Instructional Strategies, Generating and Testing Hypothesis, Module 6

Throughout this quarter I have often purposefully selected instructional strategies that I didn’t have as much experience in order to focus more fully and discover new techniques. This week the topic was having students create and test hypothesis. I have to admit that my first reaction was that this would once again be a less familiar area for me, erroneously thinking that it focused on the world of science. After completing the reading for the week I quickly realized that this instructional strategy was one I am very familiar with. On a daily basis I used this strategy by asking students to use metacognitive strategies (think about their thinking) as a way to better support their social skills.

As a Special Education teacher I often incorporate stories and problems into the classroom to help students work to improve their thinking and reasoning in the area of personal relationships. We spend a great deal of time working on problem/solution scenarios and have many discussions and activities asking students to describe or show how they would solve problems.

Social stories in particular play an important role in how students are able to begin to recognize the patterns and make connections between the situations presented in the story and the ‘real-world’ situations they are trying to successfully navigate on a daily basis (Dean, Hubbell, Pitler & Stone, 2012). I am able to work with students to help them think about their own actions and behaviors in a safe environment and ask them to work on how they might be perceived by others. We also spent a tremendous amount of time working with the ‘why’ of a behavior, the ‘if-then’ situations that leave many students feeling the need to indulge in some form of retaliation. The students in this Special Education classroom had challenges in making accurate conclusions about emotions or behaviors.

Making inferences and using deductive reasoning are suggested methods when creating and testing hypothesis yet are very difficult for my students (Dean et al., 2012).   In breaking this down into a step-by-step process I believe that I was able to help students begin learning how to better create and test hypothesis about emotions and behavior both for themselves and others.

Reference:

Pitler, H. & Stone, B., (2012). A handbook for classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Dean, C. B., Hubble, E. R., Pitler, H., & Stone, B. (2012). Classroom Instruction That Works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Video Analysis #2, Instructional Strategies, 3rd grade adjective lesson

The 3^rd grade teacher in this video was helping her students understand the use of adjectives by incorporating the 5 senses. She began the lesson by setting the objective and connected this lesson to previous lessons on adjectives (Pitler & Stone, 2012). She clearly stated what students would be doing for the lesson. She incorporated a great series of questions to activate prior knowledge (‘Who can remind us…’) (Pitler & Stone, 2012). She also did a great job with follow-up questions, after a student responded the first time she asked an additional question to hear more from the student, which helped the student focus and clarify their thinking.

There were lots of hands raised during the lesson. Most of the students wanted to share their adjective choice during the activities. The first activity was a warm up activity to get students thinking about using the 5 senses to find adjectives to describe the ocean. Next, students worked through a similar exercise with an Oreo cookie, using all five senses to describe a cookie. Once the list was complete, students then included those words into a paragraph about an Oreo cookie.

There was a large amount of nonlinguistic representations throughout the lesson. I noticed her using the whiteboard to create lists of adjectives for the topic using the 5 senses. She used this strategy twice once in the intro when the class worked together to describe the ocean and again when the students were working on describing an Oreo cookie. She also demonstrated using the 5 senses by holding the cookie up to show the class; at one point she touches it with her other hand and asks students ‘how does it feel?’ then by smelling it and asking ‘what does it smell like to you?’. These are tools used by the teacher to help students understand and remember the concept (Pitler & Stone, 2012).

Students were asked to work together as a whole class to come up with the list of adjectives however upon completion of the activity each student had to write their own paragraph describing the Oreo cookie. This style of individual and group accountability in one way in which the teacher displayed a cooperative learning instructional strategy (Dean, Hubbell, Pitler & Stone, 2012). It was evident that the class had done this style of group processing before, students obviously understood the expectations, she modeled the activity first and it was a well organized activity (Dean et al, 2012). She incorporated an ‘I do, we do, you do’ strategy to help students fully understand the activity and what was required of them.

Reference:

3^rd Grade Adjective Lesson retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfWqRvrYfAQ

Pitler, H. & Stone, B., (2012). A handbook for classroom instruction that works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Dean, C. B., Hubble, E. R., Pitler, H., & Stone, B. (2012). Classroom Instruction That Works (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.