Using Instructional Strategies That Help Students Learn

1. Using Instructional Strategies That Help Students Learn

2. Instructional Strategies • “Having access to good facilities, technology, and resources does not guarantee that the information available will be used by students to construct meaningful social studies” (Sunal & Haas, 2002). • What students learn is influenced by: * how they are taught * the quality of individual and social processes occurring in the classroom * perceptions and understanding of social studies

3. Effective Learning • Research has identified factors associated with effective teaching: • Clarity- clear instructions • Variety- variety of learning modalities and questioning techniques • Task Orientation- involvement for a significant amount of time, teachers manage and reduce interruptions, plan transitions, organize materials distribution, manage students traffic flow

4. Effective Learning • Research has identified factors associated with effective teaching:(cont.) • Student Engagement- few interruptions or disruptions, the more consistently and completely students are engaged with the lesson the higher the student achievement • Questioning- wait time, three or more seconds can increase length of students’ response, number of “right” responses, cognitive level of response

5. Instructional Methods • expository- teacher controls situation provides practice provides feedback uses lecture and closed questioning method produces lower levels of learning and recall

6. Instructional Methods Verification- demonstrates fact or concept *student knows what result should be *teacher guides use of materials, procedures, and data collection *closed or narrow questioning *also produces lower levels of learning and recall

7. Instructional Methods • Guided Discovery- teacher creates a problem to study *only one key concept is the focus *students are involved in activities illustrating the concept *teacher provides directions

8. Instructional Methods • Discovery- students decide how to address problems teacher decides content and process skills to be learned teacher presents problem students investigate

9. Instructional Methods • Inquiry- involves significant student control over direction of lesson students must be competent in social studies process skills must be able to create problems for investigation should be able to work in groups social studies projects