Picking a strategy for you lesson depends on many things, but two of the most important things are your content and what the research says about the strategy. A great many strategies work particularly just in one subject, or maybe only in one or two subjects. You wouldn't want to use a strategy made for math in a writing classroom, obviously.
Next, if it doesn't work then don't use it! We want our students to be successful, so go to your school's Galileo account and look up some of these strategies. Look for peer reviewed, empirical articles. I assure you, it will not be a waste of your time. Then you can put the strategies that are backed up with the numbers in your strategy toolbox (which I think I'll talk about in a blog post for next week).
One of my favorite math strategies is interleaving. Interleaving is a strategy in which students must differentiate between different types of problems. Instead of solving 10 problems in which they must only multiply fractions, students would be asked to solve 10 problems in which they might have to add, subtract, or multiply fractions. Interleaved practice not only gets students to differentiate between different types of problems, it can also be considered a review technique. Going back to the same example, if students learned how to subtract fractions 2 weeks previously, this would be a review. Students have to commit this to their long term memories.
One of my favorite science teaching strategies is Conceptual Change. All students come to class with a different set of background knowledge, and this strategy takes that background knowledge into consideration. For example, a student may come to class thinking that the Earth is the center of the Universe. This kind of make sense, based on the child's own observations. The Sun seems to revolve around the Earth, although that is not the case.
During a conceptual change lesson, the teacher would present observations or data that contradict students' knowledge and observations. For students to accept this information, it must be plausible and it must make more sense than the students' previous conceptions of the topic. I also suggest journaling with this strategy, because it gives students time to hash out their thoughts and to really think about the contradiction between their background knowledge and observations and the new data and observations.
(Keep in mind, this is the short version. There's a lot more that goes into creating a conceptual change lesson. It is also very difficult to do, considering many adults still have scientific misconceptions based on real observations.)
Lastly, one of my favorite strategies to use for any subject is Learning Contracts. With learning contracts, you can really create an individual learning experience for a student or multiple students. You can also tap into student interests, and get a student more interested in school as a result. This works great for students who are not motivated to learn, students with an IEP, or students that are at different ability levels.
First, as always, you have to start with your standard and your learning goals. In your learning contract, make this the most important thing by placing it at the top. Then conference with the student, and find out what their interests are and how they would like to reach the goal that you have determined based on the standards. Create a rubric for the learning contract, and have the student sign it. After that, you can do check ins to see if the student is working towards the goal, or if they need more assistance.
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