-
How would you currently describe your overall approach to teaching in your classroom: traditional, process mastery, or constructivist? What works well in your approach? What needs improvement?
-
As a math teacher I would say I am mainly traditional/process mastery. It is hard to change that for math, but I do change presentation methods for different learners at times.
-
I would describe my approach as a Spanish teacher to be mainly process mastery. Students have specific topics to cover that we approach in a variety of ways. I also have flexibility to create new units or emphasize certain topics that are of interest to my current students.
-
I would describe my overall approach to teaching as more traditional process mastery. My strengths lie in understanding the fundamental assumptions and skills that a student needs to critically engage and master to meet an outcome and building diverse pathways to support that mastery. I encourage student choice, exploration, and discovery but do not encourage the more exaggerated sister of constructivism–subjective tendencies in my classroom. I tend to spend a lot of time attending to the Author’s meaning and fundamentals as I am a teacher of God’s Word. I think incorporating a more inquiry-styled approach would allow more of the uniqueness of my students to surface in our sessions. However, I would use an inquiry-based approach with a clear frame.
-
I am at the point still of mastering the material and ways to teach the material. I sometimes like to veer into letting kids use their own ideas and joys in learning, but cannot at my level seem to help them make meaning from those activities. Perhaps I need to be too much in control and too much to measure their success. When I am better able to get a flow for the class, then I could offer more variance.
-
I support Traditional Teaching. I have learned by setting this structure for my class, it allows be to quickly identify those who need support in different areas. For example, If I have a student that physically can’t stop kicking legs or feels the need to stand, I can accommodate and identify exactly what that child needs plus this has now given me some feedback about what the student may need help with in the future when we approach different topics.