Six teaching strategies that really work… (Part 2)

Last time, I shared the teaching strategies that I believe really work and can be applied to any lesson and any age group. I shared my rationale and strategies 1-3… this blog entry can be found here.

It’s been several weeks since I published ‘Part 1’ and I never planned to wait this long until publishing ‘Part 2’ but as anyone who works in education knows it’s only a matter of time until a relatively quiet term, can become busy and fast paced overnight. During the past four weeks, I have been approached, or as some might call it ‘headhunted’, to take on an interim Headship and support a school in a vulnerable position. Some of my work within this school has been exciting and interesting, I have learnt a lot about leadership and school improvement and through quality reflection I will, in time, blog about some of my experiences and share ideas and experience that will hopefully be interesting and informative. The work within this school is by no means completed and I have only just started to scrape the surface…

Anyway, back to strategy 4, 5 and 6!

4. Questioning… deep questioning!

This seems like an obvious one but if you’re going to develop and work on anything as a teacher it should be your ability to question. What types of questioning do you use the most? Ask a question, hands up, choose a pupil, they answer the question…? There is a place for this type of question, but deep questioning is where you make the real impact and develop true understanding. The idea is simple but it’s hard to master… Getting them to formulate in words what they already know (self-verbalise), getting them to question what they think they know and then extending their thought processes. You can then build on this as a class created an environment of questioning, developing what they think they know and taking it further and further… imagine a game of table tennis, this is standard questioning – teacher then child, then teacher then children (ping, pong, ping, pong). In your class you want to play basketball, passing the ball (questions and responses to questions) around the class from child to child, back to the teacher and then around the children again. Only when the children take control of their thinking and can question their own understanding will this game of basketball happen!

5. Being collaborative learners

This includes a lot of what I have already talked about but creating an environment where children can collaborate and problem solves in groups will ensure that they develop not only the learning within the lesson but a vital life skill. True collaborative learning needs to include child lead problem solving and self-verbalisation in order to share thinking with the group. The skills of collaboration and systems to support these will vary from class to class and teacher to teacher but need to be taught and practised before they become embedded.

6. Activating prior knowledge and reflection

Linking new learning to prior learning and making those linked will ensure that new ideas stick, a bit like telling a story – the end of a story doesn’t make sense unless you have understood  the beginning and middle. Pupils will also need to be able to reflect on what has previously been successful or unsuccessful and ask themselves the question… what next?

Well, that's my six. I hope these have been useful…I would love to hear about any you think should be included in this list, just add to the comment section below. 

More teaching and leadership ideas can be found here...

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