Teaching strategies include the methods you use to teach your students. For example, you might use a lecture or you might use a student-centred approach. You might also use a combination of these teaching strategies.
Some teaching strategies will work for one group of students and other teaching strategies might not work for another group. The reason for this is that everyone learns differently and has different learning styles. This means that some students will learn best from verbal instruction while others learn best when given visual cues. If you are a visual learner, you may need to look at the information on a whiteboard or projector screen in the form of images, videos, or infographics. Nevertheless, here we will discuss some of the teaching strategies that will help you make your teaching more effective.
Technology in the classroom
Technology is an essential part of the world today. Students take more interest in studies when you incorporate technology. It attracts them more than anything else because some of the wonderful things will happen by using it which were not possible before.
I believe that learning can be more interactive with the use of technology as students can quickly research their ideas while being physically engaged during lessons, which develops autonomy. Mobile devices, such as iPads and/or tablets, can be used in the classroom for students to record results, take videos, or simply as a behaviour management technique.
When you’re teaching a lesson plan, you want to make sure that your students are learning and retaining the information. For this reason, Some tutors at IGCSE online tutoring used interactive online quizzes. It was no surprise that they reported that it’s a fun way for their students to practice their skills and see how they are improving. It’s also a great way to assess where they are at and how they can improve.
Active learning
Active learning is a teaching strategy that engages students in their learning by helping them to think about the subject matter they are learning. The concept has been around for a while and is gaining momentum in education. Students are engaged and become better learners when they are actively involved in their learning. According to James Ballencia, who is an active learning advocate, active learning not only helps students but also helps teachers.
Some active learning strategies include:
- Reciprocal questioning: Encourage students to come up with questions from previous lessons.
- The pause procedure: Taking short pauses every 15-20 mins in lectures to ensure students’ brain gets to relax while they discuss the lecture with their fellow students, ask questions and solve problems.
- Muddiest point: motivate students to jot down the point which they least understood and discuss them later.
Visualization
Some concepts are too dull until brought to life with a practical learning experience. Therefore helping students understand how the concepts apply to real-life will make their life a lot easier. They will surely enjoy and start thinking and exploring concepts more. I can understand it is not possible to practically show every concept for the teacher him or herself, but for that purpose use an interactive whiteboard and projector or screen to display photos, audio clips, and videos can be used.
Inquiry-based instruction
Inquiry-based instruction involves asking students to investigate problems on their own, rather than telling them what the answer should be. Asking questions that challenge students to think for themselves encourages them to be more independent learners. This type of instruction is not just beneficial for math or science subjects but also for the arts. By encouraging students to think for themselves, you help them develop critical thinking skills that will help them succeed in the real world.
Gamification
Gamification is a popular term used to describe using game mechanics to take pupils’ love for games and turn it into an engaging learning experience. Gamification is not just for kids. It can be a great way to motivate and engage adults in learning too. When we’re doing something we love, our brains are more focused and we become better learners. There is also a study from South Korea that states gamification keeps students motivated and active in their studies. This is because we spend more time on things that we love doing.
Modeling
It’s easy to teach kids what to do, but it’s a bit challenging to show them how to do it. It is important to show them exactly how you would do it, so they can see exactly what they need to do. By demonstrating your own technique, you show students how you learn and why your methods work. A science home tutor in Lahore says that by showing students practical examples in Lab, students’ concepts get 3x clearer. Another math home tutor said the time it takes to explain a math concept decreases significantly when a concept of math calculations is shown to the students in a clear step-by-step manner.
Cooperative Learning
In cooperative learning, students work together on projects, solve problems together, and help each other learn. It’s a great way for them to develop their social skills, especially if they’re shy or introverted. This method of teaching is effective because it teaches students how to work and communicate with other people, think critically about problems, and how to solve problems.
Student-Led Classroom
Students learn things that they wouldn’t have learned otherwise when they become the teacher for the day. You can make groups of students to teach to the entire class a new topic. You will be amazed to find their fellows more engaged in lessons when their peers teach because they can better relate to them.
Project-based learning
This teaching strategy is when students take a role in an authentic real-life problem. Project-Based Learning is a proven methodology that allows students to actively engage in and make meaning of content in order to develop critical thinking skills, develop knowledge and build relationships with the content, all of which support their success in higher education. However, some people criticize that this teaching strategy more focuses on product creation rather than learning, and it is not possible to assess students properly.
Class Discussion
Class discussion is a great way to build on what your students have learned and get feedback from them. This is where you can get a lot of useful information from your students. You can also assess their knowledge and get a feel for how well they understand the material and if they need more instruction.
Lesson Objective Transparency
If you don’t tell your students what they are going to learn, they might find it difficult to follow the lessons. You must have a clear objective for each lesson for them. You could write it on the board or announce it to the class. This will help them what they are going to learn by the end of the lecture. This then also helps them revise and stress less in coming up exams.
In conclusion, it is important to know your student’s learning styles. Also, it is important to use this knowledge to plan your lesson plans. One of the most important things for a teacher to remember is that there are no magic tricks to teaching. It’s just a lot of hard work. If you want to get the best out of your students, you need to spend a lot of time planning and preparing. If you’re going to be a great teacher, you have to put in the effort and dedication. It’s the only way you can get the results you’re looking for.