Students need to be exposed to diverse teaching methods (Walker, 2003).

 

Students need to be exposed to diverse teaching methods (Walker, 2003). That is a standard practice that I have believed in. Diver teaching methods have helped me to always focus on creating an eco-system where all of us thrive. The intent of such an environment has always been for me a user centric and user driven environment (Kochar, 2010). Long ago a Dutch teacher visiting a school I was in had said, ‘our teachers have given us a backpack of strategies to be able to teach any kid’. And that is what I see my role as an instructional designer, to develop a backpack of strategies for myself in order to adapt my teaching to any classroom.

There are certain strategies that are very close to my heart as I find that they allow me to target many skills in the kids such as (a) critical thinking or purposeful thinking (Walker, 2003), (b) active engagement, (c) values and of course math, my core subject! 

Here I am sharing the top three of my favourite and the way I design a classroom using them.

1. Questioning: (Walker, 2003) gives several clues on asking good questions such as the use of ‘what, when, who, define, describe, identify, state, show, how’ while engaging in a dialogue with the students. Some examples are, (a) what did we learn today? Or (b) define fractions in two different ways. Or (c) show why area of a square is side times side. I usually hand out these questions on a document and tie the exercise with group work. That ensures proper scaffolding of the learners while the thinking is challenged.
2. Collaborative learning (Boelryk, 2004): This is a multipurpose designers’ strategy that can be used in the math class so often. For example, (a) as a part of GRR (Fisher, 2008), (b) think-pair-share for learning a concept, (c) problem solving in a group or (d) project based work in a group. In each of these ways, one can throw in many other strategies to create a recipe. For example, ‘reflect on your involvement post the project’ or ‘help your partner understand why decimal addition is not same as whole number addition’ etc.
3. Use of rubrics (Boelryk, 2004): I have found that rubric, or put simply assessment criteria, is always great to have to direct the attention of the learner to what is important and what is not. Rubrics can be used universally (Wolcott, 2003) and hence is a strategy that is adaptive to situations. For example, (a) for projects or (b) problem solving or (c) for collaborative learning.

 

References

●       Boelryk, A. (2004). Critical thinking across the curriculum: Essential skills booklet.  https://pbl101.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/3/1/31318861/critical_thinking_across_the_curriculum_1409.pdf

●        Fisher, D. (2008). Gradual Release of Responsibility. https://www.thinkport.org/grr/

●       Kochar, M. (2010). User driven learning in mathematics. Academia.edu - Share research. https://www.academia.edu/1563753/User_Driven_Learning_in_Mathematics

●       Wolcott, S (2003); Steps for Better Thinking Rubric. http://www.WolcottLynch.com.

●       Walker, S. E. (2003). Active learning strategies to promote critical thinking. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b68a/a3bde182f829774c4926f8ea724cf56fd633.pdf