Best Practice Teaching Strategies

1. Best Practice Teaching Strategies Family and Consumer Science Programs

2. Ticket in the Door Please write down the following: 1. When you were in school what particular lesson do you remember? How was it taught? 2. What is your favorite teaching strategy? Why? When done put your sticky on the �Parking Lot�

4. Origins of Best Practice The term BEST PRACTICE is borrowed from the professions of medicine and law, where �good practice� and �best practice� are everyday phrases used to describe solid, reputable, state-of-the-art work in the field.

5. If a practitioner is following best practice standards, he or she is aware of current research and consistently offers clients the full benefits of the latest knowledge, technology, and procedures.

6. If a doctor, for example, does not follow contemporary standards and a case turns out badly, peers may criticize his or her decisions and treatments [because they did not follow best professional practice standards]. [In education,] �Best Practice means serious, thoughtful, informed, responsible, state-of-the-art teaching.

7. Best Practice largely means returning to some old, perhaps prematurely discarded approaches, and fine tuning them until they work. But these simple activities are also very powerful: They can effectively take the teacher off stage Decentralize the classroom Transfer responsibility for active learning to the student in any subject.

8. In this chart, growth does not necessarily mean moving from one practice to another, discarding a previous instructional approach and replacing it forever. Instead, teachers add new alternatives to a widening repertoire of choices, allowing them to alternate among a richer array of activities, creating a richer and more complex balance (e.g. lecturing isn�t discarded, but it is done less as other new choices become available).

9. Different Best Practice Methods Ticket in the door Parking lot Check-in activity �Tree People� Think/ Pair/ Share Stand and Deliver Resident Expert � �Jigsaw� Whips Talking circle Brainstorming Check-out activity

10. Critical Reading in Every Class

11. 13 Interlocking Principles Student Centered: Focus on students real interests, investigate their own questions- not arbitrary and distant. Experiential: Active and hands-on. Reflective: Opportunity to look back, to debrief and to reflect. Authentic: Rich, rich, complex ideas and materials at the heart of the curriculum. Holistic: Whole, real ideas, events and materials in purposeful context. Social: Socially constructed and often interactional- interactions which �scaffold� learning. Collaborative: Cooperative learning activities rather than competitive and individualistic. Democratic: Model community, learn what they live as citizens.

12. Cognitive: Develop true understanding of concepts and higher order thinking (inquiry and self-monitoring). Developmental: Activities fit the developmental level of students. Constructivist: Recreate and reinvent what they encounter. Expressive: Employ whole range of communicative media- speech, writing, drawing, poetry, drama, music, movement, and visual arts. Challenging: Challenges, choices and responsibility in the learning.

13. Best Practice Means MORE Hands on learning Active Learning Coaching/ modeling Deep study on less Choice for students Modeling democracy Attention to learning styles Cooperative activity Special help

14. Emphasis on higher order thinking skills Reading of non- fictional materials Responsibility transferred to student Heterogeneously grouped classrooms Varied roles of teacher, parents and community Reliance on teachers descriptive evaluation of students

15. Best Practice Is LESS OF� Teacher directed Student Passivity One way transmission of information Rewarding of silence Fill-in-the-blank (seat work) Student time spent reading textbooks Teacher covering large amounts of material thinly Pull-out special programs Rote memorization of facts Emphasis on completion Use of standardized tests Tracking

16. Understanding: Apply: adapt, build, introduce, propose, create, de-bug, invent; Explain: demonstrate, describe, design, predict, prove, justify, model, show; Interpret: evaluate, make meaning of, translate, critique, judge; Show Empathy: consider, imagine, relate, assume the role of, be like.

18. Check out Statements I can take back and use� Something that was difficult� Something I found easy� I valued� I need� I am wondering� I learned� Another thought I had�