As we struggle with adapting our classes to remote learning, I know lots of teachers who are realizing that their normal approach isn’t suited for remote teaching. They need to come up with a transformative tool that will reach students more comprehensively, more rigorously, more granularly online. Here are thirteen accepted pedagogical teaching strategies with proven records of success. Read through them then think how they might be applied to solve the problems you’re having with online teaching. For more information, click the link:
Depth of Knowledge (DoK)
DoK is not a taxonomy (like Bloom’s). Rather, it itemizes ways students interact with knowledge.
Frayer Model
Frayer Model uses a graphical organizer that asks students to describe words by much more than a memorized definition.
Growth Mindset
In a Growth Mindset, people believe ability can be developed through dedication and hard work. The cerebral and physical traits they were born with are just the starting point. Students are responsible for setting the patterns and strategies that allow them to succeed, by evaluating what they can do at any given point and making a plan for learning everything else.
Habits of Mind
In the face of mounting evidence, education experts accepted a prescriptive fact: student success is not measured by milestones like ‘took a foreign language in fifth grade’ or ‘passed Algebra in high school’ but by how s/he thinks. Habits of Mind lists sixteen of these.
Orton-Gillingham
Orton-Gillingham is not a packaged curriculum, rather a prescriptive program designed for each individual student. The O-G teacher incorporates phonology and phonological awareness, sound-symbol association, syllable instruction, morphology, syntax and semantics into a personalized methodology
Project-based Learning (PBL)
John Dewey suggested the education focus be switched to students when he introduced “learning by doing”, today referred to as Project-based Learning (PBL).
Socratic Method
It all started with this (supposed) quote from the iconic Greek thinker, Socrates:
“Let us examine the question together, my friend, and if you can contradict anything I say, do so and I will be persuaded.”
Standards-based Grading
According to Tomlinson and McTighe, standards-based grading (SBG) “measures student proficiency on well-defined course objectives.” This means students have clear guidelines for how to define success over time, making it easy for all stakeholders in a student’s learning to determine if they are accomplishing what must be done for college and career. It de-emphasizes subjectivity by providing an objective delineation of requirements.
Understanding By Design
Understanding by Design (UbD) visualizes the end result (what students should understand) to better select learning activities (the path that will get students there).
Unschool
Unschooling parents do not … do at home the kinds of things that are done at school. Instead, they allow their children freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests. In general, unschoolers see life and learning as one.
VARK model
The acronym VARK refers to four learning modalities — Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, and Kinesthetic. Though often classroom lessons focus on the Visual, with a bit of preparation, they can be taught using all four modalities thus accommodating students who learn best in a different way.
Visible Learning
John Hattie, the father of Visible Learning, believes the foundational element required for success is passionate, involved, committed, flexible teachers:
“The remarkable feature of the evidence is that the greatest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers.”
Whole Brain Teaching
Whole Brain Teaching is an active teaching method designed to maximize student engagement in lessons, positive interactions with classmates, and educational fun. Instruction includes vocal directions mixed with hand gestures, inflections, full body movement, head motions, and chants.
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
