Instructional Strategies for Effective Teaching. James H. Stronge

Appropriate Not Appropriate Efferent Questioning the author This strategy aims to engage students deeply in the process of deriving meaning from text and in questioning the author’s position as an expert. The teacher encourages students to pose queries to the author while reading a given text rather than after reading. The queries may look like “What is the author trying to say?,” “Why does the author use the following phrase?,” or “Does the author explain this clearly?” Appropriate Not Appropriate Instructional conversation This strategy resembles a paradox. It is instructional and aims to promote learning but is also conversational in quality, with natural and spontaneous language interactions free from the didactic characteristic of language normally used for teaching. In the instructional conversation, the teacher listens carefully, makes guesses about students’ intended meanings, and adjusts responses to help students better construct knowledge. Appropriate Not Appropriate Junior great books Students work with complex ideas and rigorous texts to develop skills in reading, thinking, and communicating. They use interpretive discussions and construct inferential and thematic meanings from the text. Appropriate Not Appropriate Expressive Literature circles A group of four students selects a book to read. The teacher assigns each member one of the four roles: (1) discussion director, (2) literary luminary, (3) vocabulary enricher, and (4) checker. In this way, all students are involved deeply in the process. Appropriate Not Appropriate Grand conversation This strategy involves authentic, lively talk about text. The teacher initiates the discussion with a big, overarching question or interpretive prompt. The talk pattern is conversational, and the teacher provides authentic responses to students’ statements. Appropriate Not Appropriate Book club Students choose what to read and establish their own schedule for reading and discussing books. The key for this strategy is having students read for the sheer joy of it. Appropriate Not Appropriate

      Source: Adapted from Murphy, P. K., Wilkinson, I. A. G., Soter, A. O., Hennessey, M. N., & Alexander, J. F. (2009). Examining the effects of classroom discussion on students’ comprehension of text: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(3), 740–764.

Socratic Seminar Rubric

Student Self-Assessment of Discussion

      The goals for this discussion were:

      1.

      2.

      3.

      How well did I achieve these goals?

      The most rewarding thing about this discussion was:

      The most challenging thing about this discussion was:

      The next time I am part of a similar discussion, I will make the following changes.

      Chapter 2

       Concept Attainment

      Zero and absolute zero—these are complicated concepts to master for young learners and old learners alike. To help them, effective teachers continually seek ways to make connections among relevant concepts. Grouping, organizing, categorizing, sense making—in essence, developing concepts for understanding the world—are critical aspects of learning for all students, and effective teachers understand the importance of concept building for any subject and in any context.

      A concept can be defined as “a set of specific objects, symbols, or events that are grouped together or categorized on the basis of shared characteristics, called attributes” (Holt & Kysilka, 2006, p. 309), so one can think of concepts as the building blocks of education. An effective teacher aims virtually everything he or she does at developing student understanding of a concept and then applying and building on those concepts. In that vein, this chapter explores concept attainment as an instructional method to help students develop skills for inductive and deductive thinking while learning subject matter in a constructive and meaningful way.

What Research Says About Concept Attainment

      The research interest on concept attainment started in the 1980s. Robert Tennyson and Martin Cocchiarella (1986) find that concept attainment not only helps students learn subject content but also helps them acquire procedural knowledge and metacognitive skills. Specifically, they summarize the following four methods of research-based teaching concepts.

      1. Definition: Provide or develop a rule or generality that verbally states the structure of the critical attributes. (Example: Provide the best examples of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock, and provide direct definitions.)

      2. Expository instances: Present and explain how to systematically classify examples and non-examples according to variable attributes, thereby making statements to elaborate on the concept. (Example: Explicitly direct students to compare and contrast the examples of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock.)

      3. Interrogatory instances: Use questioning to encourage a compare and contrast approach, direct students to identify examples and non-examples, and have them make inferences about the concept by themselves. (Example: Prompt students to categorize the rocks into igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic groupings based on their knowledge of best examples.)

      4. Attribute

Скачать книгу