teaching strat

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Teaching Strategies

These vignettes show you different strategies I use in my classes. Though some are specfically identified by class (e.g., Reading Workshop or Freshman Honors English), they are techniques that are appropriate for all classes.


Notetaking Strategies Graphic Strategies Discussion Strategies Teaching Strategies


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Title Talk: Prereading that focuses on the title of a literary text gets students thinking about the text to come. Such thinking teaches them how to generate ideas, make connections and predictions. Here is a recent example form an initial discussion of Lord of the Flies.


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Use Visual Aids to Improve Instruction: I copy most of the different Tools for Thought onto transparencies. Depending on the activity, I project the organizer onto the whiteboard or the overhead screen. Here you see it projected onto the whiteboard so I can model for them how to fill in the outline. I used the graphic organizer to take notes for what we were doing that day; then had my Reading Workshop students do the same so they could improve their notetaking skills.


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Involve the Students in the Assessment Process: My students and I created this rubric through collaboration. They came in with their papers (Weekly Paper assignment) then got into groups. They were supposed to read through and identify the important areas of a good paper and the criteria for each category. I used the board to take notes on what they said and provide structure to the discussion. I then used these notes to create the rubric we used for the Weekly Paper.
Click here to see students creating the criteria outlined on the whiteboard in the image to the left.



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Classroom Connection: I am often asked what my classroom computer set up is. This is what it looks like. It is an iMac DVD edition with a T-1 Internet line and supporting connection to the overhead monitor. This meets most of our needs. Students can, for example, do work elsewhere and send it to the class computer (room82@englishcompanion.com) to print or present.





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Use the Board: Though it will not make much sense here, I wanted to include this example of my use of the board. We were discussing how one chapter in a book can build on or be related to the previous one and/or those which came before it. The image here is one I draw as I talked; thus I used the board to support/narrate what I was saying. The arrows are meant to show how themes (e.g., change) run throughout the stories we were reading. "Kim," "Ana," and "Wendell" refer to (and the boxes represent) different stories/chapters in the book Seedfolks. When the next class comes in, I erase this and start over. I find it does not work to refer to it as a static drawing/diagram in subsequent periods. Also, the act of drawing it makes the teaching more active and makes my thinking more visible.


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Use Multiple Means to Deliver Instruction: In the picture below I am using the overhead to model how to do an assignment in my reading workshop. I photocopied the assignment to a transparency and modeled how to do the assignment. Then I had them try one. We discussed what they came up with, critiqued their responses, then continued for independent practice while I moved around to support them. So students have information to help them on this assignment on the whiteboard, on the overhead, on their handouts, and through my voice. This is not what we do every day. I only use so many modalities when teaching something specific which they need to process by multiple means if they are to learn it.


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Use Reciprocal Teaching: These students in my freshman honors English class work together (as everyone else in class is doing) to read, discuss, and make notes using a graphic organizer designed to help them learn who all the characters are. The novel Jasmine, which we read as part of their integrated world cultures course (taught by the Social Studies teacher), has many characters, jumps in time, and shifts in location. I used reciprocal teaching here to allow students to get a solid understanding who is who and how the text works before moving ahead in the text. Setting up a good foundation early on prevents confusion and problems later.



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Use Student Exemplars; In my freshman honors English class we have worked hard to learn how to read more closely. Each Friday I give them a poem (click here to see an example of one of the weekly poem assignments, complete with alignment to the standards-ooh!) Periodically I take students' responses and type them up as examples for the others. We discuss these to determine why they are good; students then have examples of what I expect them to do and, generally, their work improves that week. Then a few weeks later I will take a few more examples from the best and try to move them up a notch. This is what I refer to in English Teacher's Companion as the continuum of performance: i.e., moving them from novices to mastery . Click here to download a pdf. example of these exemplars from early in the year (i.e., I tell them these would not be strong examples a month later.)

Learn with Your Hands: Here you see a well organized paragraph that has been cut up into individual sentences. My Reading Workshop students have been focusing on paragraph organization and the organization or information; this work builds on that learning. They read a story and, as part of our focus on reading for character, wrote a paragraph using notes they had taken in a graphic organizer. I gave them the prompt: "The father in Tobias Wolff's short story "Powder," is______________________." I then gave them additional prompts to help them craft an initial draft. They I gave them the paragraph I wrote using the same prompt; the only difference was that my paragraph was cut up into pieces. In groups, they had to reconstruct the paragraph, explaining the order in which they arranged the sentences. It was fun and productive.


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Extend Thinking Through Structured Collaboration: Students in the picture to the left work together to develop and extend their ideas. The graphic organizer gives them a means of focusing their thinking; it serves as a generative structure, i.e., one that allows them to focus on what to put in the boxes to explain a process.


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Develop Students Capacity by Modeling: Students in my Reading Workshop finished reading Tobias Wolff's story "Powder," then had to write a paragraph using their notes from their character study graphic organizer. I gave them the prompt: "The father in Tobias Wolff's short story "Powder," is______________________." What you see in the picture to the left are the different possible topics we brainstormed as a class. Brainstorming possible topics helps them see the possibilities at the same time that it develops their capacity to write about them since we discuss the topics as we go.