Instructional Practices:

Instructional Practices:

How do you typically instruct your students? other learners (e.g. teachers)? Have your instructional practices changed over the years? Why or why not? And if so, in what ways?

My usual instructional strategies include direct teaching, questioning, paraphrasing, indicating understanding with a thumbs up or thumbs down, think-pair-share, and peer interaction for particular lessons and units.  I normally ask one or two students to repeat back to me what they are supposed to do to check their understanding.  I use a lot of repetition when I am introducing the task, noting the highlights of the assignment.   I am cognitive of the fact that adolescents have a need to move after several minutes of seat-work, and incorporate some type of movement or shake-up of the lesson to maintain interest and engagement within our class time.  I try to access the students’ prior knowledge through questioning such as, “Have you ever?” or “What would you do if?”  I stimulate pre-task interest by asking a burning question orally or writing one on the Smartboard to get the students thinking about different ways to answer the question without being too specific and to leave a little mystery, and yet make the question relevant enough to the learning.  The burning question is more broad than the prior knowledge questioning and lends itself well to a focus throughout the assignment.  During a novel study, for example, about a biography of someone who created a world-changing organization, I would ask, “Have you ever had an idea so great you thought it could change the world?” to access prior knowledge, while asking as a burning question, “How does a hero affect change in a generation?”  

With teachers, I would instruct more by paraphrasing during sharing of information and then asking questions about their thoughts or opinions.  If I was doing a Professional Development session, however, I would be more formal and start with a burning question to tie into the learning as well.  I believe there is always value added when a person’s critical thinking is aroused which fuels a need for an answer.  I endeavour to light the spark of curiosity with an instructional strategy, no matter the age group.

As I look back over my years of teaching, I would say that my instructional practices have changed only slightly; they have remained within a range that hasn’t swayed too much.  I attribute that to excellent training in university, which I have heavily relied on since my first year of teaching.  Because of many types of instructional strategies practice since then, relevant to the middle-school genre, I have felt quite confident throughout my career to use the mainstays of peer-interaction, group work, and questioning consistently.  The slight variation would be the specific type of activities, for example jigsaw being one I hadn’t used for a long time, but the overall general instructional strategies have remained constant.

What research do you use to support your instructional practices? What evidence do you have that indicates that your instructional practices help students achieve and be successful?

The need for social interaction and physical movement in adolescents researched by the works of Nancy Kolodziej, Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, and Thomas Many have supported my instructional practices.  Whether advocating professional learning communities (DuFour et al, 2006), or Learning Station Models (Kolodziej, 2010), the theme is ultimately about socialization and physical movement during the middle-school years for student success.  This understanding about adolescents is crucial to support them in their learning journey.  The evidence that I have witnessed in junior high is a much more engaged student body in general when they are working cooperatively and collaboratively.  Students who excel in one area are able to showcase their talents more effectively when the work is divided up into a group and they agree on how to split up the tasks.  Many students perform better in a group and their marks reflect this.  I see more consistent on-task behavior when peers are able to interact with one another towards a shared goal.

What work do we have to do as instructional leaders in this area to ensure that students are receiving the best instructional practices in our buildings/districts?

As an instructional leader, my best practices include keeping current with research.  This is largely accomplished through professional reading, my Master’s program in the course study and peer exchange of ideas, and ongoing professional development at my school.  The students themselves are also a very good indicator of whether or not they are receiving quality instructional practices.  If they exhibit deeper understanding and learning from the lesson or unit we’ve just covered, then success has been accomplished.