Teaching Styles For Student Understanding And Creative Thought

Do you ever find yourself wondering how you can form a better connection with your students? You are not alone. In her book, Bad Guys Don’t Have Birthdays, Vivian Paley looks for ways to improve her teaching methods and connect with the children in her class. After coming in contact with a school director that was a fan of promoting abstract thinking, Paley noticed that she was neglecting to take her students’ ideas into consideration and in many instances, focusing more on what she knew to be the answer rather than how her class solved the problem. To change her teaching style, Paley thought it would be better to immerse herself in the many different perspectives of her preschool class rather than presuming that she understands

I think this book gives us the opportunity to reflect on our roles in our students’ lives, as a general classroom teacher and how we can best help our students develop into active learners and well-adjusted adults. Paley also made us think about how children’s story and classroom community play a significant role in helping children learn about themselves and

In Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World, Joan Wink talks about her experience in teaching at Benson, Arizona. Wink goes on to explain her process in her shifting pedagogy when encountering her new classroom. Wink quickly realizes that she is now, too the learner, in this new setting and must adjust her lessons to fit the needs of the students in her classroom. Wink also begins to understand that although she thought she was prepared with everything she needs to know about teaching there are some practices that must be adjusted, unlearned, and relearned. For Wink, reading and writing became an important aspect in her classroom allowing the students in her classroom to choose what they want to learn and write about. Wink learned that it is important for students to have a safe space, choice, someone that responds to their writing, flexibility, humor, and most importantly to continue to read to improve writing.

Knowledge is increased when the teachings are devised to be purposeful, collaborative and engrossing, with everyday life purposes (Miller, 2008, p. 17). As the children are still quite young and just starting out in their education careers it was felt that there was a need to keep the information simple, concise and relevant to capture their interests without alienating their interests with too much information. As Piaget says, for a child to learn facts, it depends in part to a child’s capacity to relate to the facts in a way that is meaningful to them (Furth and Wachs, 1974, p. 13). The use of story writing using the facts allows the children to use their own ideas on how they think life would have been like and to use what they know to develop and interesting story on the topic, this also links in with the cross curricular subject of literacy with the story writing component and helps with development of critical and creative

Using some new ways to teach students is very helpful for teacher has an interesting class. Students took the traditional teaching styles since they are in middle school. They need some new teaching skills to give them an interesting class. Using the new ways to teach students can make students have a deep impression and make students keep focus on the class. Using the new ways is a good way to teach students have a deep impression. For example, in the article “Teachers Who Inspire: A Reader Turned Writer”, which written by Austin Stanley, tell us a story that when Stanley was studied in fifth grades, his teacher which called Mr. Spathe use some new ways to make them like writing. The new way is very useful for students, Mr. Spathe uses reading

In the first English class, I was only there for the last half of it. Before I came into the class, I was worried that I would not find any creativity because English can be a hard subject to add creativity too. The teacher, Mr. Romono, did a marvelous job of teaching the common core and keeping his students interested with creativity. Not only did he come up with a creative way to teach his students, or let his students do the creativity, his classroom was also creative. He had student’s artwork on his wall of characters from books they were reading. He also had a ton of posters with different ideas behind them. (Quote). This gives the students something to look at, as well as get excited to learn about these books. (quote form pp). The students in the ninth grade English class are working on Romeo and Juliet. I do not know if he asked the students, or chose the students, but, each student would get a specific part in the play to read aloud to the class. This is more creative than just having the students read the book on their own. (Quote) I also feel that using this technique will help the students understand the material better. Mr. Romono would also stop the reading to discuss a word they did not understand or talk about what just happened. I know this doesn’t play a major part in creativity, but it shows that he cares that his students understand. In all of my English classes throughout high school, I never had an English teacher who did an activity like this. The

Janechia chose humor and used a great book to address this topic. With this being one of my favorite books I was able to content specific feedback. This is such a great book that can allow students to be silly but really engross themselves in the book at the same time. I suggested that Janechia find more ways to include turn and talks and use her strength of be letting go in the classroom to her advantage. Lemov (2010) states that laughter is the basis of happiness for teachers and students. By letting her hair down and being fun with students in the classroom, students would find the text even more amusing. Lastly, Nikola chose suspense and surprise. I love the idea of addressing this topic through a text and pictures. By addressing this topic in this manner, students would be able to make connections between the text and images. Lemov (2010) states that making the classroom surprising and uncalculated can make any content area engaging. I pushed Nikola to include more ways for students to share their thoughts with other students. Students learn best from each other can build on others answers and make future connections to the text through discussion. As I have thoroughly read through the readings for this session, I believe that I was able to provide others with quality

We are faced with many different learning experiences. Some of these experiences have made a better impact than others. We can attribute this to our learning style. A person’s learning style is the method through which they gain information about their environment. Research is going on all over the world to help explain learning styles. To me, it is our responsibility to learn about these different learning styles so we can appeal to every type of learner in our world. Howard Gardner has elaborated on the concept of learning style through what he calls “multiple

Teachers have adapted to what the student wants or needs, not what the teacher thinks they should have. It is possible that the student-teacher relationship has evolved so far that it is now imperative that educators find a way that allows students to be curious, creative, and inquiring, in order to be, as Freire puts it “…truly human” (para 5), and still allow the teacher to command the classroom.

While going through school, my coursework has prepared me for student teaching in many ways. While going through elementary methods we were split into groups and taught a unit to five home schooled students. During this time I learned about how to choose a theme and then develop an original unit around the theme. I also learned about the value of play and storytelling when teaching elementary students. I reflected on the importance of play and storytelling when writing my final case study paper. Being able to transfer my lesson plan from paper to teaching the students helped me critique my way of designing lessons because I realized where I need more time or where I need to check for understandings.

Furthermore, as I read the assigned articles and viewed videos, I realized that my teachers obviously, followed Piaget’s, Vygotsky. Dewey, and Bruner constructivist view because they used the theory of assimilation and accommodation, e.g., the learning of a new experience and changing of a person’s worldview. I also discovered after deep reflection on this week’s assignment, how much of an impact my teachers had on my teaching style. Before retiring, I taught based on what my students needed. Therefore, much of my teaching mixed the theories of, Constructivism, Social Constructivism and Cognitive-Behavioral depending on the student.

It has been said that middle school teachers are born, not made. Indeed, teaching at the middle school level is quite unique and difficult. Our students are emotionally aware beyond the elementary years, yet are not ready for the rigors of high school. They are constantly changing, growing, thinking, and questioning. As their teachers, we have the awe-inspiring ability to help them know themselves at a time when it is still “OK” to talk to teachers, ask questions, and share feelings. What is successful in the classroom one week may not work the next, as our students change with the winds. Yet, our ability to get them thinking critically and abstractly is a fundamental challenge and reward as the human brain continues to grow throughout these years we can have a truly life altering effect on how our students think. I believe, as a future educator, that in order to create a beneficial middle school experience teachers, administrators and parents need to focus on the importance of building relationships and fostering connections, preparing students for the future, making curriculum relevant, challenging and flexible, as well as creating a safe learning environment that allows children to make mistakes and learn from them.

In classrooms around the country today, kinesthetic students are not being taught based on their learning style, thus hindering their academic and even athletic abilities and not allowing them to perform to the best of their abilities. Learning styles are ways that individual students learn best. There are four learning styles: visual, auditory, reading and writing, and kinesthetic. Personally, my learning style is kinesthetic which gives me firsthand experience of the insufficient amount of attention accustomed to the kinesthetic learning style in classrooms. The kinesthetic learning style requires the student to manipulate or touch material to learn. (source) These “twitchy” or “anxious looking” students and are sometimes even shamed for it which only hurts the learning potential of that student.

In my first semester of course work I completed a DRTA for the key assignment in Edu 624. This assignment required me to create a literacy unit based on one book consisting of a pre-reading, during reading, and after reading activity. This assignment gave me insight on how to differentiate instruction, be creative and develop an interactive lesson plan. The different methods of instruction will help the students grasp the material and stay engaged. This relates to the lifelong learning and Development framework by that an educator must always seek new teaching strategies to reach all of his or her students. Every student will not learn in the same way. Every day is a trial in error to figure out what works best for ones' students individually and collectively. In this key assignment, I guide the students through three different activities to help the students comprehend the story. These activities included, open discussion, putting the story in sequential order, connecting the story to the world around them and creating their own version of the story. Thus, students were given multiple opportunities to grasp what was happening in the story. During my student teaching, I guided students through this same process. The students read a new story about every 10 days. On day one of a story, students answered the essential question about the story in an open discussion. To do this the essential question would be posted on the reading focus section of the board. The students wrote on a sticky note their answer. Then students were called to post their answers around the question. After all students posted their answer, I would read out some of the answers and discuss them as a whole group. The purpose of this was to build background on the story in

This essay will be an analysis of various learning styles available to students at university. According to Javis, (2012) knowledge, education and learning techniques run alongside each other. However, as students studying in higher institutions, it is important to understand various learning methods available within the academic premises. Anecdotal observations amongst students has revealed that individual students possess wide spectrum of academic knowledge and ability, as a result, these students are also bound to learn differently either within themselves or from various styles learnt in their higher institutions. Therefore, reviewing different learning styles is paramount in initiating student’s thought process in making changes to their learning programmes by taking advantage of available resources to become more efficient and proactive learners. Finally, this analysis will initiate deeper understanding in various learning styles which will be used to stimulate one’s own personal learning preference and serve as bedrock to which individual’s academic or future career is built upon.