Instructional Strategies

This last year, using a variety of instructional strategies was something that proved to be a difficulty. While I had dreams of varying my classroom instruction and using a large bag of strategies to help student learning, I never was able to finally get things settled enough to actually fully integrate them into my daily plans. I felt like I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak, and used a lot of energy to get lessons off the ground, manage the classroom, and resolve student or assistant issues. Generally speaking, I used direct instruction very regularly, and then threw in other strategies when I could. My classroom overall could have benefited tremendously from a wider variety of strategies, especially for some of my students who functioned at a higher academic level.

Anyway, next year I want to greatly increase my use of different strategies in the classroom, and make more of an effort to use them regularly. I would especially like to incorporate more cooperative learning opportunities, as well as some discovery learning strategies.