Blog 6: Approaches to Teaching

Classroom management is one of the most crucial elements for teachers to keep in mind when preparing for the school year. Teachers manage their classes in a variety of ways based on grade level, students' backgrounds, and technological resources. For example, you would not teach a first-grade class like you would teach the sixth-grade. Though there is an obvious difference in content differences, students' cognitive abilities are constantly developing. It is a teachers' job to differentiate learning for all students so that they have their best chance to gain knowledge.

When constructing your classroom, you may ponder whether or not you want it to be more teacher-driven or student-centered. While having the teacher as the authority keeps organization and order in a classroom, a more student-centered approach allows the students themselves to drive their learning with the teacher as a facilitator. As a new teacher, it is slightly daunting to immediately give students authority over their education. There is nothing wrong; however, with at least allowing them to participate and have a voice in activities or tasks. This, in turn, should boost engagement, motivation, and initiative.

In my opinion, when you start allowing students this freedom from a young age, they are more likely to grow into adults that are creative, critical, attentive, responsible, and able to form strong relationships with others. In a K-3 classroom, children are developing their cognitive and social competencies. To help support this progress, teachers need to focus their classrooms so that things like routines, expectations, group activities, participation, and encouragement are emphasized (An introduction to K-12 teaching methods, 2018). If I were teaching at this grade level, I would take on a more collaborative pedagogical approach, since this champions collaborative learning.

As for older students, the older they get, the more differentiation becomes important and, unfortunately, feelings of failure. As students get closer to graduating high school and going to college, grades seem to become more of a means of dividing students into either "failures" or "achievers". To combat these difficult times, students would benefit from the tiering of lessons, the freedom to choose how they learn/ retain information, a success-oriented environment, and engaging activities. I would say a combination of constructivist and inquiry-based approaches would be most suited for growing students since these allow for more educational freedom and emphasizes active learning.

Citation:

American University. (2018, June 21). An introduction to K – 12 teaching methods. School of Education Online Programs. https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/introduction-to-k-12- teaching-methods.