Teaching+Strategies

Post **teaching strategies** that you thought worked well here. Try to add your personal experience observing or using the strategy:

I talk really quickly and this will be an ongoing thing I'll be working on. My enunciation and word choice are okay but I just blow through some sentences. To slow myself down, I have started to write a lot of stuff down. By the end of the lesson, the board is full of key words (possibly some definitions), a couple of diagrams, and perhaps a Venn diagram or even a concept map. Not sure how much the students benefit from these things, but even if they don't, I will.
 * Slow it down, write it down (Steve H)**

The teacher had a special toy that was passed to students when it was their turn to speak or he was asking questions and wanted an answer. Only the person with the toy in their hand was allowed to talk during that time, and any other student who was talking was dealt with using a management technique.
 * Permission to Speak (The Conch)** - Chris Nelan

My AT has been working for many of the students for years. Not many of them were new to him. This meant that he knew without thinking about it which students could work together and which couldn't for group assignments and projects. Because of this, we used group work often or had them work on projects where students had to share materials. This builds important life skills they will use later on. My FA informed me that I was lucky that he had built this foundation for group work because some classes can't work in groups.
 * Know your students for group work (Amy K.)**

**"Tell me my instructions" (Rubina)** Sometimes when the class is not listening to your instructions, it's important to call them out. By asking "can somebody tell me my instructions" causes the students to listen, think, rethink, and finally realize they may not have understood the instructions or were simply not listening. This is a great strategy that allows the teacher to regain his/her authority and of course repeat instruction. =)

I guess one of the most useful strategies I have learned in UOIT is to tell students how to pair up and group together, how to arrange different students in different groups coming up and getting supplies for the group, and how to arrange a representative and a recorder for the group. For example, pair up or group up with numbers, pick the student who has the longest or shortest hair in the group to get supplies. In this way, no student complains it's unfair or why me, because it's pretty random. I use these strategies everyday and I love them :-)
 * The pair up and group strategies (Yana) **

If students don't start writing after 10 minutes, you will lose them and unfortunately, I learned this the hard way. Whether it is following your procedures up on the board or working in a THINK-PAIR-SHARE (two people in a group), it is important that you have them moving because this stimulates their performance significantly. Although this may seem difficult if you have a class with students of several different needs, it keeps everyone in touch and gives them an opportunity to not only learn, but socialize in a constructive manner.
 * After 10 minutes of teaching - start having them write something! (Christe M.)**

My AT asked me to create a placemat to help students with problem solving strategies. This is something she wanted to use as a poster as well as a handout for the students. This is what I came up with The idea is the question goes in the centre, it is the main focus, then it guides the students through what they should do to solve the problem, with symbols to help them remember
 * Placemat problem solving (Greg Leverton)**

**Tell me what I'm doing wrong (Michelle B)** I had noticed that a lot of the students were making the same mistakes over and over again when drawing graphs, so for one lesson I told them that I was going to draw a terrible graph on the board, and I wanted them to write down all the mistakes that I made. They really enjoyed telling me all the things I was doing wrong, and when I marked their graphing assignments a couple days later I could really see a difference in the quality of work.

**Teaching Strategies (Michelle K)**

After the first week I realized that it is important to write your instructions/expectations down as I found that listening skills were weak. No matter how many times you may say the same thing, students will not grasp the information. Students needed that visual aid to fully comprehend their instructions. 

**Teaching Strategies (Michelle K)** When students were required to take notes, I learned that it was important to have a photocopy of the notes with a few words missing for students in the LS class. By having only a few words missing, the students were able to focus more on the discussion and lesson than trying to write everything down, thus reducing their stress as their communication skills, such as written skills, were very weak.