The opportunity to teach, observe, and be part of various teaching strategies has been integral to my journey as an educator for many reasons. Dissecting various teaching strategies, seeing their pros and cons, how they can be used in the classroom, and what assessment looks like for each one was incredibly helpful. Having other instructors come in and show us how planning and execution looks was a great expererience because it put the theory into practice.
I now have a large collection of teaching strategies that I can use in my own teaching practice. What I love about these individual presentations was that they broke many ideas into manageable chunks. As a new teacher, seeing all the different ways that someone can teach and the different strategies that they use in the classroom can be very overwhelming. In this way, we were able to learn and participate in individual strategies over a long period of time, enabling us to digest each one on its own.
This hands-on approach reminds me that my own students will benefit from chunking larger assignments, breaking down information into manageable chunks and creating opportunity for them to experience the learning instead of just reading about it. Everytime we learned a new concept in this class, it was taught in such a way that begged us to reflect on why the instructor chose to teach it that way. We were able to EXPERIENCE the learning. This concept is so important to remember when we are standing in front of a class.
Whether we were learning how to use different strategies, Bhangra dance, or how to plan lessons thematically, we were engaged because the lessons were hands-on and each teacher continuously checked for understanding (formative assessment) so that we would each feel success in our understanding. I believe that formative assessment is such an important part of students feeling as though they matter to the teacher. When we check in, create dialogue, ask questions, create multiple ways to learn and show learning, and have low stakes assessment, children have so much more opportunity to engage in and understand the content before being assessed.
When I was in highschool, I remember so many quizzes, tests, reports, and assessments that made me feel stressed out. I didn’t feel that my learning was being check on before any of these assessments were made and I went into many of them with feelings of inadequacy because I didn’t understand the concepts. I felt that delivering the content was more important than whether the students understood it or not.
Using the teaching strategies that we shared with the class, being part of Kavita’s Bhangra dance, and watching Miranda Hounsell seamlessly create a themed unit with students in mind was so refreshing. We must plan, we must teach, we must assess-with students in mind. When we teach for the sake of quickly getting through curriculum, we lose our students, their trust in us, and their confidence in themselves.