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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?
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Constructivist. It gets the kids involved. Kids that don’t want to get involved don’t do work.
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When I teach my art lessons, I teach a specific skill or idea, then assign the project. This is process mastery. As the students progress, they are permitted more and more freedoms in their assignments. Instead of walking them all through the same landscape drawing, more advanced students are choosing their landscapes, but must still include the essential elements of a landscape. In that way I am partly constructivist. Students tend to learn best the things they most want to learn, so the goal is always to kindly that desire. It’s not always possible, so we must require certain lessons.
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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.
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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!
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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.