervention & School Special Interest Section Quarterly / American Occupational Therapy Association, 21 (2), 3-4. Web.

Yilmaz, K. (2011). The cognitive perspective on learning: Its theoretical underpinnings and implications for classroom practices. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 84 (5), 204-212. Web.

Zohar, A. (2013). Scaling up higher order thinking in science classrooms: The challenge of bridging the gap between theory, policy and practice. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 10 , 168-172. Web.

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Synthesis Essay on Effective Teaching

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Teaching Methods and Strategies: The Complete Guide

You’ve completed your coursework. Student teaching has ended. You’ve donned the cap and gown, crossed the stage, smiled with your diploma and went home to fill out application after application.

Suddenly you are standing in what will be your classroom for the next year and after the excitement of decorating it wears off and you begin lesson planning, you start to notice all of your lessons are executed the same way, just with different material. But that is what you know and what you’ve been taught, so you go with it.

After a while, your students are bored, and so are you. There must be something wrong because this isn’t what you envisioned teaching to be like. There is.

Figuring out the best ways you can deliver information to students can sometimes be even harder than what students go through in discovering how they learn best. The reason is because every single teacher needs a variety of different teaching methods in their theoretical teaching bag to pull from depending on the lesson, the students, and things as seemingly minute as the time the class is and the subject.

Using these different teaching methods, which are rooted in theory of different teaching styles, will not only help teachers reach their full potential, but more importantly engage, motivate and reach the students in their classes, whether in person or online.

Teaching Methods

Teaching methods, or methodology, is a narrower topic because it’s founded in theories and educational psychology. If you have a degree in teaching, you most likely have heard of names like Skinner, Vygotsky , Gardner, Piaget , and Bloom . If their names don’t ring a bell, you should definitely recognize their theories that have become teaching methods. The following are the most common teaching theories.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism is the theory that every learner is essentially a “clean slate” to start off and shaped by emotions. People react to stimuli, reactions as well as positive and negative reinforcement, the site states.

Learning Theories names the most popular theorists who ascribed to this theory were Ivan Pavlov, who many people may know with his experiments with dogs. He performed an experiment with dogs that when he rang a bell, the dogs responded to the stimuli; then he applied the idea to humans.

Other popular educational theorists who were part of behaviorism was B.F. Skinner and Albert Bandura .

Social Cognitive Theory

Social Cognitive Theory is typically spoken about at the early childhood level because it has to do with critical thinking with the biggest concept being the idea of play, according to Edwin Peel writing for Encyclopedia Britannica . Though Bandura and Lev Vygotsky also contributed to cognitive theory, according to Dr. Norman Herr with California State University , the most popular and first theorist of cognitivism is Piaget.

There are four stages to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development that he created in 1918. Each stage correlates with a child’s development from infancy to their teenage years.

The first stage is called the Sensorimotor Stage which occurs from birth to 18 months. The reason this is considered cognitive development is because the brain is literally growing through exploration, like squeaking horns, discovering themselves in mirrors or spinning things that click on their floor mats or walkers; creating habits like sleeping with a certain blanket; having reflexes like rubbing their eyes when tired or thumb sucking; and beginning to decipher vocal tones.

The second stage, or the Preoperational Stage, occurs from ages 2 to 7 when toddlers begin to understand and correlate symbols around them, ask a lot of questions, and start forming sentences and conversations, but they haven’t developed perspective yet so empathy does not quite exist yet, the website states. This is the stage when children tend to blurt out honest statements, usually embarrassing their parents, because they don’t understand censoring themselves either.

From ages 7 to 11, children are beginning to problem solve, can have conversations about things they are interested in, are more aware of logic and develop empathy during the Concrete Operational Stage.

The final stage, called the Formal Operational Stage, though by definition ends at age 16, can continue beyond. It involves deeper thinking and abstract thoughts as well as questioning not only what things are but why the way they are is popular, the site states. Many times people entering new stages of their lives like high school, college, or even marriage go through elements of Piaget’s theory, which is why the strategies that come from this method are applicable across all levels of education.

The Multiple Intelligences Theory

The Multiple Intelligences Theory states that people don’t need to be smart in every single discipline to be considered intelligent on paper tests, but that people excel in various disciplines, making them exceptional.

Created in 1983, the former principal in the Scranton School District in Scranton, PA, created eight different intelligences, though since then two others have been debated of whether to be added but have not yet officially, according to the site.

The original eight are musical, spatial, linguistic, mathematical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic and most people have a predominant intelligence followed by others. For those who are musically-inclined either via instruments, vocals, has perfect pitch, can read sheet music or can easily create music has Musical Intelligence.

Being able to see something and rearrange it or imagine it differently is Spatial Intelligence, while being talented with language, writing or avid readers have Linguistic Intelligence. Kinesthetic Intelligence refers to understanding how the body works either anatomically or athletically and Naturalistic Intelligence is having an understanding of nature and elements of the ecosystem.

The final intelligences have to do with personal interactions. Intrapersonal Intelligence is a matter of knowing oneself, one’s limits, and their inner selves while Interpersonal Intelligence is knowing how to handle a variety of other people without conflict or knowing how to resolve it, the site states. There is still an elementary school in Scranton, PA named after their once-principal.

Constructivism

Constructivism is another theory created by Piaget which is used as a foundation for many other educational theories and strategies because constructivism is focused on how people learn. Piaget states in this theory that people learn from their experiences. They learn best through active learning , connect it to their prior knowledge and then digest this information their own way. This theory has created the ideas of student-centered learning in education versus teacher-centered learning.

Universal Design for Learning

The final method is the Universal Design for Learning which has redefined the educational community since its inception in the mid-1980s by David H. Rose. This theory focuses on how teachers need to design their curriculum for their students. This theory really gained traction in the United States in 2004 when it was presented at an international conference and he explained that this theory is based on neuroscience and how the brain processes information, perform tasks and get excited about education.

The theory, known as UDL, advocates for presenting information in multiple ways to enable a variety of learners to understand the information; presenting multiple assessments for students to show what they have learned; and learn and utilize a student’s own interests to motivate them to learn, the site states. This theory also discussed incorporating technology in the classroom and ways to educate students in the digital age.

Teaching Styles

From each of the educational theories, teachers extract and develop a plethora of different teaching styles, or strategies. Instructors must have a large and varied arsenal of strategies to use weekly and even daily in order to build rapport, keep students engaged and even keep instructors from getting bored with their own material. These can be applicable to all teaching levels, but adaptations must be made based on the student’s age and level of development.

Differentiated instruction is one of the most popular teaching strategies, which means that teachers adjust the curriculum for a lesson, unit or even entire term in a way that engages all learners in various ways, according to Chapter 2 of the book Instructional Process and Concepts in Theory and Practice by Celal Akdeniz . This means changing one’s teaching styles constantly to fit not only the material but more importantly, the students based on their learning styles.

Learning styles are the ways in which students learn best. The most popular types are visual, audio, kinesthetic and read/write , though others include global as another type of learner, according to Akdeniz . For some, they may seem self-explanatory. Visual learners learn best by watching the instruction or a demonstration; audio learners need to hear a lesson; kinesthetic learners learn by doing, or are hands-on learners; read/write learners to best by reading textbooks and writing notes; and global learners need material to be applied to their real lives, according to The Library of Congress .

There are many activities available to instructors that enable their students to find out what kind of learner they are. Typically students have a main style with a close runner-up, which enables them to learn best a certain way but they can also learn material in an additional way.

When an instructor knows their students and what types of learners are in their classroom, instructors are able to then differentiate their instruction and assignments to those learning types, according to Akdeniz and The Library of Congress. Learn more about different learning styles.

When teaching new material to any type of learner, is it important to utilize a strategy called scaffolding . Scaffolding is based on a student’s prior knowledge and building a lesson, unit or course from the most foundational pieces and with each step make the information more complicated, according to an article by Jerry Webster .

To scaffold well, a teacher must take a personal interest in their students to learn not only what their prior knowledge is but their strengths as well. This will enable an instructor to base new information around their strengths and use positive reinforcement when mistakes are made with the new material.

There is an unfortunate concept in teaching called “teach to the middle” where instructors target their lessons to the average ability of the students in their classroom, leaving slower students frustrated and confused, and above average students frustrated and bored. This often results in the lower- and higher-level students scoring poorly and a teacher with no idea why.

The remedy for this is a strategy called blended learning where differentiated instruction is occurring simultaneously in the classroom to target all learners, according to author and educator Juliana Finegan . In order to be successful at blended learning, teachers once again need to know their students, how they learn and their strengths and weaknesses, according to Finegan.

Blended learning can include combining several learning styles into one lesson like lecturing from a PowerPoint – not reading the information on the slides — that includes cartoons and music associations while the students have the print-outs. The lecture can include real-life examples and stories of what the instructor encountered and what the students may encounter. That example incorporates four learning styles and misses kinesthetic, but the activity afterwards can be solely kinesthetic.

A huge component of blended learning is technology. Technology enables students to set their own pace and access the resources they want and need based on their level of understanding, according to The Library of Congress . It can be used three different ways in education which include face-to-face, synchronously or asynchronously . Technology used with the student in the classroom where the teacher can answer questions while being in the student’s physical presence is known as face-to-face.

Synchronous learning is when students are learning information online and have a teacher live with them online at the same time, but through a live chat or video conferencing program, like Skype, or Zoom, according to The Library of Congress.

Finally, asynchronous learning is when students take a course or element of a course online, like a test or assignment, as it fits into their own schedule, but a teacher is not online with them at the time they are completing or submitting the work. Teachers are still accessible through asynchronous learning but typically via email or a scheduled chat meeting, states the Library of Congress.

The final strategy to be discussed actually incorporates a few teaching strategies, so it’s almost like blended teaching. It starts with a concept that has numerous labels such as student-centered learning, learner-centered pedagogy, and teacher-as-tutor but all mean that an instructor revolves lessons around the students and ensures that students take a participatory role in the learning process, known as active learning, according to the Learning Portal .

In this model, a teacher is just a facilitator, meaning that they have created the lesson as well as the structure for learning, but the students themselves become the teachers or create their own knowledge, the Learning Portal says. As this is occurring, the instructor is circulating the room working as a one-on-one resource, tutor or guide, according to author Sara Sanchez Alonso from Yale’s Center for Teaching and Learning. For this to work well and instructors be successful one-on-one and planning these lessons, it’s essential that they have taken the time to know their students’ history and prior knowledge, otherwise it can end up to be an exercise in futility, Alonso said.

Some activities teachers can use are by putting students in groups and assigning each student a role within the group, creating reading buddies or literature circles, making games out of the material with individual white boards, create different stations within the classroom for different skill levels or interest in a lesson or find ways to get students to get up out of their seats and moving, offers Fortheteachers.org .

There are so many different methodologies and strategies that go into becoming an effective instructor. A consistent theme throughout all of these is for a teacher to take the time to know their students because they care, not because they have to. When an instructor knows the stories behind the students, they are able to design lessons that are more fun, more meaningful, and more effective because they were designed with the students’ best interests in mind.

There are plenty of pre-made lessons, activities and tests available online and from textbook publishers that any teacher could use. But you need to decide if you want to be the original teacher who makes a significant impact on your students, or a pre-made teacher a student needs to get through.

Read Also: – Blended Learning Guide – Collaborative Learning Guide – Flipped Classroom Guide – Game Based Learning Guide – Gamification in Education Guide – Holistic Education Guide – Maker Education Guide – Personalized Learning Guide – Place-Based Education Guide – Project-Based Learning Guide – Scaffolding in Education Guide – Social-Emotional Learning Guide

List of 107 Classroom Teaching Strategies (With Examples)

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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teaching strategies definition and examples, detailed below

Use this list of 107 classroom teaching strategies for your lesson plan or teaching portfolio. This can help demonstrate pedagogical knowledge and the ability to apply theory to practice.

Or, try some of these strategies out when you’re low on ideas and looking for a fresh way to teach in the classroom. Note that these are just some examples of teaching strategies – I’m sure there are even more out there!

Tip: Bookmark this page so you can come back to it every time you need some new teaching strategies!

Teaching Strategies Examples (List)

Click on the strategies to open detailed explanations and examples.

Flipped Instruction

Description

Flipped classrooms involve asking students to complete the reading, preparation and introductory work at home. Then, during class time, the students do practice questions that they would traditionally do for homework.

Flipped instruction enables the teacher to offload the direct instruction elements of education like Introductions to homework. This enables teachers to spend more time on student-centered differentiated support .
Students may not complete their assigned pre-class homework, which will undermine the lesson.

Theoretical Link

Social Constructivism / Socio-Cultural Theory : The teacher can spend more time supporting students in a student-centered environment.

Assign a video introducing a concept for homework.
Spend the first 10 minutes of the lesson assessing students’ comprehension of the video
Jump straight into student-centered practice tasks
Walk around the class helping students who need additional support for the rest of the lesson

See my full article on Flipped Classrooms Pros and Cons.

Play-Based learning

Students learn cognitive, social, and physical skills during play tasks. Tasks can be teacher-led with specific goals (e.g. volume transfer in a sandpit) or unstructured student-led play.

Engagement: students may be more engaged during active play-based learning compared to teacher-centered instruction.
Cognition : students get the opportunity to learn through discovery and trial-and-error, helping to build neural pathways
Social: students play together, developing communication, groupwork, and negotiation skills.
Physical: play engages fine and gross motor functions , helping to improve physical abilities.
Many traditionalist, including many parents and potentially your head teacher, may consider play to have no educational or academic benefit.
Parents may frown upon this method for older students, despite its benefits across age groups.
Many people consider that the risks of injury during play-based learning are too high.

( Read More: Pros and Cons of Play Based Learning )

Social Constructivism. Students learn through social interaction and building knowledge in their minds through trial and error.

Play is also encouraged in all 5 Contemporary Early Childhood Perspectives (Froebel, Reggio Emilia, Forest Schools , Steiner-Waldorf Schools, and Montessori).

Use modelled instruction to show students how to play with developmentally appropriate resource-rich toys and puzzles. Consider puzzles that require mathematical skills that link to current curriculum outcomes.
Provide students with the puzzles and allow free unstructured play time
Mingle with the students, helping them with prompting and guiding questions
End the lesson with a whole group discussion of what they learned during the lesson.

See my full article on Play Based Learning Pros and Cons .

Project-Based learning (PBL)

Project-based learning requires students to spend an extended period of time (e.g. a week or more) on a single project to gain in-depth knowledge about the task. The projects should be personally meaningful and give students freedom to go in-depth on areas of interest.

Students have the opportunity to become ‘experts’ on topics. By going deep on a topic, students may become very knowledgeable and feel empowered.
A balance is struck between ensuring students focus on curriculum-linked projects and giving students the freedom to explore the details of a topic that are of personal interest.
Students tend to have increased freedom using this approach. So, students need to learn self-regulation skills before beginning the task.

Constructivism in the Classroom : Students work independently using their own intellect and resources to learn. By doing personal research, students ‘construct’ knowledge in their minds and apply that knowledge to the project to demonstrate their knowledge.

Teacher assigns students a research question, such as “What are the key characteristics of mammals?”
Students work in small groups to come up with an idea for a poster, diagram, or presentation project on the topic.
Teacher approves or asks for amendments of students’ proposed projects.
Students are provided a series of lessons over a 2-week period in computer labs and in resource-rich classrooms to complete their project.
Teacher checks-in intermittently to ensure standards are upheld and to stimulate students to improve upon their projects.
The project concludes with students presenting their project to their parents.

Authentic Learning

Authentic learning involves having students learn about concepts in real-life (or near real-life) environments. Similarly, authentic assessment refers to assessments in real-life (or near real-life) environments

By learning a task within its context, a student will understand its value for them outside of the classroom.
Engagement: students may be more engaged in a task if they understand its practical application rather than just its theoretical purpose.
Cognition and Memory: Students may find it easier to recall information if they can reflect on an instance in which they applied the knowledge to a real-life task.
Authentic learning tasks are difficult to set-up from within a classroom.
It is debatable whether so-called ‘authentic’ environments are genuinely authentic. A mock supermarket experience for practicing counting money, for example, lacks the potential for environmental distractions of a real-life situation.
Some information is by its very nature academic and theoretical rather than practical, and this information is still of value to students.

Constructivism: Authentic learning environments are designed for students to be active learners who ‘construct’ knowledge through personal experience.

An ESL teacher provides students with a set of conversational tasks to complete during a day’s field trip to the city.
Students complete the tasks in the ‘real world’ by walking around the city asking for directions, buying lunch, etc.
Class comes together at the end of the day to discuss and reflect on their experiences of applying their knowledge in the ‘real world’.

Discovery Learning

Discovery learning involves allowing students maximum freedom within a resource-rich environment to ‘discover’ answers to challenges. It requires students to build upon prior knowledge and use resources available in the environment to increase their own knowledge.

Discovery learning is often held in contrast to teacher-centered approaches, as students are not ‘told’ information; instead, they must discover knowledge for themselves..

Students generate knowledge for themselves rather than being told what is right and wrong.
By discovering truths, students will have a firmer understanding for the reasoning behind why something is true.
Too much student freedom may distract students from the learning outcomes.
This can be a time-consuming technique as students discover information at their own pace. It can therefore be difficult to implement in education systems that are packed with curriculum outcomes that must be met.

Construcitivism: Students generate their own knowledge through engagement with their environment rather than having truths ‘told’ to them by an authority figure.

Teacher places the appropriate resources in the classroom to allow students to discover truths themselves. These resources may include science experiment stations, newspaper articles, etc.
Teacher transparently presents the lesson objectives to the students, i.e. “What is heavier – sand or water?”
Students are given minimal guidance, but sent to the learning stations to try to answer the prompt themselves.
Teacher provides minimal guidance, recognizing that making mistakes and trying the ‘wrong thing’ is also a part of the discovery experience.
Students get together at the end of the class to discuss what they ‘discovered’.

High Expectations

Setting high expectation involves requiring students to put in maximum effort during their lessons. HIgh expectations does not mean expecting all students to meet a certain standard. Rather, it means expecting each student to try to beat their own personal best.

High expectations are necessary to ensure students continue to strive for improvement. Without high expectations in the classroom, students can become lazy and lose respect for education.
Teachers need to be aware that sometimes students have ‘off days’ where they cannot succeed at their normal level. This may be due to health, hunger, or environmental factors .
Teachers need to balance high expectations with compassion for their students. Try not to let burnout occur due to strenuous demands.
Measure students’ prior knowledge to ascertain their current developmental level.
Have students aim to achieve at or above their current ability in a given task.
If students underperform, provide formative feedback and insist they readdress their work to make edits and improvements.
Allow students to progress to subsequent tasks only when their work has met or exceeded the minimum standard you set for that individual.

See my full article on High Expectations in the Classroom .

Parent and Community Engagement

Parent and community engagement involves bringing students together with their community. It can involve bringing parents and community members into the classroom, or bringing students out into the community on field trips.

By engaging with the community, students come to see themselves as a member of their community.
It can help students to get to know important members of their community to give them a sense of belonging, and help them see (and, in the future, seek) support networks.
By bringing role models into the classroom (especially minority and female role models), students can come to see that they could potentially become female firefighters, politicians of color, etc.
Students can learn from more than just one teacher to get a variety of perspectives.
Safety concerns often require teachers and community members to fill-in forms and complete background checks before community engagement can occur.
Finding members of the community willing to work with teachers can be difficult.

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory: Students learn within family and community contexts (children’s ‘first teachers’) in order to respect and carry-on culturally engaged learning.

Teacher does networking to find community members willing to come into the classroom.
Teacher finds relevant curriculum links that community members can help them teach about.
Teacher and community members meet to discuss a lesson idea.
Community members and teachers team-teach in the classroom.
Students are given the opportunity for one-on-one time with community members.
Students present the results of their lesson to community members before community members leave.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Unconditional positive regard involves teachers consistently and unconditionally viewing students as capable and competent. When students make mistakes, fail, or misbehave, it is the teacher’s role to continue to let students know that they believe in the student and their abilities.

Empowering: when students are given unconditional positive regard, they know that their teacher believes in their ability to constantly do better.
Shows Empathy and builds Trust: children come to learn to respect and trust their teacher when they know their teacher is always on ‘their side’.
Teachers need to ensure that they still let students know that inappropriate behavior or lack of effort is unacceptable. The teacher should follow-up their discipline with comments about positive regard.

Humanist theory of Education : Humanist Carl Rogers invented this approach. He believed unconditional positive regard was necessary for building students’ self-confidence.

“Even though you did not do well today, I expect that you will come to school doing better tomorrow.”
“The quality of your work does not match your potential. Let’s talk about some strategies for improvement before you go away and do it again.”

See my full post on the Humanist approach to Education .

Modeled Teaching

Modeled teaching is an instructional strategy that involves the teacher ‘showing’ students how to do a task. The teacher shows the task while also breaking it down into small steps. This helps students to see how to complete the task.

A very effective way to introduce new topics.
The teacher maintains control when introducing a new idea to ensure students have appropriate understanding and safety knowledge before trying for themselves.
Shows that learning can occur passively – students can learn simply by watching.
Not appropriate as a standalone strategy. Students need to eventually try things alone to show competency. Therefore, consider matching modeled teaching up with the I Do, We Do, You Do method

Bandura’s Behaviorism: Bandura blends behaviorism with constructivism by showing that learning can occur through observation only.

See my full post on Behaviorism in Education , which has a segment on Bandura’s modelled instruction approach.

I Do We Do You Do Method

The I Do, We Do, You Do method is a scaffolding strategy that provides gradual release of responsibility from the teacher to the student. It involves three steps: (1) I Do: Teacher models the task; (2) We Do: Student and teacher do the task together; (3) You Do: Student attempts to complete the task alone.

Students are provided an appropriate balance of support and freedom.
Teacher has ample time to assess students’ abilities to make adjustments to their pedagogy as they move through the 3 steps (particularly in step 2)
In large groups, students may fall behind at Steps 2 and 3.

Sociocultural Theory: Students learn through social interaction with a more knowledgeable other (see: Lev Vygotsky).

Teacher asks all students to sit on a mat at the front of the class.
Teacher models the steps required to complete the day’s task (I Do).
Teacher re-does the task. This time, instead of telling the students the steps, the teacher asks students to raise their hand and tell the teacher what to do next (We Do)
Teacher asks students to complete the task in small groups. Teacher walks around providing support (We Do)
Students complete the lesson by doing the task alone. Teacher only intervenes for the few students who are still struggling (You Do)

See my full guide on implementing the I Do, We Do, You Do method .

Guided Practice / Cognitive Apprenticeship

Students follow along with their teacher as an ‘apprentice’. By working side-by-side, they learn the subtle little things (‘ tacit knowledge ’) required to know in order to master a skill.

Students get very close one-to-one interaction with an expert, helping them learn.
By learning-by-doing, the student learns not only the theory but also the skills required to complete tasks.
An approach predominantly used for young children in Indigenous communities, which is not applicable on a wide scale in Western mass education systems.
Requires one-to-one support, which is not often available.

Socio-Cultural Theory: Rogoff studied Guatemalan Indigenous teaching methods to come up with this approach. It fits under the socio-cultural theory because its emphasis is on social interaction between master and apprentice.

Common in trade schools for students studying to be mechanics, engineers, etc.

See my full guides on the Guided Practice teaching strategy and cognitive fexibility .

Scaffolding

Scaffolding involves providing support to students while they cannot complete a task alone. Then, when the student can complete the task alone, the teacher withdraws their support.

Students feel supported while learning tasks that are just outside of their grasp at the present time.
A clear way of guiding students towards new skills.
May require a lot of one-to-one support, which can be difficult to provide in a classroom environment.

Socio-Cultural Theory: Scaffolding was invented by Jerome Bruner ( not Vygotsky).

The teacher models a task before students try it themselves.
The teacher provides the student with a visual aid (the scaffold, in this instance) that breaks the task down into small parts.
After 15 minutes of practice with the visual aid, the aid is withdrawn and the students try the task alone.

Direct Instruction (a.k.a Explicit Teaching)

Direct instruction (also known as explicit teaching) is a teacher-centered approach that involves the teacher using simple straightforward language to explain concepts to students.

Provides clear and direct knowledge to students
Is sometimes the only way to teach something, particularly when introducing a new idea.
Students cannot consolidate their knowledge with direct instruction alone. Explicit teaching should be followed-up with other teaching strategies that involve more active learning so students can practice and demonstrate their knowledge.

Behaviorism: Traditionally, direct instruction was embraced by behaviorists who believed in teacher-centered teaching. Today, it is used in most teaching approaches.

Repetition (Rote Learning)

Repetition involves giving students time to retry tasks over and over again until it is consolidated in their minds. The information should be safely in a student’s long-term memory before moving on.

Repetition commits information to memory, and is often one of the only ways to ensure something is truly remembered long-term.
Repetitive rote learning that lacks contextual background is hard to remember. Sometimes, giving context through doing tasks through real-life scenarios can be better for memory long-term.
Repetition can disengage students and demotivate them.
Doesn’t account for social and cognitive aspects of learning.

Behaviorism: Repetition is central to a behaviorist approach. Pavlov, a famous behaviorist found that he could teach his dog through repetitively associating a bell with food. The dog came to learn through repetition that the bell meant ‘food’.

See my full post on Behaviorism in Education.

Spaced Repetition

Spaced repetition builds on simple repetition. Spaced repetition involves gradually increasing the space between times you repeat something. Repetition of a task should be very common. Over time, the task should be re-examined less and less often.

The idea behind spaced repetition is that the concept being learned is re-engaged with just before it is forgotten so that it is consistently recalled into memory and gradually sedimented into long-term memory.

Provides long-term support to ensure students remember information over a sustained period of time.
Perfect for revision and standardized test preparation.
Can be disengaging and boring for students who tend to prefer active learning.

Behaviorism: Spaced repetition was invented by behaviorist theorist Ebbinghaus in 1885.

Provide students with a sprinkle of review tasks as a part of their weekly homework.
Start lessons (or set aside some time each week) with revision of tasks from months previously to jog students’ memory.

Prompting involves providing students with nudges, guides and questions that will help them to move closer towards an answer. A prompt is a suggestion to a student that they pay attention to a particular aspect of a task that will help them get closer to the answer.

Prompts are used regularly by teachers to get beyond blocks in student learning. Without prompts, students may never develop or improve.
It is hard to know exactly how much prompting to give and at what stage. Students need time to think things through and make mistakes. Too much prompting too soon can prevent students from thinking for themselves.

Social Constructivism: Social constructivists believe teachers have a role in helping students to build knowledge in their minds. Teachers’ interventions can help spur knowledge development.

A teacher might ask a question to get the student to look at the task from a different perspective.
A teacher may point at a section of a diagram and ask them about that section.
A teacher might start a sentence and ask a student to finish it.

Differentiation

Differentiation is a teaching strategy that requires teachers to change their teaching styles and educational materials to meet the diverse needs of students within a classroom. It generally involves grouping students into several sub-groups in the classroom based on ability, skillset or learning preferences.

Enables the teacher to more effectively address the diverse needs of students in a large classroom.
Ensures learning is more personalized in the hope that no child will be left behind in a lesson.
Differentiation is often used as an excuse to dumb down a task – differentiated instruction should be paired with high expectations to ensure all students are working to their maximum potential.

Socio-cultural Theory: This approach acknowledges that all students have different social and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, each student requires a personalized learning approach. It realizes that one size fits all will not work because all students are different.

Separate students into three ability groups: Advanced, Middle, and Lower. The advanced students can be provided with project-based learning tasks to complete while the teacher works with the middle and lower groups to provide additional support.
Provide students with a range of tasks that addresses the same learning outcome. Students can choose between different tasks depending on their learning preferences.

Manipulatives

Manipulatives are physical educational toys (or: ‘tools’) which are used to support learning. Providing students with physical manipulatives during learning enables them to visualize their learning in a 3D space.

Students can learn more actively when they have manipulatives than when learning through teacher-centered direct instruction methods.
Helps students who need to visualize information to learn.
Creation of physical models helps students to form mental models (‘ cognitive schemata ’).
It can be expensive to gather enough materials for all students in a classroom.
Providing students with toys can distract them from the task. Strong classroom management skills are required.

Constructivism: Constructivists including Freidrich Froebel and Maria Montessori have advocated for the use of educational toys to help students to explore and discover in student-led active learning contexts.

Base Tens ‘Dienes Cubes’ are cubes that can be bunched into singles, groups of ten, groups of 100, and groups of 1000 to help students visualize the decimal system of counting.
Colored beads can be used to help students in early childhood learn to recognize patterns.
Froebel’s Gifts are 9 manipulative toys that students can use to solve developmentally appropriate puzzles.

Prior Knowledge Assessment

Prior knowledge assessment entails assessing students’ knowledge at the beginning of a unit of work in order to teach students at an appropriate level. If prior knowledge does not take place, teachers may teach content at a level that is either above or below a class’s optimal learning level.

Ensures the content being taught is at an appropriate level.
Respects the fact that students come into the classroom with pre-existing knowledge.
Identifies misconceptions students may have about a topic.
Enables teachers to take into account students’ cultural knowledge when preparing a unit of work.
Ensure you assess prior knowledge well in advance so you can plan lessons based on prior knowledge. I’ve assessed prior knowledge at the start of a class before and realized the lesson I planned was completely useless!

Student-Teacher Conference

A student-teacher conference is a one-on-one discussion between a student and a teacher to take stock of a student’s needs. The conference usually involves a discussion of both strengths as well as areas for improvement. The conference should conclude with a list of goals for the teacher and student to mutually strive toward.

An opportunity for both the teacher and student to express concerns and anxieties
Helps students to feel ‘seen’, valued and cared for by the teacher
Hard to achieve in every lesson. Teachers could consider systematically conferring with one or two students per lesson until all students are met with.
There is a power imbalance in the student-teacher relationship which may prevent students from speaking candidly.

Socio-Cultural Theory: Interactions between teachers and students are important to learning within the socio-cultural approach.

Print a list of your students with a column for ‘achievements’, ‘goals’ and ‘struggles’. Over the course of a week, meet up with your students and discuss with them what they’ve achieved in the current unit of work, what their goals are, and what the barriers are to achieving those goals.

Fill-In the Gaps (Cloze Passages)

A simple teaching strategy that involves asking students to fill-in an incomplete piece of text. This can happen verbally (starting a paragraph and asking students to complete it) and in writing (a traditional cloze passage).

Helps students to jog their own memories by prompting them slightly.
Enables teachers to quickly assess students’ knowledge (just-in-time assessment).
Cannot be a consistently used strategy as students also need to learn through more challenging approaches such as discovery learning and project-based learning.
Paper cloze passages involving a story in which the key phrases are removed.
Prompting questions like: “Can you finish this sentence? The first king of England was …”

Peer Assisted Learning (PAL)

Has the teacher step aside and allows students to take charge of the learning environment.

Students can often explain concepts to one another in a clear way because they’re on the same level and closer in their learning journey than the teacher, who probably learned the content years ago!
Peer assisted learning is not the same as the students doing the teaching. Students should continue to view each others as partners in learning.

Socio-Cultural Theory: students learning through collaborative discussion fits firmly into the sociocultural theory of education .

Invite students from a grade level above to come into the classroom and act as moderators of discussions on topics of interest.
Pair stronger students with weaker students. Have the stronger students demonstrate their knowledge by supporting the weaker students. I find this works really well because children can often explain things in a clear language that other children can understand.

Poster Presentations

A poster presentation is a great way to demonstrate knowledge at the end of a lesson or unit of work. Provide the students with posters, pens, and printing materials if required.

A fast, effective way of presenting knowledge to the class.
Allows students to practice demonstration skills.
Ends up with a physical product that can be photographed and added to the student’s portfolio to prove that outcomes have been met.
Can be a lazy way to achieve presentation of knowledge. Ensure the focus remains on the content and not the coloring-in or drawing pretty pictures.
Not useful for all lessons: when students can create a working model, diagram, etc. this would be preferred.
Have students work in groups to write up their knowledge in a visually engaging way.
Then, have each group verbally present their poster to the class.

Two-Minute Presentation

Two Minute verbal presentations, like posters, are an effective way of having students demonstrate their knowledge at the end of a lesson or unit of work. Each student gets two minutes to present their knowledge on a topic to the rest of the class.

An effective, fast way of doing summative assessment.
It is an inefficient use of other students’ time having them listen to 20 other two-minute presentations when they could be engaging in higher-order learning during that time. Students find it very boring and frustrating to sit through the assessment of other students.
Use the two-minute presentation method for the final lesson in a series of lessons on one topic.
Have students read over their notes from previous classes and write a summary of the top 10 points.
Have students prepare their two-minute presentations by adding the notes to palm cards. With 10 points, students have about 12 second per point!
Ensure students have time to practice with one another and instruct them on how to take additional notes on their palm cards for points they forgot during practice.
If each student has a different topic or angle to present engagement may be enhanced during the class presentations.

De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

De Bono’s 6 thinking hats strategy asks students to look at an issue from multiple perspectives. It can be used for groups or individuals. Depending on the hat a student is provided, they have to think from a different perspective.

The Six Hats

White hat: Provide the facts.
Yellow hat: Explore the positives.
Black hat: Explore the negatives (devil’s advocate).
Red hat: Express your feelings and intuitions . Include concerns, dislikes and likes.
Green hat: Be creative. Come up with new ideas and alternatives.
Blue hat: The manager who ensures all the hats are sticking to their lane.
Helps students to think outside of their own perspectives.
Encourages students to attack an issue from many different angles.
Teachers group work skills if used in a group.
I often find it’s hard to get groups of 6, so sometimes one student has to use two hats.
Introduce a contentious topic with a video or reading.
Distribute hats to the students.
Have students spend some time brainstorming what they would say on the issue from their perspective. If you have a large class, group all the white hats together, red hats together, etc. to work in groups for this part.
Then rearrange students into groups where there is one colored hat per group (groups of 6 is ideal, or 5 with one person taking the role of blue hat as well).
At the end of the class, have a whole group discussion summing up our points and list the details of the topic on the white board. Hopefully students will see that the issue is a very complex one!

A pop quiz is a short test that takes place with no prior warning. The quiz can be formative or summative. Link the quiz to rewards to keep students motivated to do well and be prepared at any moment.

Can be motivating for students who enjoy the challenge of competing with themselves or others.
Keeps students on their toes which encourages ongoing review and homework on the part of the students.
May worry some students who are unprepared.

Democratic Vote

Taking a democratic vote is a progressive education strategy that attempts to empower students in the classroom. Have students vote on what or how they will learn within the classroom. This can be done at a small scale in a lesson plan by asking students to vote on how a lesson will progress, for example.

Can empower students, giving them a sense of ownership over the classroom.
Can build trust and rapport between the students and the teacher.
Helps the teacher take the pulse of the class and understand what they want and need.
Teachers may lose their power and control over the class if they overuse this approach.
Just because the majority supports something, it doesn’t mean it’s best. A small group of students may fall behind and have their voices drowned out by the majority.

Progressive Education: Progressive educators such as Alfie Kohn advocate for empowering students through increased democracy in the classroom.

See my full post on Citizenship Education .

Non-Verbal Gestures

Using non-verbal gestures are powerful ways to help students learn, as well as to manage the classroom. Educators can explicitly teach signs or use gestures common in society.

Teachers can give individual students instant feedback that is subtle and does not disrupt the rest of the class.
Students feel acknowledged when small gestures are used just for them.
It is a non-intrusive way of prompting students.
Cultural sensitivity required. Different cultures ascribe different meanings to non-verbal gestures.
Nods of approval can let a student know you have recognized their good work without disrupting the flow of the lesson.
Pointing can be used to direct students’ attention toward prompts around the room or on worksheets that may help stimulate thinking.
Tapping a watch can remind students to pay attention to time limitations of a lesson.

Environmental Manipulation

Environments have a strong impact on learning. Temperature, lighting, seating plans , colors and posters on the walls can all affect learning.

A non-intrusive way of supporting learning.
Helps students feel more comfortable in the classroom.
Your classroom has limitations which may prevent the ideal environmental settings.
Different students may work better in different environments (e.g. heat settings)

Humanism: Teachers pay attention to the conditions required for creating an optimal learning environment.

Classical Conditioning (Behaviorism): Students are ‘conditioned’ by cause-and-effect mechanisms that are subtle and that they aren’t even aware of.

For more, see my full post on behaviorism in education.

When a class is too loud, try subtly turning off the fan. It’s amazing how often this small environmental manipulation can quiet down a class.
Ensure the classroom is not too dark. A dark classroom can impede reading, especially for students who do not have perfect eyesight.
Heat and noise can both prevent learning.
Calm colors on the walls can help students relax into the learning environment.

Associative Learning

Associative learning takes place when several ideas are introduced to a student that are mutually reinforcing. In the classroom, this means presenting students with several stimulus materials that help a student to recall a fact.

Is very effective during revision for an exam.
Has questionable long-term benefits as at this stage the concept is not yet solidly consolidated in long-term memory. The recall of information is dependant on other associated information.

Behaviorism (Pavlov’s Dog): Most famously, Pavlov managed to get a dog to associate the ringing of a bell with food. The dog would salivate whenever the bell rang, whether or not there was food around.

Cognitive Constructivism: while associative learning is most commonly associated with Pavlov, constructivists also have an explanation. The more associations someone has with a topic, the more neural pathways are created connecting ideas. This helps improve memory recall.

Cooperative Learning (Group Work)

Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that involves having students work together rather than in competition. Usually, this takes place in small groups where the success of the group is dependant on the students working together to achieve a common goal (also known as positive interdependence). See more: Cooperative learning examples .

Minimizes destructive competitiveness in the classroom which may undermine a collaborative and collegial atmosphere.
Requires students to talk to one another which can help them learn from each other’s perspectives.
Students need to be explicitly taught group work skills before participating.
Some students may become lazy and let others do the work for the whole group.

Sociocultural Theory: Learning is stimulated when students converse with one another. They get to see others’ viewpoints which may help each student build upon or challenge their existing views.

Agenda Setting

The teacher presents the students with the agenda at the start of the day. The use of visual aids may be helpful here, allowing students to see a timeline of the day’s events on the board at the front of the classroom.

Very effective for students with autism who often feel calmed knowing there is some structure to their day.
Helps relax students into a day or even a lesson by giving them certainty about what’s to come.
Any benefits that may arise lack scientific backing.
Download a card set of images that represent different lesson types and activities. Use this card set to lay out a visual timeline for the students every morning.

Team Teaching

Instead of one teacher delivering a lesson to a group of students, several teachers get their classes together to teach one lesson to a larger group.

Teachers can be more flexible. One teacher may take the role of presenter while the other acts as a support with students falling behind.
Teachers can share the workload, particularly for preparation.
Large groups may lead to some students falling behind without the teachers realizing.
There is the potential for more noise distractions and subversive behavior in large groups.
Teachers need to have the same work ethic for this to be effective.
Large class sizes required.
Consider having one teacher take the lead on all mathematics lessons and the other take the lead on all literature lessons. This enables each teacher to become more expert on their topic.

Directing Attention

Directing attention involves diverting students away from negative non-learning behaviors and towards positive behaviors by presenting them with engaging learning materials or ideas.

Prevents negative behaviors without confrontation.
Focuses on creating engaging lessons.
Can be done multiple times in one lesson whenever a teacher sees a student is distracted.
Tends to be more effective with younger children than older children.
Use visual aids, worksheets and manipulatives to help direct and maintain students’ attention on something physical. With adults, I use flipchart paper (also known as butcher’s paper) as the prop to direct attention.

Allowing students to sit where they choose, rather than having assigned seating, has had a resurgence in popularity in the past decade. A flexible seating classroom often has a range of differently organized workstations, allowing students to select a spot to sit that’s most comfortable for them and which best suits the style of learning that will be occuring in that lesson.

Can reduce sedentary periods of time by allowing students to move around more during a lesson.
Enables students to sit at a table that best suits their learning (computer table, group table, individual table, on a bean bag, etc.)
There is often not enough space at workstations, meaning students end up not actually sitting where they choose.
Often students like to have a spot they can call their own. It helps give students a sense of place and belonging.
This approach is very common in the Agile Learning Spaces and Flexible Classrooms movement.

See my full post on the Common Classroom Seating Arrangements .

Formative assessment involves assessing students’ learning throughout the learning process, not just at the end. Formative assessments can take place at one point in a unit of work or regularly throughout a lesson.

Allows teachers to adjust their teaching if students are not quite up to where you expected, or if they are exceeding your expectations.
Students get feedback on their progress before the summative assessment, allowing them to adjust.
Gives the teacher a better understanding of their students. If a student fails a summative assessment but the teacher knows the student could do the task at the formative stage, more investigation can take place to see why there is a discrepancy.
Can be time consuming to constantly assess students’ abilities.
Formative assessments often lack the authority of summative assessment pieces.
Formative assessments can be simple stops to get feedback and ongoing questioning of students.
They can also take the form of pop quizzes or student-teacher conferences.

Summative assessments take place at the end of a unit of work and are often the formal final / overall grading of a student’s knowledge.

Summative assessments are necessary for providing a final grade for a student and are often required by school boards.
Summative assessments give students something to strive toward which may keep them motivated and encourage them to study.
They are seen as too high-stakes and can cause stress for students.
If a student does poorly, the assessment is right at the end, so the teacher and student often don’t have any more time address the problems and help progress the student’s learning.
Standardized tests.
Assessments for student portfolios.
End-of-year exams.
Entry exams.

Gamification involves implementing elements of gameplay in your lessons. This can be as simple as creating a competition out of a mathematics quiz.

Recently, computer software such as excel and programming languages have been used in the classroom as elements of ‘digital’ gamification.

Don’t confuse gamification with game-based learning, which is discussed next.

Gamification can make boring lessons fun , thereby increasing the engagement and motivation of students.
Teachers must not lose focus on the learning outcomes that must be met. ‘Fun’ is not the goal, it is the means for achieving the goal, which is always learning .
Get your students into two groups and have them compete in a trivia contest based on your lesson content.
Give students table groups and reward tables with points depending oh how well they do.

Not to be confused with gamification, game-based learning involves the use of actual games (board games, computer games, sports games, etc.) into a lesson.

While gamification involves using elements of gameplay into lessons (points, competitions), game-based learning involves using actual games in a lesson.

Students often love video games at home, so they get excited that they can play them in school as well.
Games can also support cognition by prompting students to complete and practice tasks to win games. See also: cognitive tools.
Parents may feel playing games in the classroom is not acceptable. Make sure parents know your reasoning behind using games.
Ensure the focus remains on the learning outcomes, not just on ‘having fun’.
Minecraft is a very popular computer game that is used in classrooms.
Sim City is a popular game for city design courses.
Use card games to teach counting. I teach ESL students counting using the game UNO.

See my full article on game-based learning as well as my explanations about how to use minecraft and sandbox games in the classroom .

A coach does not stand in front of players and simply tell them what the ‘facts’ are. A coach stands behind a player. He watches the player and gives feedback on their performance. His job is to encourage, suggest adjustments and be the support network for the player.

Coaching is one of the great metaphors for teaching . A teacher who uses coaching as a strategy tried to emulate the role of the coach: observing and offering support and suggestions for adjustments.

Student-centered : the student is the focus and the teacher is the supporter.
Personalized: each student will get unique feedback based on their performance.
Sometimes the teacher needs to introduce new ideas, meaning coaching may not be as useful as another approach such as modeling or direct instruction.

Sociocultural Theory: In sociocultural theory, teachers tend to encourage active learning and provide social support.

Inquiry-based learning involves the teacher presenting a problem for the students to solve by making their own inquiries. It is similar to discovery learning, but is different in that inquiry based learning generally involves the teacher setting out a puzzling problem to solve at the start of the lesson.

Students ‘find’ the answers rather than being given them by teachers.
Answers emerge out of exploration, problem solving and discovery, meaning students learn why something is true, not simply what is true.
Significant support is required to help guide students through their inquiry. Students need to be taught how to inquire and given the right inquiry tools (such as books, appropriate websites, etc.)

Constructivism: Students learn through constructing ideas in their heads rather than being told the facts.

Reciprocal teaching involves having students facilitate their own small group lessons. It is usually used in reading lessons.

The teacher first models how to guide group discussions before sending students off to facilitate their own lesson. In groups of four, students usually take the roles of: questioner, clarifier, summarizer and predictor. Students read stimulus materials then self-facilitate a group discussion about the text.

Students learn self-regulation learning skills which are essential for later in their lives.
When students are trained up, the classes work very effectively and the teacher can fade into the background.
Students learn group work, communication and negotiation skills. They also learn how to speak up in a group.
Students learn to be mature even when the teacher isn’t looking. By taking on responsibility as ‘teachers’, students should rise to the challenge.
Requires a lot of pre-teaching so students have the required skills for these sorts of lessons to work.

Sociocultural theory: working in groups, communicating and sharing ideas help stimulate thinking and encourages students to challenge their own ideas in order to improve them.

Example (Modelled off the I Do, We Do, You Do approach)

The teacher should model the four roles required in front of the whole class, with several volunteers to act as the demonstration group.
The teacher assigns groups and the four group roles: questioner, clarifier, summarizer and predictor.
When students do the activity in small groups for the first time, explicitly walk the students through the steps. Use a bell or similar audible cue to cycle students through the group work steps.
Allow the students to work in independent groups – walk around and help groups who are struggling.

Blended learning involves a mix of online instruction and face-to-face learning. This strategy can be employed by giving students part of their instruction as homework online and part of it in class. It differs from flipped learning because a flipped classroom involves at-home instruction and in-class practice. Blended learning can have both practice and instruction occuring at home and/or in class

Gives the teacher flexibility to teach partially during homework time and partially in class.
Students need access to technology at home unless the at-home parts are only reading and printouts.
Usually only suitable for university students who are short on time. Blended learning allows them to do some of the learning in their own time.
Used regularly for distance learning students and rural and remote students.
Used regularly at university level.
If using this method, I recommend taking a look at the flipped learning model for some ideas of how to split your distance and in-class segments efficiently.

See my List of 10 Pros and Cons of teaching Online .

A growth mindset focuses on teaching students that they have the power to improve and succeed if they put their effort into it. The opposite would be students refusing to try because they don’t think they have the power in their own hands to succeed.

Teaching growth mindsets is all about modelling positive behaviors. Include growth mindset in your lesson plans by finding points in the lesson to discuss specific strategies to move toward success, strategies for studying, and positive thinking.

Focuses on helping students see that they have ‘ agency ’ (in other words, they are capable of improving their lives)
Motivates students to improve their own lives
Many students have many barriers to success. If you ignore those barriers and simply say ‘you can work harder’, this will make students feel disempowered. Teachers need to show students the pathways to success.
Ensure the content is actually achievable for your students.
Break down tasks into manageable chunks so that students know the steps toward success. Then, use encouragement to motivate students to put in their effort.
Celebrate success to show students that they are competent and capable.

Culturally responsive teaching is an instructional strategy that involves ensuring students’ cultures are integrated into lessons. This includes celebrating students’ cultural backgrounds when relevant and using learning styles that are dominant within your students’ cultures.

Includes children from cultures that have been traditionally marginalized within the classroom.
Minimizes the impact of Westernization of education.
May make new students from cultures that are different to the majority in the class to feel a sense of inclusion and belonging in the classroom.
Helps all students see the world from a variety of perspectives and learn to respect pluralism.
Teachers need to be sensitive to cultures different to their own.
Teachers should consult parents and community members about best strategies for the cultural needs of the students in the class.

Sociocultural theory: sociocultural theory believes

Have role models from minority backgrounds come into the classroom to share their backgrounds.
Consult with parents about ideal teaching methods within their culture.
Avoid nonverbal gestures that have different meanings in different cultures.
Another example: eye contact is considered respectful in Western cultures but acts of defiance in Indigenous Australian culture.

Mastery learning and teaching is a strategy for ensuring all students meet a certain standard of understanding or ability before moving on.

Teachers set a benchmark of knowledge 9r ability for students to meet. Then, all assessment in this method is formative, where students are given feedback and as much time as possible to improve before progressing.

Students are not left behind and gaps in their knowledge are not overlooked.
Students may feel less stressed or rushed with this approach.
There is no talk of inability or failure in this method as teachers and students keep working away at the task until success is achieved.
There is not enough time in traditional school systems for this approach.
The difference in abilities between students means some students will get a long way ahead while others remain a long way behind.

Humanism: there are elements of unconditional positive regard in this approach (see Carl Rogers).

An example may be that all students must get 80% on a test to progress to the next unit of work.
This approach is common for getting a “handwriting license” in primary / elementary school.

Stimulus materials are tools that a teacher provides during lessons to spur students into engaging with the lesson or thinking more deeply about the content provided. They include videos, educational toys (manipulatives), worksheets, visual prompts, objects from outside the classroom, and so on.

Without stimulus materials, the classroom feels empty and detached from real life. Bring stimulus materials into the classroom to help students make stronger connections to things going on outside.

Provides something for students to focus on which can focus students’ minds.
Helps students to learn actively if they have the opportunity to touch and manipulate the props.
Can inspire and draw-in students at the start of the lesson.
Stimulus materials can be very expensive.
Students can get distracted playing with the materials rather than listening to their peers or the teacher.
Students need to learn to share materials.

Constructivism: constructivists encourage the use of props so that students can ‘learn by doing’ and be ‘hands on’ in their learning.

Place several props into a bag. Have the students put their hands in the bag and see whether they can guess what the props are.
Place an unusual prop related to your lesson in the middle of the classroom. Get the students to guess what it is before beginning the lesson.

Service learning involves having students meet learning outcomes while contributing to and ‘giving back to’ their community. This often involves volunteer work, internships and placements within the community where assistance is needed.

Students can increase their sense of belonging within the community.
Connections between learning and life are made explicit in this sort of learning.
Learning moves from the theoretical to the practical.
Students can come to see how they are connected to a wider ecosystem, and that they have an important part to play in serving that ecosystem for the good of all.
It can be hard to place all your students in a service learning placement if there are many students to allocate.
It may be impractical given safety and security requirements.

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory: EST highlights that people are situated within community from whom they get their values and beliefs. By being more connected to the community, students learn who they are and how they’re connected to a society and culture that surrounds them.

Prepare your students in the classroom. Consider having organizers or community members come into the classroom to tell the students what to expect.
Have students write preparatory notes about what the intend to learn, who they intend to speak to, and what their day-by-day goals will be whilst doing the service learning.
Have students complete their service learning / voluntary work in groups or individually.
Meet with the students intermittently during the service learning and have student-teacher conferences on how it is progressing. Intervene where needed.
Have students come together at the end of the project to reflect on what was learnt and how their understanding of their place in the community has evolved. Discuss possible future involvement and engagement in the community to emphasize that community involvement is an ongoing project.

Invented by Lave and Wegner, situated learning involves learning by being embedded within a professional environment and slowly picking up the ways of doing and speaking within that context.

It has similarities to other instructional strategies outlined in this article such as service learning and cognitive apprenticeships. However, its defining feature is the slow absorption of knowledge through prolonged exposure to an authentic professional setting.

Students learn the most important practical information required for a job.
Students learn the ways of speaking and behaving that are required within a professional situation.
Not practical as a teaching strategy in classrooms. It works best as an apprenticeship model for new graduates from university.

Sociocultural theory: the situated learning approach emphasizes the importance of learning from ‘more knowledgeable others’.

The sixty second strategy involves having students review one another’s work in three steps which take 60 seconds each. The steps are: respond, reflect and review. This usually takes place after a student presentation where the students give a cumulative 3 minutes of feedback and reflection on the presentation.

The goal is not just to give feedback to the presenter, but for the listeners to also think about how they would have done the presentation and what their own thoughts on the topic are.

Students learn how to give feedback to others in positive and constructive ways.
It is a great way for students to actively engage with other students’ presentations.
Students need to know how to be positive in feedback and not be hurtful.
Have the student who is presenting their work give their presentation.
The students who watched the presentation have 60 seconds to write their thoughts on the topic that was presented.
Next, the students have 60 seconds to write down feedback on the presenter’s work.
Then the students have 60 seconds to provide positive affirmation and praise.
At the end, have the students share their feedback with the presenter in small groups so that the environment is not so intimidating for the presenter.

Thumbs down, thumbs up is a simple strategy for getting immediate feedback from students. During a lesson, pause after each step to get instant thumbs down, thumbs up feedback on whether students understand the previous step.

If there are thumbs down, the teacher should ask those students if they have direct questions or whether they might want that section to be covered again in different language or more slowly.

Enables the teacher to gauge students’ reactions in real time.
Gives the students an opportunity to give the teacher feedback immediately so that they don’t fall behind or become frustrated.
If the majority of students give thumbs up but only one or two give thumbs down, this is not endorsement to move on. Rather, the teacher should make sure no students fall behind.

For this teaching strategy, either the teacher or student summarizes something someone previously said in their own words in order to ensure they understanding each other without any misconceptions.

In having a student repeat the teacher’s statement in their own words, the teacher can see whether students actually understand something.
In repeating a student’s statement in different language, the teacher can see whether they truly understand what the student means.
The biggest risk here is in the teacher ‘putting words in the student’s mouth’. This may give the student a free pass.
The teacher explains a concept, then asks the student to repeat it without using the same words. A pause of a few minutes between the teacher’s explanation and the student’s response can be helpful in preventing the student from directly copying the teacher’s language. As time passes, the meaning should stay but the exact words should be forgotten.
Alternatively, the student makes a statement, and the teacher translates it in their own words and finishes with “Is that what you meant?”

Demonstration involves showing the students a practical example of something that is being learned in class.

The difference between demonstration and modeling is that a demonstration usually:

does not involve explicit explanation of all the steps, and
is usually not followed by students having a go themselves.

Demonstration (rather than modelling) may be necessary when the concept being demonstrated is dangerous or requires expertise.

Having something complex or theoretical demonstrated can be exciting to link theory to practice.
Demonstrations may require expensive field trips or inviting experts and expert equipment into the classroom.
A demonstration could be as complex as going to watch a space rocket launch or as simple as a ranger demonstrating how to use bear spray.

Role modelling involves demonstrating the requisite behaviors or ideal way of acting within a learning environment. Role modelling has the intention of positively influencing students into copying the teacher’s positive learning behaviors.

Students are socialized into behaving and learning in socially appropriate ways.
A teacher who sets personal high expectations for their own learning will have those high expectations flow on toward the students.
A teacher needs to be aware that all of their behaviors rub off on students. This means they need to ‘put on their happy face’ despite what’s going on in their private lives.

Bandura (Social learning theory): Albert Bandura believed that observation was important in influencing how people will behave and learn. See his famous Bobo doll experiment where children were more aggressive toward a doll when they observed an adult being aggressive toward it.

Male teachers may role model positive masculinity, such as politeness and respect to all people regardless of gender.
A teacher can be a role model my demonstrating engagement and volunteering within the community, insisting on respectfully welcoming guests when they enter the classroom, or having high regard and respect for reading, learning, and apologizing.

Predicting involves asking students to make predictions or ‘guestimates’ before a study is undertaken. The teacher may make a prediction for the students to respond to, or ask students to make predictions themselves.

It stimulates students to think about the logical flow-on effects of the things they are learning about (such as in science: gravity, momentum, etc.)
Students are asked to think forward rather than simply react in the learning environment.
At the start of a lesson (before introducing too much information), ask students what they think will happen during the lesson.
Show the students a diagram or comic strip demonstrating sequence of events with the last few events missing. Have students fill-in the gaps.

The teacher inserts intentional mistakes into their teaching materials (such as misspellings in their presentations) or their speech in order to:

Check students’ depth of knowledge,
Make memorable teaching moments, or
Keep students critically engaged.
It keeps students on their toes throughout the lesson, particularly during the boring parts.
It can make learning into a game if you let the students know to look out for the mistakes in advance. You could also offer a reward for the person who identifies the mistake.
It can lead to critical discussion about common mistakes that students make in a topic.
You may risk having students believe you had made the mistakes intentionally.
Students may believe the mistakes are truths and end up believing things that are untrue.
Create intentional spelling errors in your worksheets and powerpoint presentations.
Mispronounce a word and see if students realize.
Flip two words in a sentence and see if anyone realizes.

Immediate feedback is any feedback that takes place during a lesson rather than after a lesson or exam has been completed.

There are two primary types of immediate feedback: feedback from students to teachers, and feedback from teachers to students.

The feedback’s purpose should be to make impromptu changes during the lesson before it is too late.

Teachers can adjust their teaching methods in the moment to ensure the lesson is a success.
Students can adjust the ways they are going about completing a task to ensure it is successful.
In large groups, one-to-one feedback can be difficult.
Teachers need to be able to think on their feet to make immediate adjustments.

David Schon’s ‘Reflection in Practice’: According to Schon, successful practitioners reflect in practice rather than just on practice. Reflection in practice requires practitioners to reflect on what they’re doing while they’re doing it.

Asking for a thumbs up / thumbs down from students to see if they understand something.
Looking over the shoulder at children’s work to see how they’re coming to their conclusions.
Accepting ‘hands up’ questions at any point during an explanation or lecture.

A whole group class discussion gets all students in the class talking to one another in one group. When I use this strategy, I try to get students sitting in a conversation circle. The benefits of students sitting in a circle include:

There is a neutral power structure with no one at the head of the discussion.
All students can see one another.
Whole class discussions encourage all students to develop the confidence to share their own views publicly.
If the whole class gets into it, there can be a lot of great back-and-forth.
Often, the loudest and most confident students dominate the discussion.
Some students are too shy to speak up.
It is easy to embarrass a student, so be careful to be sensitive.
Use a speaking stick so only one person speaks at a time. The only person who can speak is the person with the speaking stick.
Use discussion circles so that all students can see each other when talking.
If conversation is slow to start, consider asking individual students direct questions.
Use open-ended questioning to force students to answer in full sentences.

Concentric circles is a method that builds on the whole group circle time discussion. Students sit in two concentric circles with the inner circle facing the outer circle. The students in the inner circle should be paired one-to-one with a student in the outer circle (like speed dating).

The teacher poses a question and the pairs are given 60 seconds to discuss the problem. Then, the students from the inner circle rotate one person to the right so they are facing a new partner for the next question.

Disagreements about pairing and students working with their friends are resolved because each student gets a turn working with another student.
Students get to learn and communicate with other students they don’t usually spend time with.
Discussion can help students see perspectives that they did not come up with on their own.
There needs to be an even number of students in the class so each student has a partner to work with.

Sociocultural theory: students learn by interacting with others to help them test, challenge and extend their own ideas.

One student takes the role of a character from a book, history, etc. They dit in front of the class and get interviewed by their classmates. The student must stay in character and answer the questions from the perspective of that character.

Students explore topics from perspectives other than their own, helping them to develop lateral thinking skills .
Students need time to research their character and brainstorm their character’s perspectives on various topics before being put in the hot seat.
Shy students or students who are not confident with the material may be intimidated by this instructional strategy.
This strategy can be linked up with strategies like De Bono’s thinking hats where students would answer questions from a particular perspective.

Graphic organizers are visual aids in the classroom designed to help students visualize and conceptualize ideas and their relationships with other ideas. Examples of graphic organizers include flowcharts, mind maps and venn diagrams. Use them to help students think more deeply about topics.

Very useful for students who are visual learners.
Provides a framework for deeper and critical thinking.
Provides structure to help students who are unsure of how to proceed with critical thinking.
Don’t stick to just one framework as the frameworks narrow the scope of thinking in exchange for depth. Mix up your graphic organizers.

Cognitive Constructivism: cognitive constructivists such as David Jonassen believe graphic organizers help students to share their cognitive load with the organizer, helping them to organize and sort ideas in their heads more effective.y

Flow charts
Venn diagrams
Concept maps
Network or family tree
Spider diagram
Compare-contrast matrix
Series of events chain
Character charts

This is one of the simplest, most frequently used, but also most effective classroom teaching strategies. Students think about a topic on their own. Then, they pair up with a partner and discuss, compare and contrast their thoughts together. Thirdly, the pair share what they discussed with the whole class.

Moves students from individual thinking to social thinking in a clear process.
Helps students to vocalize their own thoughts in small and large groups.
Helps students to see other people’s perspectives by encouraging communication, compare and contrast.
Students need the confidence to speak up in front of the whole class. I have found some students like to have the comfort of flip chart (butcher’s) paper as a prop when presenting their discussions to the class.

Sociocultural theory: learning through conversation allows students to see diverse perspectives and therefore improve on their own perspectives.

Step 1: Think. Students are given 2 minutes to think about the topic on their own and take 5 bullet points on their own.
Step 2: Pair. Students get together in pairs (or groups of 3 if appropriate) to compare and contrast their own ideas. Students discuss the ideas and come up with a collective group of ideas.
Step 3: Share. Each group shares their own thoughts with the whole class. As each group presents, other classmates can challenge ideas or take additional notes to add to their own group’s thoughts.

Assigning group roles for students who are doing small group work is another simple instructional strategy to try. There are many group role types to be found online. I tend to use the roles of: timekeeper, moderator, notekeeper, and collector. All students should be equal discussion contributors, and this is managed by the moderator.

Helps to structure the activity, give students certainty in what they are doing, and reduce the uncertainty from group work.
Encourages communication to get students hearing other students’ ideas and perspectives
Students must be explicitly taught the group roles and need time to practice them.

Sociocultural Theory: By communicating with peers, students widen their perspectives and (with more knowledgeable peers) have their knowledge scaffolded.

Ensure you model the group roles before beginning the activity. Consider using a fishbowl method by having a sample group sit in the middle of a circle modeling the roles to the rest of the class.
For the class’s first attempt at group roles, structure it very clearly by getting the students to follow a clear step-by-step guide. Slowly release responsibility to students when they are ready.

The barometer method gets a measure of students’ opinions by asking them to stand on a line from 0 to 10 (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = unsure or conflicted, 10= strongly agree).

Students tend to find this a non-intimidating way of sharing their opinions.
Can be a good way of getting students talking. Once they stand on the line, you can ask them to explain why they stood where they did.
It may be beneficial to prevent students from taking a neutral “I don’t know” stance without sufficient defence of this position.

Critical theory : The barometer could be paired with critical theory if students critique assumptions in society with a focus on the perspectives of marginalized groups.

Introduce a complex or controversial issue through a book, video or class discussion.
Ask students to stand on an imaginary line from 0 to 10 representing their opinion.
Place students into three groups based on their position in the line: agree, unsure and disagree. Have the three groups present their 5 best arguments to the class.

Cognitive tools are educational technologies designed to promote thinking beyond what a student can do without the technology. This might include using wearable technologies to help students map out their own movements to then test their knowledge of geography, use of excel sheets to create financial estimations, etc.

Educational technologies can help us do things we couldn’t do without them.
Can engage students who love computers and technology in learning tasks.
Teachers must ensure technology use is focused on helping students learn more or at a higher level of critical thinking than if they didn’t have technology.

Cognitive Constructivism: this approach, invented by david Jonassen, emphasizes that computer technologies should be used to extend and promote higher-order cognition.

See my full article: Examples of Congitive Tools in Education .

Anticipation and guestimation is an instructional strategy designed to get students thinking about the consequences or flow-on effects of actions. Teachers ask students to make predictions based on limited knowledge about a topic

Students often have to use mathematics and logical reasoning to succeed in this task.
Students are required to be resourceful and seek clues that will show them the possible consequences of action.
It is important to strike a balance between giving enough information to make informed guesses and not too much information that the students can deduce the full answer.

A silent conversation is a way of getting students to communicate without having them speak up in front of the class. Students write their responses to a prompt on sheets of paper but cannot speak while doing so. They should then also write responses to one another’s points so that they are ‘conversing’ through writing.

Students who are shy to speak up my be more willing to participate, especially if their written response can stay anonymous.
It can often be easier to respond in writing than speaking because students have time to reflect and think about the wording of their response before writing it.
Only one student at a time can write their response. Consider what other students will be doing during this time.
Students must be competent writers.

Sociocultural theory: we learn and extend our knowledge through social interaction. By seeing others’ points, we can improve or amend our own.

One way to do this is to have a flip chart paper sheet (butcher’s paper) on a wall with a discussion prompt written above. Have students walk up to the paper intermittently thought a lesson to write responses to the prompt. After the first few students write their responses, the rest of the students must respond not to the prompt but to the answers written by previous students – how can they add to or challenge what someone else has already said?
The second common way of having a silent conversation is to pass a piece of paper around the class and have students write their responses to conversation chains on the piece of paper.

A devil’s advocate is someone who argues for an opposing point of view in order to stir up an argument and poke holes in other points of view. The devil’s advocate does not necessarily need to believe the points they are arguing. Either the teacher or students can be the devil’s advocate I’m this teaching strategy.

Encourages students to see their own blind spots or misunderstandings.
Helps students to see a diversity of points of view.
Improves students’ debating skills.
Students and parents may interpret you devil’s advocate position as an attempt to teach unsavory views in the classroom.

Critical theory: A devil’s advocate can help students with skills desirable within critical theory, like seeing views of people who are not commonly heard in society and the capacity to critique dominant narratives in society.

The teacher can note in their lesson plan moments when they believe there are opportunities to play devil’s advocate role promote debate.
The teacher can give students debating points where one person acts as devil’s advocate and another as the person defending the dominant perspective.

Strategic pauses are one of the most important tools in a teacher’s toolbox of teaching strategies. A strategic pause is a gap between statements to let a point sink in or linger, or to give students a moment to think about an answer before the teacher moves on.

An excellent classroom management strategy
Encourages students to think and not rely on teacher prompting
Emphasizes important points
Can leave students confused
Requires follow-up and knowledge testing

Cognitive load theory: Too much information at one time can cause a student to lose track. Time is required for the mind to interpret, sort, stack, save and withdraw information in their mind (‘create cognitive schemata’).

Pause after a question for 10 seconds before discussing the answer.
If the class has started getting unsettled, often a pause in the teacher’s speaking is enough to settle them again and remind them to re-engage with the learning materials.
Slow speech with sufficient pauses between ‘chunks’ of information (seeL ‘chunking’ strategy) can help students arrange information in their minds appropriately.

Chunking involves presenting information in manageable ‘chunks’ to allow students to sufficiently process information before moving on to the next section of a lesson or task.

Teachers should present only a manageable amount of information to students before giving them a chance to consolidate the information and practice their new knowledge.

Without giving sufficient time to consolidate information before giving new information to a student, the student will struggle to keep up with the information and old information may fall away before it is secured into their memory.

Less students will be left behind, confused and disillusioned in the classroom if they are given consolidation time.
There is often not enough time in a crowded school curriculum to chunk information well enough.
It is hard to tell how much is ‘too much’ information, and how long is long enough before knowledge is consolidated into memory.

Cognitive Overload Theory: If students are given too much information, their mind becomes ‘overloaded’ and they are unable to process more information. We only have a limited amount of working memory space in our minds. See: John Sweller’s cognitive overload theory .

Only teach two or three key points per lesson.
Provide a lot of discussion and practice time before moving on to presenting new information.
Consistently use formative assessment and reflection in action during the lesson to see when is the ideal time to move on.

Snowball discussions are another twist on the think-pair-share method. For snowball discussions, students start in pairs and share their thoughts and ideas together. Then, the pairs join up with another pair to create a group of four. These four people share thoughts together, compare notes, debate ideas, and come up with an agreed list of points on a topic.

Then, groups join up again to make groups of eight. The groups of eight compare points and perspectives, then join up to create groups of 16, etc. until it ends up being a whole class discussion.

An effective strategy for promoting discussion between students. It can be useful for getting students to compare how different groups of students approach points from different perspectives.
The class group needs to be large (20+) for enough rounds of this strategy to happen.

Sociocultural theory: social interaction helps students see perspectives that are not their own and challenge their own views. This helps them pick holes in their own points and improve their misconceptions.

Yes, homework is a teaching strategy! A traditional approach to homework sees it as an opportunity for students to consolidate information that was taught in class. Studying for upcoming exams is often also an important part of homework.

Other homework strategies like flipped classroom are possible – see the flipped classroom discussion earlier in this article.

Help students to consolidate information learned in class.
Ensures students have an opportunity to keep information fresh in their minds and be reminded of information learned in previous months.
Excessive homework can impede students’ rights to enjoyment, sports and extracurricular activities out of school.
Students often do not have support at home if they get stuck.

Behaviorism: repetition over time helps memory retention.

Active listening involves using strategies to pay close attention to what someone is saying. Teachers can explicitly model active listening by giving students strategies like pointing their bodies at the speaker, keeping their eyes on the speaker, nodding when they agree, and putting hands up to ask questions or clarification.

Active listening encourages respect in the classroom.
It could help students to remember better because it minimizes distractions.
Students may be more likely to contribute questions if they are paying more attention.
Some students (such as students with autism) need stress balls, fidget toys, etc to help them concentrate.

Examples that show active listening include:

Facing the speaker square-on
Eye contact
Asking questions
Repeating, paraphrasing or summarizing the speaker’s statement.

The “connect, extend, challenge” teaching strategy is a three-step strategy designed to get student thinking about how their knowledge is progressing.

In step 1, students ‘connect’ what they’re learning to their prior knowledge. In step 2, students think about how the new knowledge ‘extends’ what they already knew. In step 3, students reflect on what ‘challenges’ they still face: what is still confusing to them?

This is a framework that gets students to explicitly think about how they are progressing in their learning.
The clear steps give students guidelines to help them achieve success.
Requires prompting and scaffolding

Social Constructivism: This strategy has implicit links to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. Students look at how their backgrounds impact their thinking, what level they are at, and what is still sitting in their ‘zone of proximal development’ (.e.g what they need to learn next).

Split a piece of paper into three columns to help students in this task: one column for ‘connect’, one for ‘extend’, and one for ‘challenge’.

While a seemingly simple activity, this instructional strategy gets students to refine the topic they’re exploring down to one simple sentence that catches the essence of the issue.

For this strategy, have students come up with a headline for the lesson as if they’re a journalist reporting on the issue at hand. Get them to think about how it can be catchy, explain the problem at hand, and provide an engaging ‘hook’ to draw readers in.

Helps students identify the key point of a lesson, forcing them to think about what is really important in the lesson.
Some issues are complex and refining it down to one sentence may risk simplification.

To extend this activity, have students write a journalistic piece to go under the headline.

Being transparent about a lesson objective is a teaching strategy designed to help students understand the purpose of the lesson. By knowing the objective from the outset, the students are less likely to get confused about the purpose and direction of their lesson.

Students are aware of the purpose of the lesson, which may make it more relevant .
Students can more objectively measure how successful they have been in the lesson.
Lesson objectives are often worded for adults not children, so the wording may just confuse the students at times.
Write your lesson objectives on the first slide of lecture slides if relevant.

Open-ended questioning involves asking questions that require an elaboration in the response. In other words, it cannot be a question that can be answered with “yes” or “no”.

Students are required to provide explanations and justifications for the points they make.
Teachers get a more detailed appreciation of students’ levels of knowledge .
Make a habit of using open ended questions when talking to students about their work.
Write all assessment tasks with open ended questions.
Pose open ended questions as stimulus prompts.

The fishbowl strategy gets a small group of students to sit in a circle in the center if the classroom with the rest of the class sitting in a circle around the group.

The students in the middle of the circle complete a discussion or task as a demonstration for the students observing.

Teachers can use advanced students in the middle of the group as a way of modeling skills or behaviors for the remainder of the class.
More knowledgeable students can model behavior for less knowledgeable students.
Students get a chance at performing in front of others.
Many students will find doing a task I’m front of their peers intimidating.

Bandura’s observational learning : Bandura argues that students can learn from observing the modeling of others.

Get older students from higher grades to sit in the middle of the fishbowl.
Or, use the fishbowl as the “we do” step in the I do, we do, you do method.

Use the four corners of the classroom as different stations for answering questions proposed by a teacher.

The stations may have answers like: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Another example may be periods of time for a history exam: the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Or, the corners may have specific answers in the corners related to the questions being asked.

This activity may be appealing for kinesthetic learners who want to move about to stay engaged.
Provides a visual comparison between different views of students in the class.
When students head to the corners, the teacher needs to ask students to explain their decisions to ensure depth is achieved in the lesson.

Multiple Intelligences: The lesson can help students who are kinesthetic learners.

This strategy involves getting students to trade ideas with one another.

Students write down their answer or thoughts to a TEACHER’S question. Then, they pair up. The students give their answer to their partner and take their partner’s answer. They discuss the differences between and merits of each answer.

Students then split up and find a new partner to repeat the activity.

Writing down an answer ensures all students participate and that all students provide an explicit response.
Seeing other people’s answers helps students get a broader perspective on a topic.
Pre-plan for what to do when you don’t have an even number of students in the class.

Sociocultural theory: students learn from their peers through discussion. Discussion can help broaden horizons and allows students to see multiple perspectives on an issue.

Present a discussion topic or question to the class.
Have each student write down 3 points on a piece of paper to answer the question.
Pair students up to discuss their answers. Get them to consider similarities and differences as well as pros and cons of each answer.
Have students break apart and trade answers in another pair.

Brainstorming involves asking students to come up with their initial thoughts on an issue. The thoughts do not have to be refined or correct. Instead, the students should use the brainstorming time to get their mind flowing and discussion started. Usually, this activity takes place using flip chart / butcher’s paper.

A good way to start discussion among students, especially if they don’t know each other well or are shy.
The students may need to assign some roles to group members. Consider rotating the role of ‘writer’ between students (usually one person writes an idea for the whole group on the brainstorming paper).
A good way of doing this activity is to place students in small groups and provide them a large sheet of paper to write down all their initial thoughts.
Students can then report all their thoughts back to the class.

The expert jigsaw method teaching method involves having students split into groups of ‘experts’ and then ‘topics’.

First, each ‘expert’ group focuses on a sub-area of a topic to develop their ‘expertise’ as a group.

Once the initial group work discussion has concluded, the ‘expert groups’ split.

The teacher then forms new ‘topic groups’ with one student from each of the original expert groups in the new groups.

The idea is that each group in the second part of the lesson will have an ‘expert’ on a particular area of a topic. Every expert will be able to contribute their perspective to the group

For example, if the topic is dinosaurs, the initial ‘expert groups’ may get together to discuss separate issues: Group 1 will discuss extinction, Group 2 will discuss bones, Group 3 will discuss diets, and Group 4 will discuss geographical locations.

When the ‘topic groups’ converge, they should contain one expert on extinction, one expert on bones, one expert on diets and one expert on geographical locations. The topic group will therefore have a broad range of expert knowledge to discuss and share.

Gives each student a sense that they have something meaningful to contribute because they will be an expert on something when converging in the ‘topic’ groups.
Encourages collaboration and positive interdependence in group work.
Requires forethought and organization by the teacher.

Social Constructivism: social interaction helps students construct ideas in their minds. Each student gets to hear the expert perspective of another student who is a ‘more knowledgeable other’, while also acting as the more knowledgeable other when it is their turn to share their expertise.

A KWL chart is a type of graphic organizer that can be used throughout the course of a lesson to help students keep track of their learning.

The chart can be on a simple piece of paper split into three columns: (K) What I already know; (W) What I want to know in this lesson; (K) What I learned.

At the start of the lesson the students can fill out the first two columns. The first column will help the teacher assess prior knowledge. The second column will help the teacher and students guide the lesson by outlining what they want out of it.

At the end of the lesson, the third column can be filled-in: (L) What I learned in the lesson. This helps students reflect on the lesson to show them that they did actually learn something!

Students can keep track of their own learning.
There is physical evidence of what was learned that teachers can use in students’ final report card comments and teaching portfolios.
It is a good structured tool to help guide a lesson.
It would be good if there was a fourth column for ‘what I still want to know’ so student can leave the lesson with more questions that can be addressed in future classes.
Students sometimes place topics in the (W) What I want to know column that are relevant but not covered in a pre-made lesson plan. This can require the student to get a bit creative in re-arranging their lesson on the fly.

A SWOT analysis is a teaching tool used to help students identify their own Strengths , Weaknesses , Opportunities , and Threats .

It is often used at the beginning of a term or unit of work to help students self-identify how best to proceed in their studies.

A SWOT analysis starts with a piece of paper split into four quadrants. The top-left has ‘Strengths’, top-right has ‘Weaknesses’, bottom-left has ‘Opportunities’ and the bottom-right has ‘Threats’.

There are plenty of templates online you could download also.

Students then fill out the SWOT sheet, identifying their strengths and weaknesses (e.g. ‘I am organized’ or ‘I am time poor’) and opportunities and threats (e.g. ‘I have the opportunity to work with my peers to improve’ or ‘I have an upcoming swim meet that will take up more of my time’).

Students are taught to self-assess and plan ahead to avoid upcoming challenges in their lives.
Students can balance affirming statements about their own skills with honest recognition of their weaknesses.
I often find students use generic phrases copied from their neighbors. It’s a good idea to insist on depth of engagement and thinking when doing this strategy .

Read aloud is a strategy that involves the teacher reading a text out loud to students. The strategy relies on the teacher using strategic pauses, pitch and tone changes, pace and volume changes, and questioning and comments. These reading aloud strategies help students to become more engaged in a lesson and get more out of the reading experience.

Can be more engaging than getting students to read to themselves.
By using strategic pauses and asking questions of students, the text can both be read and analyzed at the same time. This may improve comprehension.
I’ve found many pre-service teachers get nervous doing this task. Remember that people of all ages love being read to.

A SIT analysis asks students to list aspects of a lesson that were surprising, interesting and troubling. It is useful following the viewing of a short film or reading a book about a topic that seems bizarre or a fact that is counterintuitive.

Like a KWL chart, you could do this task by splitting paper into three columns: one for ‘surprising’, one for ‘interesting’ and one for ‘troubling’.

Gets students to take a critical stance and make judgements (particularly for ‘troubling’)
Is a good way to take stock of students’ interests in order to create follow-up lessons based on topics the students have already demonstrated concern for.
The ‘troubling’ part is often hard for students to complete – consider explicitly modeling a sample response before asking students to complete it alone.

Critical theory: students can use a SIT analysis to critique the justice or inequality issues presented in a text.

When writing a lesson plan, it’s often a very good idea to note any time you’re encouraging higher order thinking – especially if there’s a column in your lesson plan for ‘teaching strategies’. This help people reading the lesson plan to see that you’ve been intentional about promoting higher order thinking.

Following Bloom’s taxonomy, higher order thinking usually includes tasks that involve verbs like : Judge, Appraise, Evaluate, Compare, Criticize, Assess, Estimate, Deduce, Hypothesize and Generalize.

Helps a teacher to be more explicit in their language and to ensure a lesson is challenging for students.
Ensures students are practicing their critical thinking skills rather than just repeating a teacher’s ‘facts’.
For higher order thinking tasks, it’s important that you don’t give students the answers. Instead, give them hints, pointers and resources that will help them to come up with the answers on their own.

Constructivism: Bloom was a constructivist who believed learning happens when students build knowledge in their mind rather than just copying facts from an authority figure in the classroom.

Getting students to debate an idea is a great way of getting them to build coherent and logical arguments in defence of a position. It requires them to gather, analyze and sort facts before they present them to an audience.

Students learn to identify positive arguments on a topic even if they disagree with it, helping them to see things from multiple perspectives.
Students may require resources to do background research to come up with strong points for or against a position.
Split the class into two groups and assign each group a position for or against a statement.
Give each group 15 minutes to come up with some arguments for their side of the argument. Each student in the group should have one argument to make for the team. The student writes their argument down on a piece of paper.
Line the two groups of students up facing one another.
Go down the lines getting each student to make their point for or against the position. Zig-zag from one group to the next as you go down the line
Once the students have completed, do an anonymous poll of the class to find out which position is most convincing. For the poll, students do not have to vote for their team’s position.

Note taking involves getting students to actively listen out for key points in a speech or video and synthesize it into key points for remembering later.

A popular framework for not taking is the Cornell method. This involves splitting a page into two columns.

The column on the left is a ‘Cue’ column. In the cue column write key words, phrases or Quotes as if they were headings or headline points to remember.

The column on the right is the note taking column. This column is larger and allows space to add detail and diagrams explaining the ‘cues’ that were written on the left in more detail.

Turns passive learning during a didactic explicit instruction lesson into a more active learning environment.
Helps students organize and synthesize their thoughts.
Helps with studying for exams later on.
Teachers may talk too fast for students to take detailed notes. Remember to use strategic pauses and remind students at strategic times that they need to be taking notes.
Feel free to download cornell method worksheets off the internet. Just look for them on your favorite search engine!

Recording a lesson involves using either video, audio or Screencast technology to save the lesson for revision later on.

This method is very useful for students with learning disabilities who may require more time to process information. They can rewatch later on and make use of pause, rewind and slow functions during the revision.
Great for when students miss a day so they can catch up.
Whenever you work with technology, be prepared for issues to arise that may delay the lesson.
Use Screencasts when teaching a lesson online.
Screencasts can also save your work when writing on an Interactive Whitenoard. Revision at a later date will show the steps you took in doing the ‘working out’.

Word walls are sections on the walls of a classroom where teachers and students can record new vocabulary, quotes or key terms they encounter during a unit of work.

Word walls can be visible evidence of progression through a unit.
Students can refer to the word walls when trying to explain their points and ideas to the class.
During exams, remember to cover the word walls so students can’t cheat by looking over at the answers.
Word walls can be great props for refreshing students’ memories at the start of a lesson. Start the lesson by reviewing the vocabulary learned in the previous lesson.

Goal setting involves explicitly instructing students on how to set short (within a lesson), medium (within a unit of work) and long term (through the year) personal targets for success.

The goals can be for a whole group or individual.

Goal setting gives students something to strive toward.
It is a way of gamifying education. Students can challenge themselves to reach their step by step goals.
It helps students understand where they are headed and what the purpose of the lesson is.
Ensure goals are achievable lo that students do not become disillusioned.
Have students prepare their daily goals at the end of the previous day or start of the current day.
Reflect on medium-term goals weekly.

A worked example is a completed piece of work that students can look to as models for their own work.

A worked example could be a sample of a completed diagram our 3D model, a completed essay or anything else that is a finished product of something the students are about to attempt.

Students feel more secure knowing what they are working toward.
Students can get ideas from the worked sample that they can adapt for their Ken work.
Sometimes students copy the sample too closely rather than using their own thinking. Consider using a sample that requires similar skills and processes but a different end product.
Make sure you spend time discussing the steps it takes from going from nothing to the completed product.
Provide students with past examples of creative writing pieces and discuss the strategies used by the authors.
Show samples that are good and poor. Get students to discuss how the poorer samples could be improved.

Students have different learning styles (or more accurately, different learning preferences ).

One theory proposes that there are eight ‘intelligences’. A student may have one that is dominant and others that are weaker.

The eight intelligences are:

Visual-Spatial : Prefers learning through images and visual arts. Uses diagrams to model relationships between concepts.
Linguistic-Verbal : Prefers learning through storytelling, reading and writing.
Interpersonal : Good at working in social situations, gets energy from social interaction, and can empathize with others easily. Enjoys group work.
Intrapersonal : An introverted person who prefers learning alone. They do a lot of thinking and reading but mostly like to think through things in their own time (see: intrapersonal skills ).
Logical-Mathematical : Sees patterns easily. Enjoys mathematical puzzles.
Musical : Enjoys learning through music, songs and rhymes.
Bodily-Kinesthetic : Learns through movement. Prefers lessons that require moving about.
Naturalistic : Has an affinity with nature. Learns well in calm natural environments.

A teacher can integrate different activities into a lesson plan that appeal to different people’s learning preferences. In this way, they create a more inclusive classroom for multiple different types of learners.

Inclusion: Teachers can use this theory to engage students who do not learn well in traditional lessons.
Attempts to be student-centered and teach in ways that are appealing to students.
In 2004, a detailed study in Scotland found no evidence or scientific toxic basis for the theory that different people have learning styles. Furthermore, it argued that the 8 styles in the multiple intelligences model were a arbitrarily contrived. Thus, learning styles may simply be learning preferences.
It is unclear whether a teacher should create lessons catered to a student’s learning preference or help students strengthen their skills in areas students identify as their weaknesses.
If students are not given a chance to practice all “styles” (not just their preferences) they may miss important skills, such as mathematical skills or literacy skills.

Howard Gardner: The theory of multiple intelligences was invented by Howard Gardner in the United States.

Non-interventionism involves a teacher taking the role of ‘unobtrusive observer’ while students learn. The students are left to come to their own conclusions, face up to their own challenges, and ‘struggle’ through the lesson.

The teacher’s intervention may come through changing what they plan for the next lesson based on what they see, or lightly intervening after the students have struggled for some time.

Other reasons for intervention may be for safety or fairness reasons.

Struggling to find an answer is Important for learning. Students can make mistakes and learn why the mistakes are wrong instead of just being told what us correct.
Without a teacher imposing their views, students can come up with creative and thoughtful solutions to problems that the teacher dis not foresee.
Students develop independent minds.
Many parents and mentors watching your lesson may come away with a sense that you were lazy or did not do enough to help the students. This approach needs to be clearly explained and justified in lesson plans (I’d recommend referring to Montessori in your justification) and situations when you would go from observer to intervener should be spelled out in advance.
If students are struggling too much, learning may not occur – there is a limit to this approach!

Montessori Classrooms: The role of the teacher as “unobtrusive observer” was pioneered by Maria Montessori.

Montessori argued that children learn best when placed in resource rich environments and left to explore. Our interventions may impede creativity, self-belief, autonomy and self-discovery.

Constructive alignment involves explicitly linking the lesson assessment tasks to the compulsory learning outcomes in the curriculum.

This is an impressive thing to see in a lesson plan.

Use language (including verbs and nouns) from the learning outcome in the assessment task. Furthermore, make sure to provide a criteria for what constitutes pass or fail.

Teachers can easily justify their lesson choices to their boss or assessor.
The assessment tasks are always relevant and focused.
Students can see the relevance of the assessment task to their learning goals.
If the language of the curriculum objectives are complex or obtuse, it may just confuse students to use that language in their assessment task.

Biggs: Constructive alignment was invented by John Biggs who designed this method to ensure all lessons are relevant and move students a step closer to completing all learning outcomes.

The ‘ zone of proximal development ‘ is a phrase used to explain the ideal difficulty level for a lesson.

A lesson that is too easy won’t help a student progress.

A lesson that is too hard will disengage a student who just won’t be able to do the task.

But a lesson that is difficult but achievable with effort will push a student forward. These lessons that are just hard enough but not too hard are lessons in the “zone of proximal development”.

Students get lessons catered to their own needs.
There is always catered support for any student in the class.
By creating lessons that are always challenging, you are setting high expectations for all students.
Differentiation like this can lead to bug Differences in ability levels across the whole class.
You’re often under pressure to teach content that is too hard for students to meet standardized curriculum requirements

Sociocultural theory: Lev Vygotsky, one of the most famous educational psychologists, invented this approach to help teachers provide lessons that are at the right level for progressing a student’s learning.

Weave the ZDP into a lesson plan by stating that you will assess a student’s current ability then teach them the thing that is the logical next.step.
Another way to do this is create three student worksheets for three different ability levels. State in your lesson plan that you will assess each student’s ability and give them the appropriate worksheet. Each worksheet should build on the previous to help students move through their ZPD one step at a time.

Positive reinforcement is the use of praise, stickers, candy or other rewards to show students that they have done a good job.

Teachers can stack positive reinforcements so students can take steps to get small, medium and large rewards to encourage students to keep on trying and working hard consistently.

Students get clear signals to know when they have done well.
Students get encouragement to keep going and keep trying in order to get the reward.
Too much positive reinforcement can come across as insincere and lose students’ respect. Furthermore, students may become desensitized to praise if it occurs too much. Praise ‘scarcity’ makes occasional praise more valuable.
Explicit reinforcements are extrinsic motivation . The best sort of motivation is intrinsic motivation (wanting to do something for the pleasure of doing it). For more, see my full guide on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation .

Behaviorism: Positive reinforcement is believed to be beneficial for changing behavior over time. See: John Watson’s operant conditioning examples .

Sticker charts
A subtle nod or wink
Certificates and awards

Negative reinforcement involves the removal of a privilege, points or tokens when a student gets an answer wrong.

This is often confused with punishments. For me, negative reinforcements should not punish but be used in limited learning scenarios as part of the learning ‘game’.

An example might be losing points in a gamified lesson so the student is less likely to win against their opponents. Students know it is part of the game and not a punishment designed to distress the student.

Provides very clear messages to students about what is correct and incorrect, helping them to learn quickly.
Parents often do not like any negative reinforces, so be very careful to set clear guidelines and use this strategy in limited circumstances.
Be careful not to embarrass students in front of their classmates.

Behaviorism: Watson brought negative reinforcements into education, arguing that repeated use of them can change students’ behaviors.

Losing points in a class contest.
Failing a level in an educational computer game.

Drop everything and read (DEAR) involves getting students to stop what they are doing and read for 10 minutes.

It is a strategy that helps build students’ literacy skills (especially when students can choose their own book). However, it is also useful for helping students get more depth of knowledge on a topic being taught when you give them all an article or book to read to help them have more knowledge for subsequent parts of the lesson.

An effective way of getting students to spend intense time learning about a topic.
Helps integrate literacy into your daily activities.
There will always be a small group of students who squirm and struggle when asked to read. Consider alternatives like the Read Aloud strategy or using videos instead if DEAR doesn’t work for your class.
Make sure to follow up DEAR time with discussion and comprehension tasks.
Introduce a topic with initial information to engage the class.
Set a 10 minute silent reading task based on the topic.
Discuss what was read with comprehension prompts.

A gallery walk involves a teacher placing stimulus questions on flip chart paper (butcher’s paper) around the walls of the classroom.

The charts the teacher has put up are stations that students will stop at during the activity.

The teacher places students into groups. If there are 5 stations around the room, the teacher will create 5 groups.

Students get a set amount of time at each station to read the prompt questions. The students can write on the chart paper with their group response and also respond to other groups who have already written their points.

Once all students have rotated through the stations, the students end up back at the station where they began. The teacher the. gives each group 3 minutes to present to the class a summary of the comments written on the paper at their station.

Students get to learn from others and see other groups’ responses.
The students are up and moving about which may help the concentration of bodily-kinesthetic learners.
Some students may not participate fully. Consider getting students to rotate who writes on the paper at each station to mitigate this challenge a little.

Note whenever you would encourage metacognition in a lesson within your lesson plan. This will help anyone reading it know that you’ve thought about giving students strategies for “thinking about thinking”.

Metacognition is about thinking about how you think. Strategies include:

Thinking aloud
Writing your steps to reach an answer
Explaining your thought processes
Reflecting on your learning and considering faster ur more efficient processes
Helps students understand the processes required for thinking deeply about an issue.
Gives students the strategies and skills to learn any task, not just the ones at hand.
Metacognition is difficult because it requires explanation of your thinking. However, it is necessary if people want to know how to think .

Case studies are in-depth examples of an issue being examined. A case study should show how an issue or theory looks in real life. Teachers can present case studies through videos, newspaper articles, magazine articles, guests coming into the classroom, etc.

Case studies help students to see how theories and ideas look in real life. This can also help a student understand the relevance of the topic being studied.
A case study may help students make sense of a complex idea by putting it in real concrete terms.
Case studies might not be representative of a generalized issue – they may be outliers or flukes. Pick your case study carefully and discuss whether it is a typical or outlier sample.
A case study of city planning may be an innovative city that has recently been designed.
A case study in mathematics may include looking at the mathematics underpinning a famous bridge’s construction.
A case study during a unit of work on refugees might look at the experiences of one real-life refugee.

Educators can create ‘mystery’ in their classroom by carefully structuring lessons that give ‘clues’ to a mystery that needs to be solved by the students. Ask the students to act as detectives and place clues around the classroom (like a gallery walk). Have students move around the classroom taking notes on the mystery which will reveal an answer after thorough investigation.

Creates a sense of excitement in the classroom, helping students to engage.
Forces students to use critical, logical and lateral thinking in order to find the answer.
Ensure the mystery is not too far outside a student’s zone of proximal development so that the mystery can be solved.

Storytelling in the classroom involves teaching through narrative-style stories rather than telling (‘didactic learning’). Teachers can tell stories by reading books (see: Read Aloud strategy), turning a dry explanation into an allegorical story off the cuff, or bringing people into the classroom who have an engaging personal story to tell.

Stories can draw students into a topic through the creation of a sense of excitement and entertainment.

Steiner-Waldorf Schools: Rudolf Steiner called the teacher the ‘chief storyteller’ whose role is to create a sense of enchantment around learning through stories.

Invite guests into the classroom who have stories to tell.
Use stories that have a moral of the the story, then analyze the moralistic message.

Use newspaper clippings to link topics and theories to current affairs. Teachers can bring in recent newspapers to let students search through them for relevant stories or use old newspapers to search for how a topic was discussed in the past. Alternatively, teachers can get students to search for newspaper articles online.

Teachers could also assign reading through newspapers and bringing newspapers to class as a part of their homework.

Newspaper stories can show students how the topic being discussed plays out in real life.
They also show students how the topic is relevant to the present-day lives of people in the community,
Newspapers are increasingly uncommon – consider adjusting this to use online news sites and printing out articles from the web.
Some topics won’t have relevant news articles associated with them. Do a search in newspapers and online yourself for articles before using this teaching strategy.

Self-paced learning involves letting students progress from activity to activity in their own time. For this approach, a teacher lays out a list of 10 – 20 lessons that students can work on at their own pace. Students work on the activities while the teacher walks around and gives support.

Students are encouraged to reflect on their own learning development and only move on when they are confident that they have consolidated the knowledge from an assessment.
Less students will fall behind if the teacher doesn’t pressure them to move on.
Teachers have time to work one-on-one with students while students work away at student-led tasks.
Fast students will need extension tasks or personal projects to complete once they have finished and are waiting for slower students.
There is often not enough time for slower students to finish.

Visual aids are any objects used in the classroom to attract students’ eyes and therefore immerse them more into a lesson. Visual aids can have both cognitive benefits (see: cognitive tools) and engagement benefits.

Engagement: students are more likely to pay attention if they have something to look at.
Cognition: some students may benefit from visualizing a concept to help them order ideas in their minds.
Visual learning : some learners prefer learning visually than aurally (see: learning styles).
A visual aid needs an educational purpose. Consider why you are using the visual aid before deciding to use it.
Graphic Organizers
Educational toys (see: Manipulatives)

Related Article: 25 Teaching Styles Examples

These teaching strategy examples are clearly not the only ones out there – there are probably thousands! But, in my time teaching, these have been the most effective and common teaching strategies that I have come across. Use this teaching strategies list for your own lesson plans to demonstrate pedagogical knowledge and depth of understanding of how to educate a range of different learners.

Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Number Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Word Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Outdoor Games for Kids
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 50 Incentives to Give to Students

4 thoughts on “List of 107 Classroom Teaching Strategies (With Examples)”

this is valuable in my course production of Instructional materials in social studies. maraming Salamat!

Thank you very much for these valuable teaching strategies & techniques which can be used to enliven the classroom atmosphere, encourage students to do their tasks and learn more in the process. God bless!

As a student of Curriculum and Pedagogic Studies and also the Curriculum Lead in my school, this is best of resources I have had on the subject of teaching strategies. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much, these are very helpful and remind me that some of my teaching styles are already mentioned here.

19 More Lessons About Teaching

By Andrew Joseph Pegoda

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Previously in Inside Higher Ed , I provided 19 lessons that I’ve learned about teaching. (See here or here .) In no particular order, I’d like to share another 19.

20. Survey courses can be much more than surveys of the content and are a huge responsibility because they provide a last opportunity to reach students. As much as possible, I use the survey courses that I teach in United States, Texas, Mexican-American and African-American history as surveys of much more than hundreds of years of past peoples and events. More and more I strive to also provide a survey of various methodologies.

For example, for primary sources, we’ll look at a range of the traditional written sources, as well as films, music, objects, paintings, photographs and short stories. We’ll look at secondary sources that are based on an analysis of historical memory, oral history and archival sources at various points during the semester. We’ll look at articles concerned with environmental, religious, military, political and intellectual history and more. For actual face-to-face time, we use a mixture of learning through interactive lessons, watching and discussing documentaries, completing written assignments and group assignments, and listening to and discussing clips from songs and movies. Sometimes we focus on grassroots, sometimes the great men, sometimes the culture. We’ll even have a bit of chemistry or psychology or something else mixed in here and there, as it helps uncover ways to study the past.

I hope students get a survey of teaching methods, content and ways of studying appropriate primary and secondary sources. The survey is also a survey of ways to think and learn.

Required freshman- and sophomore-level survey courses demand that we cover a bunch of material in far too little time and provide essentially the last and only opportunity in an institution of higher education to show students how wonderfully complex, diverse and interesting our subjects are. After the vast majority of students take the required six credit hours in American history, they will never again take a history class and will likely never read another history book. I take seriously my only opportunity to show them how and why history is important and how and why anything and everything is history. While most students are not history majors and do not become history majors, so far my students say again and again that they leave my courses more aware of the history around them and embodied in everyday culture.

21. Teaching takes all of your time -- in the best way possible. Teaching does take real time as far as planning, actual teaching in the classroom or online, giving feedback on assignments and answering emails, but when I say teaching (and learning) takes all of my time, I mean something very different. Anytime I am doing anything, I am always consciously and unconsciously thinking of ways my current task could improve or influence how I teach or what I teach. I find myself at all sorts of random times, including in the middle of the night, thinking about something insightful a student said or pondering ways to reach so-and-so that seems to have an untapped spark for learning. Teaching is not a job or a career. It’s a life. For me, teaching never feels like going to work and always has the same (or more) excitement as if I were still taking classes myself.

22. Thrive on the deep satisfaction of teaching. Again and again while teaching, I find my aches, pains and worries evaporate. We all frequently have opportunities to open up and share personal details about our lives because the classroom is a safe place -- a safe place to learn new perspectives from each other, to discuss hot button issues and to ask deep, powerful questions. Laughing is fun and important, too. When it happens naturally, laughing is a great thing for helping a class bond and learn together. Sometimes the things that evoke laughter surprise me and make me laugh even harder! And college is one of the few places in society where deep, intellectual conversations are welcomed and celebrated instead of demonized.

23. Stick to your beliefs and instincts (within reason). There are always new studies saying something is effective and then another studying saying, “Wait, no.” You know what I mean. We must stay up to date, as much as possible, with new research in best practices, as well as research in the areas in which we teach. But at a certain point we have to stick with what works for us and our students. We should try new things, but each professor has a distinct personality and way of reaching students. If something works, it works.

24. A quiz can work wonders at getting students to read and understand the syllabus. I recently experimented with requiring my student in my online Texas history class to take a multiple-choice syllabus quiz before they could begin to work on any of the assignments or earn any grades. The quiz was in Blackboard. Students could take it as many times as needed until they earned a 100 percent, at which point they would see all the course materials appear.

This worked so well that I’ll be doing it in all of my classes from now on: I’ve received almost zero questions this semester about assignments, deadlines, policies and other “syllabus stuff.”

Questions on the quiz were very detailed and picky, per se, but were designed to get students to really look at everything in detail and to become familiar with the syllabus and to notice important or unusual aspects of it. For example, I had questions about late work, the font required for assignments and whom to contact with questions. The way the class is set up, it’s better to read Chapter 12, followed by Chapter 11, in one of the books -- so I made that into a question. Such an approach guarantees the syllabus is read and hopefully helps students internalize the most important information.

25. Twitter and Facebook don’t work (for me). A lot of professor friends incorporate assignments and online discussions into their classes where students use Twitter and Facebook with great success. But that has not worked for me so far. I still want to try it again sometime. Thus far, however, I find that students forget about it because it is still somewhat unusual to use social media for assignments, or they resist having their fun space cross over with school space. Oftentimes, too, they don’t have any social media accounts and/or don’t know how to use them and don’t have the desire to figure them out. Twitter and Facebook assignments also make the grading process much more difficult since everything is not automatically and easily together. The latest technology simply isn’t always needed (and sometimes is a hindrance!) for effective teaching and learning.

26. Blogs do work and work wonders. For over a year now, I have had some of my students create free blogs on wordpress.com in lieu of some more traditional tests and papers with great success overall. Blogging is important and interesting because it forces students to think differently. The Times New Roman size 12, double-spaced paper won’t work. They need images and tags and to have control over what their page looks like. Blogs work best when the topic is fully open-ended. In classes where students blog, I also always have them reply to blog posts from each other.

27. Teaching involves constant flexibility, trial and error, and change. Effective teaching requires near constant adaptability, boldness, change, determination and experimentation. I always enjoy the challenges, successes and failures of innovative teaching strategies. Likewise, we have to be flexible with ourselves, our classes and our students. I have a firm no-late-work rule that I seldom enforce because I understand students have busy, busy lives.

28. Effective discussion-based classes are tricky. My experiments with discussion-based classes are ongoing. Thus far, I find that discussion-based classes work best if you have a small class and all (or almost all) of the students are exceptionally strong -- who do everything required and more. Even then, I find that students don’t actually know enough (for the simple reason that they haven’t been studying said subject forever). I find discussions work best when we talk about one specific source, essay or thought question. I am still experimenting with these discussion roles .

29. Students don’t know how to read (or study). The difficulty students have with reading is one of the newest things I have learned and internalized. For some time I’ve realized students have difficulty pronouncing new words. (Due to dyslexia and slight hearing differences, this is something I too have struggled with and still do occasionally.) But I’ve only in the past few months realized that students have great difficulty sitting down, reading any kind of material and retaining that information. Lately, I spend more and more time giving advice for effective reading. With growing frequency, students understand exactly where they need to improve but struggle in unlearning strategies that were seemingly successful when they were given an automatic A on everything in high school.

30. Not every student will like you, and you can’t reach every student, every semester. Almost all professors want to reach every student and have a positive relationship with each one. This simply isn’t possible. There isn’t time. And not every student and professor will match. (The unpredictable, unscientific ways in which people get along well or not so well is one problem with programs that automatically match a student with a faculty mentor.) Additionally, some students at this historical moment are not in a place where they can thrive in college.

31. Being rested is tremendously important. Effective teaching requires not only sufficient sleep but also mental rest. On the days that I teach, from the time I start my car to the time I park it, 35 to 41 minutes have gone by. This is treasured time when I can prepare mentally. Before teaching, I try to avoid checking my email or talking with students about anything too serious, so I can keep my mind fresh. I like to have a bottle of water, too.

32. Mentoring students is a really important and fun part of teaching. Teaching and visiting with students outside of the classroom is fun and important -- just as important as inside the classroom. I love the conversations that I regularly have with students, whether they just need a friendly ear or some sort of career or academic advice. I especially enjoy staying in touch with students well after the formal end of the semester.

33. Students are busy from mental and physical exhaustion. Through talking with students, I’ve found that they are almost always too busy. Given society as it is in 2016, students face struggles of paying for an education that is more and more expensive, while also working and taking care of children and sick relatives. They are busy and tired. Society does not provide them the assistance they need. They are also tired from having been in school for 13-plus years by the time they reach college. They’ve never had a chance to breathe and play, or as Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus would say, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” More here .

34. Challenging students with ideas is just as important as challenging them with the word load and type of assignments. I’ve always been a big fan of challenging students as far as what I ask of them when it comes to reading and writing. Students continue to rise to these challenges. But I’m also increasingly realizing that college is an important time to challenge students in terms of the ideas and types of material they are exposed to. We have to allow time for the corresponding emotional demands of college.

35. Student overwhelmingly respond to the new and unusual more than anything else. Again and again, students respond best when I teach material in ways that are new and shocking. They are always fascinated when we talk about Christine de Pizan, lynching, or how Margaret Sanger advocated for birth control in part because she hoped it would cause black people to become extinct. Likewise, they are captivated by the songs “Ain’t No Bugs on Me,” “Atomic Power” and many others. Various film clips, paintings and photographs are always popular, too.

36. Low-stakes assignments can backfire when some students don’t take them seriously. Students sometimes see that earning a zero on that discussion or quiz will only hurt their grade by one or two points. The saddest part of this is they miss a learning opportunity, and even a teaching opportunity, since we all learn from one another. Additionally, they sometimes think that one too many times, and it ends up having more negative consequences. More here .

37. Students frequently don’t understand how grades correspond with their performance. Most of our current college students come from high schools where essentially no one ever earned a final grade below an A or never read a book, wrote a paper or did homework. Therefore, we need to explain even more what we are looking for and what is necessary for a college degree. More here .

38. Students can be tricked into talking louder (and doing other things). I frequently have trouble hearing students in the classroom, even when I am close to them. I know other students have trouble hearing their classmates talk. By walking farther away, instead of closer to, the person who is talking, I encourage them to talk louder, and then everyone can hear them. I have also just finished one successful experiment where students assign themselves work to do before the next class. With full freedom, these students assigned themselves a good amount, and for the first time in the semester, they all came to class fully prepared and having completed their work.

More information about my journey teaching can be found here and here .

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Professional development

Effective Teaching Strategies Used in Today’s Classrooms

August 7, 2019

Home Educators Blog

Effective teaching strategies are the methods, procedures, or various processes that an educator uses during classroom instruction. These strategies are the vehicle to which teachers drive their instruction to meet standards and reach their students’ educational needs.

Teachers need to have a wealth of knowledge in various teaching strategies and a bucket of these strategies to choose from. This helps educators engage their learners and keep their classrooms actively participating in the learning process. What role do teaching strategies play in classroom instruction, student learning, and what are some effective teaching strategies used in schools today?

The Role That Teaching Strategies Play in Classroom Instruction

Teaching strategies play an important role in classroom instruction. Without the use of a strategy, teachers would be aimlessly projecting information that doesn’t connect with learners or engage them.

Strategies help learners participate, connect, and add excitement to the content being delivered. As students become familiar with the various strategies teachers use, some can even apply those strategies independently as they learn new material.

Classroom Teaching Strategies Used in Today’s Classrooms

Differentiated instruction.

Every student that comes into your classroom is unique. They enter with different background experiences, different beliefs, and different interests. It should then come as no surprise that students have different ways of learning new material. That is why differentiation is so important. Differentiation provides personal learning strategies for every student. It gives students the opportunity to learn content in the way their brain learns best.

In reading, this can mean grouping students with others in the same ability level. It can also mean providing students with activities that best suit their learning styles. For example, some students may work on a word hunt while others are writing a summary, and still others may choose to draw a picture to show what they learned.

In math, differentiation is also very important. Some of your students may be learning two-digit addition while others may need to be enriched with three- or four-digit addition. Some students may need more hands-on manipulatives to learn the content, while others may prefer repetitive practice on problems. Regardless of how students learn, they need to be given the opportunity to have experiences with materials in a variety of ways and in the way that best matches their learning style .

Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world, meaningful, and personal projects. With this teaching strategy, students gain knowledge and skills over an extended period. Projects can last a few days or even span over the course of several weeks or an entire semester.

Throughout project-based learning, students are working on complex projects or trying to find answers to real-world problems. At the end of the project, they demonstrate their learning by showcasing their project to their classmates or the community. Project-based learning helps students gain knowledge and skills as they investigate authentic, engaging, complex, and challenging topics.

Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is another teaching strategy that many students can benefit from and truly engage with. It involves structuring your class work in a small group format where each group as an entirety succeeds, instead of just individual students. Many learners appreciate this format as it helps balance strengths and support weaknesses.

Some learners may contribute an artist mindset while others may be more outgoing, and some more academically inclined. When strengths from many students come together, the overall product is often greater than what may have been generated individually.

Experiential Learning

In the 1970’s, David A. Kolb helped develop the modern theory of learning called “experiential learning.” It is a process that cycles through an experience, a reflection, and a review of the experience. Learners participate in an experience, have time to reflect on it, then they engage in thoughtful thinking. This thinking is designed to provide time to draw conclusions and conceptualize the meaning of the experience, and finally they act on the students’ conclusions as they try out their learning.

While this may sound complicated, the process itself is something so natural that many people go through it without even realizing it . The more you practice this teaching strategy the more your students will become familiar with it and naturally apply it to other learning experiences.

Student-Led Classroom

A student-led classroom is just like it sounds; students take ownership in their learning and become leaders in their room. Teachers structure their classrooms so that students are a part of the process of establishing rules , creating consequences, and developing their classroom community. Student-led classrooms help students feel empowered and allow teachers to see what students fully know and understand.

Classrooms such as these help better develop a student’s communication skills as they learn to lead and speak in front of their classmates. Student-led classrooms are another great teaching strategy to put into place for any grade level regardless of being elementary, middle, or high school.

Inquiry-Based Learning

Inquiry-based learning is a unique teaching strategy that can pair well with many students’ learning style preference. It is a strategy where students follow methods and practices similar to scientists, exploring things they are interested in as they ask questions and evolve their learning as they go. Unlike the traditional classroom style of teachers presenting facts and knowledge about a subject, students take the reins as they unravel information and draw conclusions.

The strategy of inquiry-based learning has many realms including:

Students confirming answers using various methods — structured inquiry, open ended-questions, and a solution framework.
Students work in groups to determine the type of investigation they want to do as they work to answer a question. As students catch on to the format of inquiry-based learning they may come to really enjoy this learning strategy as well!

There are many effective teaching strategies that educators are using to engage their students and better connect them to their learning. By trying out strategies such as these, teachers can find the platform that best suits their student’s needs.

Looking to advance your career as an educator? Check out our 190+ available masters, doctorates, endorsements, and certifications to today!

*Updated September 2022

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Strategies in Teaching Academic Essay Writing, Level of Effectiveness, and Instructional Barriers: The Case of Filipino Learners

2023, World Journal of English Language

This study about academic essay writing strategies was conducted in order to propose teachers' lesson guide based on the effective strategies that were ascertained after the investigation. The study used the descriptive-quantitative method of research. The University-approved questionnaire was used to identify the frequency of use of the strategies utilized in students' essay writing activities. There were 126 students and 20 English teachers in Cebu City, Philippines, used as the respondents of the study. It was discovered that the three academic essay writing strategies investigated in the study were always used in both argumentative and informative essay writing, as perceived by the respondents. The first two strategies, traffic light color coding, and planning using informal outline, were found to be very effective in both writing the argumentative and informative essays, while the third strategy, framed paragraph, was also effective to use in both writing the two types of essays. The strategies used, and the students' performance showed a significant relationship. The top barriers in teaching academic essay writing were as follows: teaching essay writing to second language learners, lack of time for explicit instruction, no strategies in place for the part of the students, lack of parental support, and lack of essay structures on the part of the teachers. It was concluded that there were various effective pedagogical strategies that teachers could utilize in teaching academic essay writing. Based on the findings, this study further presents its recommendations.

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PATIENCE IGUBOR

Writing is a tool for communication and learning.However, students’ performance in essay writing in Nigeria has been poor. This under-achievement has been traced to ineffective methods and strategies. Literature reveals that most studies focused on innovative ways to improve students’ achievement in essay writing without attention to essay structure-based instructional strategies. This study, therefore, determined the effects of two modes of Essay Structure-Based Instructional Strategies (ESBIS) on students’ achievement in argumentative and expository (cause/effect) essays. The moderating effects of vocabulary knowledge and attitude to essay writing were also examined. The study adopted a pretest-posttest, control group, quasi-experimental design using a 3×2×3 factorial matrix. Two Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Benin City were randomly selected. Three public secondary schools from each LGA were purposively selected while two intact SS II classes were randomly assigned to each of ...

Educational Research and Reviews

Syahrul Munir

Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Languages and Arts (ICLA-2019)

Desvalini Anwar

The aim of this empirical study is to explore O level English language teachers' perceptions regarding teaching practices and methods used in teaching English essay writing. The population of study comprised O Level English language teachers (N=131) schools of Karachi. Through simple random sampling technique, data were collected from (n=58) participant schools which forms approximately 44% of the targeted population. Total sample size was n=73 (n=22 male and n=51 female) teachers. To carry out the cross sectional survey of the chosen sample, two instruments i.e., Factors Affecting English Essay Writing for Teachers (FAEWT) and teachers' structured interviews were developed to collect the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Data were tabulated, calculated, analyzed, and interpreted through SPSS Version 20, in the light of objectives of the study, and the research hypotheses. Central tendency i.e. mean and measures of dispersions i.e. Standard Deviation and t-test were used for testing hypotheses. Results revealed that students were lacking in understanding the principles of English grammar, difficulty in word spelling and use of punctuation marks in writing essays. On the basis of these findings, it is recommended that Cambridge-affiliated schools' management should provide Cambridge professional development training to teachers continually and also provide well-furnished library, language laboratory and classrooms so that teachers can provide quality input to develop students' written discourse. This study plays an important role in contributing to researchers, policy makers, curriculum developers, teachers and students to enhance students' skills of writing an essay with no errors and coherently.

English Language Teaching

Nicola Walshe

This paper tries to shed light on the use and endeavors teachers bear in correcting students writing papers without achieving good results to improve their writing. This theoretical research or reflection of this paper attempts to explore the reasons why some teachers sometimes feel that their teaching of writing is worthless since they spend a lot of time commenting and writing marks on students corrected papers and still many students do not get better or improved.

Janet U . Mejos

Writing is one of every vital macro skill in English. It has been a part of the assessment tool utilized by the teachers in assessing the performance of the learners. However, students encountered problems in expressing their thoughts in writing, others don't have unity or coherence of their ideas, as well as the grammars and writing system even they are given enough time to answer. This study identified the level of performance in writing an essay among secondyear Bachelor of Secondary Education major in English students in terms of knowledge of conventions, clarity and coherence, and rhetorical choices. It described the profile of the students in terms of age, sex, and writing experience. A descriptive design with Four-Point Likert Scale, Scoring Guideline/Rubric, Frequency, Percentages, Mean, and ANOVA were utilized. The findings revealed that the respondents' age is 19-20 years old, the majority is female, and onehalf of them have no writing experience. The extent of the performance in writing an essay among them was "competent." There is no significant difference in the level of performance in writing an essay of the respondents when grouped according to their profile. Moreover, the study's findings suggest that the importance of going back to the basics is necessary emphasized. The basics or the foundational lesson in writing will be considered from the Parts of Speech to the making of sentences and paragraphs. Hence, it is suggested that students will practice writing and reading as often to widen their perceptions, knowledge and to improve their grammar, technicalities, and content organization. Also, teachers are encouraged to incorporate basic skills in writing an essay in the different courses and may utilize various approaches and strategies suitable to the needs of the learners. Furthermore, the administrators may provide projects and programs that could cater to students' performance in writing like conducting seminar workshops and training in writing for students.

JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies)

Writing essay is still considered difficult for English students to master. The students are expected to be able to express their ideas correctly without making any chance of messages to be misinterpreted by the readers; therefore, they have to know and use the best or the most appropriate ways to write. The purpose of writing this article is to introduce learning strategies and the possibility of training of learning strategies in writing essay to English students. The first strategy is integration of strategy with the process of writing essay: pre-writing, writing draft, and post-writing activities. The second is training learning strategies, such as memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies to students to make writing essay easier, faster, more enjoyable, more effective, and more self-directed to achieve the desired result in their writing. To get better result of improvement, the model of training of learning strategies in writing essay should be applied and developed based on the appropriateness of teachers, learners, subjects, and situations.

Mansoor Ali

AL-ISHLAH: Jurnal Pendidikan

Naniana N I M R O D Benu

Academic wiring is one of the essential skills in academic writing, and it is vital to support students' self-development through opinion writing, grant essay writing and others. This study explores students' difficulties in writing English academic essays and the dominant challenges by using a mix-method approach. The qualitative is used to collect data, while the quantitative is used to find the difficulty percentage—the data analysis uses indicators from Brown (1999). The sample of this study was 30 students in the fifth semester of the English Education Study Program at Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana. The results showed that students still experienced serious difficulties in four aspects of academic writing; content, organization, discourse and mechanics. The most dominant difficulties (97%) were found in; 1) thesis statement; 2) related ideas; 3) development of ideas; and 4) use of description/cause and effect, comparison/contrast; 5) effective introduction; 6) topic ...

European Journal of Foreign Language Teaching

Bui Thi Thu Trang

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties faced by English-majored students in writing academic essays. To collect the data for the investigation, the sample involved was twenty-seven English-majored students who have been studying English as their specialization at a public university in Vietnam. The instruments of this study conducted a mix-method as a qualitative and quantitative approach. To achieve the purpose of this study, the questionnaire was administered as the quantitative data collection and the semi-structured interview as the qualitative data collection. Then, five of the total participants were randomly interviewed to gain insight ideas of the difficulties that they face when writing academic essays in their writing course. The results of this study demonstrated that the majority of students had obstacles related to insufficient linguistic knowledge namely, lexicon-grammar, vocabulary, and the structure of sentences. The findings from the interview...

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Abdul Rahim Hj Salam , Fauziah Ismail , Saralathulasi Sara

Journal of Language Teaching and Research

Jamila Al Siyabi

English Review: Journal of English Education

Teaching as a Profession: The Strategies to Improve Efficiency

Categories: Teacher Teaching Teaching Philosophy

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Words: 1813 |

10 min read

Published: May 17, 2022

Words: 1813 | Pages: 4 | 10 min read

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2005). The systematic design of instruction. Allyn & Bacon.
Gagne, R. M. (2013). Instructional technology: Foundations. Routledge.
Pollard, A., & Collins, J. (2005). Reflective teaching. A&C Black.
Reflective practice. (2005, August 29). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 4, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice#cite_ref-Shapiro_18-0
https://www.mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf
https://ncert.nic.in/pdf/nc-framework/nf2005-english.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice#cite_ref-Shapiro_18-0

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EDMH200 - Supporting Teacher Mental Health: The First Five Years

Unit rationale, description and aim.

Early career teachers experience overlays of different stressors as they learn about school culture, their role and identity as a teacher and of teaching practice. Research identifies links between teacher well-being and student academic achievement as well as identifying the stressors of competing priorities such as ensuring academic excellence, preparation for external tests, sociocultural inequity and access to digital technologies as well as attending to student well-being.

The unit focuses on using evidence-based, researched-informed practice to develop an understanding and a repertoire of skills to navigate the challenges of early career teaching stresses. Students will be challenged to consider how their attitudes and beliefs about mental health are formed and how an accumulation of stressors develop burnout. Pre-service teachers are encouraged to develop strategies to work collaboratively with their colleagues, students, local communities and other professionals to build whole-of-community networking to reduce and decrease potential stresses as well as improving teachers’ lifelong learning, outcomes and wellbeing. Through examining factors leading to burnout, students develop workload and time management strategies to decrease stressors to develop robust mental health.

The aim of the unit is to encourage pre-service teachers to become aware of potential stressors, the duty of care to self and students, and the teaching code of conduct. Further, the unit seeks to build a pragmatic mindset and offers strategies to manage and mitigate the impact of teaching stressors.

Campus offering

Find out more about study modes .

Unit offerings may be subject to minimum enrolment numbers.

Please select your preferred campus.

Semester 1 Online Scheduled

Prerequisites

Learning outcomes.

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table. Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact. Explore the graduate capabilities.

Identify the most common school and classroom-base...

Learning outcome 01, describe the professional, collegial factors that ..., learning outcome 02, research, reflect and analyse the experiences of e..., learning outcome 03.

Topics will include:

Relationship between teachers’ mental health and student well-being and academic achievement.
Attitudes and beliefs about mental health and how our attitudes are formed.
Attitudes about difference, stigma and impact of attitudes on others.
Identity and role formation as a teacher: The influence of societal beliefs and social media.
Contemporary understanding of mental health including classifications of needs and non-categorical approaches.
Philosophy and contemporary, consumer-led research underpinning mental health.
Impact of classroom life and other stress factors in the first five years of teaching.
Promotion, workload, burnout and impact on teachers’ mental health.
Consideration of support services and strategies available to early-career teachers.
Time management and communication strategies with children and families to reduce conflict.
Teachers’ code of conduct and duty-of-care.
Relevant legislation and policy including Human Rights, Anti-Discrimination, Disability Standards, Nationally Consistent Data collection, support strategies, legislation and policy to ameliorate burnout and support teachers’ mental health.

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment tasks and their weightings are designed to allow pre-service teachers to progressively demonstrate achievement against the course learning outcomes by demonstrating attainment of academic and professional standards and develop graduate attributes consistent with university assessment requirements. The three assessment tasks are designed to build and increase an understanding of work-place environments and work-place stress which can be relieved by collegial networks and the development of workload and time management strategies.

The first assessment task, a visual essay draws on the students’ pedagogical knowledge to identify and examine the most common impacts on teacher’s mental health. The second, group-based task requires collaboration with peers to research how and why collegial networks support teachers and their mental health during difficult teaching and work-place situations. The third utilises the knowledge and understanding acquired from AT1 and AT2 so students can construct a self-care plan that considers research-identified strategies that protect and strengthen mental health.

Minimum Achievement Standard

The assessment tasks for this unit are designed to demonstrate achievement of each learning outcome. In order to pass this unit, students are required to complete all assessment tasks and gain an overall pass result.

Electronic Submission, Marking and Return

Electronic submission and marking of assignments through Turnitin.

Overview of assessments

Assessment task 1: visual essay with 5+ selected....

With 5+ selected photos or images write an annotated photo essay that reflects knowledge of educational learning theories to explore your understanding of the key factors that impact the mental health of an early career teacher.

Assessment Task 2: Group task Media Representatio...

Using a range of literature, construct media content that examines the benefits of developing and maintaining social and collegial networks for positive mental health and well-being.

Assessment Task 3: Writing Task Care Plan with Ra...

Care Plan with Rationale

Analyse current literature and develop a rationale for, and an action plan of holistic self-care appropriate for early career teachers in a post-pandemic world.

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

Learning and teaching strategies include lectures, tutorials, review of resource material provided and group discussion and individual self-paced activities.

This is a 10-credit point unit and has been designed to ensure that the time needed to complete the required volume of learning to the requisite standard is approximately 150 hours in total across the semester. To achieve a passing standard in this unit, students will find it helpful to engage in the full range of learning activities and assessments utilised in this unit, as described in the learning and teaching strategy and the assessment strategy.

Technology Enhanced Learning

Lectures and tutorials will be offered in synchronous time, but will be recorded for students unable to attend the scheduled sessions. Students will be notified via Canvas when the lectures and tutorials will be held, their Zoom links and when the recordings will be uploaded. Additionally, the self-paced activities with links to digital resources will be available on the Learning Management System.

AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS - GRADUATE LEVEL

On successful completion of this unit, pre-service teachers should be able to:

APST Graduate level standards (delete those not applicable)


3.3 Include a range of teaching strategies.
3.7 Describe a broad range of strategies for involving parents/carers in the educative process.
4.3 Demonstrate knowledge of practical approaches to manage challenging behaviour.
4.5 Demonstrate an understanding of the relevant issues and the strategies available to support the safe, responsible and ethical use of ICT in learning and teaching.
6.1 Demonstrate an understanding of the role of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in identifying professional learning needs.
6.3 Seek and apply constructive feedback from supervisors and teachers to improve teaching practices.
6.4 Demonstrate an understanding of the rationale for continued professional learning and the implications for improved student learnings.
7.1 Understand and apply the key principles described in codes of ethics and conduct for the teaching profession.
7.2 Understand the relevant legislative, administrative and organisational policies and processes required for teachers according to school stage.
7.3 Understand strategies for working effectively, sensitively and confidentially with parents/carers.
7.4 Understand the role of external professionals and community representatives in broadening teachers’ professional knowledge and practice.

ACECQA Curriculum Specifications

On successful completion of this unit, pre-service teachers should have developed the following specific knowledge:

Standards/Attributes/Criteria

A6 diversity, difference and inclusivity

B4 language and literacy

B6 social and environmental education

B8 physical and health education

C1 alternative pedagogies and curriculum approaches

C7 contemporary society and pedagogy

D1 developing family and community partnerships

D2 multicultural education

D3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives

D4 socially inclusive practice

D5 culture, diversity and inclusion

E2 contemporary theories and practice

E3 ethics and professional practice

F3 professional identity and development

F4 advocacy

Representative texts and references

Sydney Catholic Schools, (2021). The code of professional conduct https://sydcatholicschools.nsw.edu.au/policies/code-of-professional-conduct

NSW Department of Education (2021) Code of conduct https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-accountability/department-of-education-code-of-conduct

Aldrup, K., Klusmann, U., and Ludtke, O. (2017) Does basic need satisfaction mediate the link between stress exposure and well-being? A diary study among beginning teachers. Learning and Instruction . 50 (8): 21-30.

Cross, D. (2017). Teacher wellbeing and its impact on student learning, The University of Western Australia. Telethon Kids Institute .

Everymind, (2017). Start Well: A research project supporting resilience and well-being in early career teachers. University of Newcastle, Teachers Health Foundation.

Goddard, R., and Goddard, M. (2006). Beginning teacher burnout in Queensland Schools: Associations with serious intentions to leave. The Australian Educational Researcher. 33 (2): 61-75.

Harmsen, R., Helms-Lorenz, M., Maulana, R., and van Kleen, K. (2018). The relationship between beginning teachers, stress causes, stress responses, teaching behaviour and attrition. Teachers and Teaching . 24 (6).

Hogan, J.P., and White, P.J. (2021) A self study exploration of early career teacher burnout and the adaptive strategies of experienced teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education . 46 (5).

Makhdoom, I.F., Atta, M., and Malik, N.I. (2019). Counterproductive Work Behaviours as an outcome of job burnout among high school teachers . Bulletein of Education and Research , 41 (2): 79-92.

Mclean, L., Abry, T., Taylor, M., Jimanez, M., and Granger, K. (2017). Teachers’ mental health and perceptions of school climate across the transition from training to teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education , 65: 230-240.

O’Brien, P., Goddard, R., and Keeffe, M. (2008). Burnout confirmed as a viable explanation for beginning teacher attrition. A Report for University of Southern Queensland.

Seidman, S.A., and Zager, J. (1991). A study of coping behaviours and teacher burnout. Work and Stress, 6 (3); 206-216.

Credit points

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COMMENTS

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