Teaching to Multiple Learning Styles

Since we have talked several times in class about modifying teaching strategies to accommodate multiple learning styles, I decided to do a little research on my own.  I was able to compile a list of tips from multiple articles and blog posts to help alter teaching to connect with each student, regardless of their learning style!

·       Provide a learning style test as soon as possible!

·       Explain the meaning of the learning styles to students as well as the significance of knowing what type of learner you are! Encourage students to become familiar with what works best for them so that they can use similar strategies when studying, doing homework, or even while in other classes.

·       Group students by learning styles! This will allow students to work with peers who learn the same way as them; if they’re struggling to grasp a concept, there will be someone there who knows exactly how to explain it in their language.

·       …Group students by different learning styles! This will help students learn to play to their strengths and work with others to achieve a common goal.

·       Offer choices in the classroom! It doesn’t have to be an expansive creative project for every single assessment, but offer students multiple small choices and they will automatically choose to do what has worked best for them in the past.

·       Abandon the teacher centered approach to teaching (lecture), and incorporate a student centered approach! This teaching style puts the students and teacher on a more equal playing field where the teacher performs more of a facilitator role. The following are two variations of this style:

o   Cooperative Style: This encourages student independence and autonomy, and includes mostly hands-on activities.

o   Inquiry Based Learning: {MY PERSONAL FAVE} This style focuses on group work and social growth in the classroom. This method also encourages student independence and hands-on activities, the only difference being that students rarely work alone.

I like the idea of modifying teaching to accommodate to different learning styles, but I would like to venture one step further by possibly having students learn about and optimize their strengths by taking the StrangthsQuest test. I’d like to get some feedback on this about how I could utilize it in the classroom, and I would like to do some research to see if someone else has tried this!

Christmas Book Party

I found an awesome blog post (http://bsbooklove.blogspot.com/2016/11/laughingalltheway.html) about Christmas activities to use in the classroom that are both fun and content oriented! One activity that I definitely want to try is to have a “Book Party” the day before Christmas break. This holiday party is unlike any that I have ever heard of. Each student chooses their favorite book, short story, poem, etc. that they have read over the course of the semester. They then determine what aspect of the text stood out to them the most: the setting, a theme, a character, the tone. Students then bring a food to class on the day of the party that represents that aspect of their chosen text!

During the party each student presents their text, their favorite aspect of it, and the food they brought. The class samples the food as the student describes the relationship between the food and the text. I think this is a great way to encourage reading and to end a semester with a fun twist. It’s creative and unique, and I think that students would love it because it’s unlike any classroom Christmas party they’ve attended in any other class! The blogger uses the picture below to provide inspiration for students. 

This party would allow students to make connections with a text beyond the usual confines of language and would require students to think critically and creatively about a text. I think that this celebration of the holidays and of reading, paired with yummy food and students sharing their ideas with peers would be the perfect way to end a semester!

 

Can we understand the truth behind fiction?

In my internship class, we have just finished reading Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. One of the interesting things about this is book is that O'Brien explicitly states that some stories have true bases but fictional tellings. He discusses, just underneath the surface, that his book is about how and why we tell stories.

My students seem to struggle with the concept that books can have true aspects intermingled with fictional details. So I have decided to make that my culminating project for the Heroes unit I taught. We have discussed the nature of heroism and how literature portrays heroes.

In this project, I have provided them with a guideline of a PowerPoint project that I'm assigning them to work on. They will choose nine stories from different chapters and discuss how those stories serve a purpose or are important to the narrator, author, or reader. Through this, I am forcing them to work look at the fictional details O'Brien uses and think at length about how those serve narrative and authorial purposes.

This is also my final observed lesson (today 11/8/2017). I'll make sure to update you all on how this lesson is received!