Instructional Strategies

Overview:
WEBSITES for Ideas:

• Creating Life Long Learners

PURPOSE:
TEACHER STRATEGIES:

1. Graphic Organizers / Thinking Templates

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT:

Cooperative Learning videos:  Cooperative Learning Strategies - good ideas/weird animated video!
1. 10 Steps to Better Engagement from Edutopia - excellent tips.

2. Article from Education.com

3. Quick article. Notes from article:
To get more engagement: Learning time in the school day has been divided into four categories: (a) scheduled time - the amount of time the teacher plans to spend on various subjects; (b) allocated time - the amount of time actually devoted to the learning activities; (c) academic engaged time - the time students are actually on-task in a learning activity (e.g, taking notes, listening to teacher, solving a problem); and (d) active academic responding time - the time a student spends making responses that are active and observable (e.g., discussing tasks).
What gets in the way of engagement?poor learning design and poor classroom management.


1. An essential question (frames students' reading and thinking)
2. cluster questions (unit questions - tie the unit selections togther and helps students relate to essential question
3. Thinking skills - directly tuaght and applied throughout unit
4. End-of-cluster activities - help students synthesize what they hare learned
5. Writing prompt -
6. Assessment options - essay test, vocabulary quizzes, rubrics for individual projects, WIDA- PMIs

Teachers:
1. activate pk
2. model and teach thinking skils
3. develop thematic vocabulary
4. use writing to integration literature and thinking skills
5. assess students' knowledge using appropriately differentiated assessments - WIDA's PMIs


Rereading Classroom Instruction that Works (Marzano) after all this training is really interesting!!!

Key aspects of teaching and learning:

1. Creating the environment for learning
   1. Setting objectives 
   2. Providing feedback based on objectives
   3. Reinforcing effort
   4. Providing recognition
   5. Cooperative learning - provide opportunities to interact with one another in ways that enhance their learning  (Goal:  connect students to teachers and one another in productive ways)
2. Helping students develop understanding (reflection and communication)
   1. cues, questions and advanced organizers - enhance their ability to retrieve, use, and organize what they already know about a topic.
   2. Nonlinguistic representations - enhance students' ability to represent and elaborate on knowledge using mental images
   3. Summarizing and note taking - ability to synthesize information and organie it in a way that captures the main ideas and supporting details.
   4. Assigning homework and providing practice (fluency) - extend the learning opportunities for student to practice, review, and apply knowledge.
3. Helping students extend and apply knowledge - enhance students understanding of and ability to use the knowledge by engaging them in the mental processes that asks them to...
   1. Identify similarities and differences
   2. Generating and testing hypostheses

Teachers move beyond teaching content to teaching students how to learn!

The process of acquiring and integrating information:

1. construct meaning / construct a model of steps required of the process or skill
   1. recall PK
   2. make and verify predictions
   3. correct misconceptions
   4. fill in unstated information
   5. identify confusing aspects of knowledge
2. organize and store information
   1. by recognizing patterns in the information
   2. store si most effectively by creating a mental image of it.
3. Develop a conceptual understanding of the process and understanding
4. Practicing its variations
5. Using the process or skill fluently or without much conscious thought
6. *move byond "right answer" learning to an expaned understanding and use of the concepts and skills in real-world contexts
   1. more flexible and efficient in using twhat they have learned
   2. Complex reasoning prcesses

21st Century Skills:

1. set personal learning goals,
2. self-check for understanding
3. access tools and resources for enhancing thier understanding
4. use what they have learned in real-world contexts.

Conley emphasizes that students develop these skills over time through intentional practice and use, and the skills ultimately lead students to "think about the world in complex ways" (xix).

good relationships:

• care about students as people and learners
• hold high expectations 
• convey tehse expectations to their students
• help students meet those expectations
• design learning activities that are workth students' efforts
• relevant to their lives
• require higher-order thinking
• warm and empathetic
• establish a sense of community
• respect students and stduents respect thema nd each other
• GROWTH MIND SET - effort = growth
• help to develop mental determiniation to continue improving and learning