-
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?
-
It would be a combination of traditional and process mastery. I think the area that most frequently needs improved is simply attempting to keep classroom exercises up to date and relevant to the learners in the room and not rely on the same, exact exercises that may have worked for learners in the past.
-
This will be my first year in the classroom, but I believe my school does a great job incorporating positive elements of each orientation. I love the idea of building a structure that has a level of flexibility!
-
I would consider myself an eclectic teacher, incorporating different learning styles based on what works best for the specific lesson and curriculum. Since my school uses Abeka curriculum, the traditional approach is built in. I do try to offer some flexibility when it comes to showing understanding of a concept, including using a project instead of always a standard test. I think I need to include more variety as the continual use of worksheets gets rather boring and monotonous for students. I try to have real-life lessons and hands-on activities to stimulate learning and thinking.
-
I would say that I try to have a mixture of all of it. I feel like if I don’t have a good enough relationship with my students to be able to tell when they aren’t understanding concepts in order to try a different approach than I’m not in tune enough with how the course is doing. On the hand, the blessing of working in a Christian school is being able to decipher the days when other topics outside of the classroom might need to be addressed and talked about. Sometimes the Holy Spirit guides us to have those conversations.
-
I would say it is a mix of all of them. Traditional in the sense that I need to teach students specific things to meet state standards and what they need to be able to go to a college. Mastery in the sense that I am trying to build into my assessments, the ability for them to show mastery at many different times throughout the year so in case they did not understand a concept earlier in the year, but they mastered it later, for them to be able to understand they know it well now and their grade reflect it as well. And with constructivist, I understand many students have many different ways of learning and interests, so I try to provide flexibility in creative assignments for them to decide how they want to demonstrate their understanding. Right now there is a lot of room for improvement as I learn about different types of learners and what helps them to learn best. In terms of what is working well, I think Black said it best, “perhaps most importantly, it’s invaluable to us to be able to pull out aspects of different orientations that are positive as far as positively relating to a biblical worldview”. Being open to all aspects of different orientations to teach from a biblical worldview.
