InTASC Standard #8: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to
develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
Instructional Strategies
Introduction
In my early childhood classroom, I utilize a wide array of instructional strategies that help me meet the unique needs of my little learners. While designing these instructional strategies plays a large part in my weekly and daily planning process, implementing these methods enables me to accomplish several goals simultaneously. Particular strategies lend themselves to the incorporation of technology and inquiry tools, while others allow me to formatively assess students’ level of mastery and content knowledge. Additionally, these strategies enable me to differentiate and purposefully incorporate tactics that meet the sensory and behavior needs of students with exceptionalities. When crafting and implementing an instructional strategy, I choose approaches that do one or more of the following: are student-directed, support oral language development, or encourage peer interaction.
In pre-Kindergarten, the majority of our daily instructional minutes must be “student initiated”, which occurs most often in learning centers and outdoor play. Best practice, therefore, is to create a child-centered classroom, where students are decision makers and leaders. Many of my instructional strategies assign students roles and responsibilities, and allow students to act independently. Students are actively “doing” the learning, instead of simply being talked to, and they often engage in dramatic interpretations of literary works with their own creation of props and lesson additives.
Oral language development serves as one of the driving forces behind the need for early childhood education, and I pay particular attention to strategies that supports both receptive and expressive language skills. Our classroom environment in itself fosters a language rich atmosphere, and the low student-to-teacher ratio provides ample opportunity for rich conversational exchanges. Strategies I select aim to get students talking, ensure that all students have multiple opportunities to engage, and reinforce phonemic awareness through environmental print awareness.
Further, many instructional strategies foster oral language development through peer-to-peer interaction. At this formative age, children learn best from their chronological-aged classmates. Instructional strategies build relationships between peers by designating each child a role or expectation, so everyone feels valued and vital. Stronger relationships among peers serves to strengthen our collective class culture and enlivens students to meet their big academic and personal goals. In this way, instructional strategies support the foundation that is critical in creating positive student outcomes.
Please click the links below to explore the instructional strategies I use in my classroom.
Table of Contents
Conclusion
The ultimate goal of my instruction is to foster student growth, as a “whole child”. Planning purposefully ensures that I select instructional strategies that are geared specifically towards the needs of my students. I use a variety of instructional methods to bridge thematic content and critical thinking skill. I intentionally choose tools that encourage peer interaction, support oral language development, and are student-directed. These categories are important to students’ overall development and are critical components in growing confident, cognizant scholars. I want my students to feel a sense of ownership in their education, and feel that they can make choices, but also develop an understanding that those choices have an impact on their learning. I consciously design strategies, like reading manipulatives and story mats, with my students with exceptionalities in mind. These strategies seek to catalyze their oral language use, by meeting their sensory or visual needs first, and build off their prior knowledge. Finally, when my students apply these strategies, they build connections between the essential skills and content. Processing the content through these tools helps make their learning meaningful and relevant to their lives, and fosters my students’ sense of independence and efficacy as scholars in the ever-changing world.