Before beginning each lesson and as
a best practice, I use advance organizers because I want the learner to
understand what is taught, retain the information, and remember the material. Advance organizers help to orient the student
to learning goals and expectations and relate to the learning tasks. During Learning Focus training that was
offered within my school district, I was introduced to advance organizers and
their uses in improving student knowledge and skills. There are several types of
advance organizers such as graphic organizers, narrative, and expository. Advance organizers are to be presented during
the lesson introduction. During the lesson, an advance organizer can help
students to stay focused or be used as a review of ideas and content taught. Advance
organizers are a great way to organize new information about a topic. Moreover,
as a cognitive strategy, they help students to merge what they already know with
new information they have just learned. The
most frequently used advance organizer in my classroom is the KWL chart. My
students tell me what they know (K), what they want to know (W), and what they
learned (L). Thus, the KWL is used before, during, and after instruction to bridge
the gap between what the learner knows and what they need to know. Advance organizers that are relevant to the learning task
facilitate and promote the transfer of learning. One interesting
advance organizer that I stumbled upon is the use of cartoons as advance
organizers.
Another teaching strategy for my classroom is
the think, pair, share. I use the think, pair, share strategy because it allows for cooperative and collaborative
learning experiences. I encourage my
students to share their thoughts and ideas about a topic with another student,
their partner. Together they discuss and
think about questions related to the topic.
Then we come together in a whole group and discuss their thoughts. This type of learning strategy gives a
student support from their partner during discussion and make them more
comfortable about sharing their ideas and thoughts. Many students who are “shy” about sharing
their ideas and thoughts tend to participate more in the safer environment of a
think, pair, share. This was a technique
presented during an English Language Arts Workshop for teachers of
reading. Advance organizers and think,
pair, share can be used as student-centered pre-instructional activities which
should always “directly relate to the objectives” (p. 175).
During my rapid instructional
design reading, I was intrigued by the notion of how to design instructional
training. Many things throughout Piskurich’s
(2015) book sound very familiar to me as a classroom teacher. I believe there
is a hint of backward design principles embedded throughout. This backward design of instruction is one in
which you begin with the goal in mind and work backwards from there to design content.
Piskurich’s book is written for the industrial setting, yet I can see it
applied in a classroom setting as well. In the design
stage of the ADDIE model, an instructor begins planning using the objectives or
training goals. Piskurich states that this is “to
help the designer make sure that all the content that is needed is there” for
training purposes (p. 129). As a teacher, the goals or objectives are also
my starting points. I begin with these in mind and work
my way backwards to ensure that content that needs to be taught is taught and
to organize that content. In discussing
objectives, Piskurich is very specific about having measurable and observable
goals. Again, something that is just as important
for those who teach. My objectives have to be well designed, purposeful, linked
to standards, measurable, and observable. Otherwise, I will not be able to properly
assess my students or recognize when my students have (or have not) mastered
their learning goals. Assessments and data drive my instruction and
instructional decisions; however, it is important that I carefully link assessments
and standards. Moreover, in planning for
instruction, I look at how I am going to assess my objectives before I plan
units of study. In planning for my
classroom instruction, I must always meet my learners where they are. When necessary, I may have to go back and
teach (or reteach) supporting standards to scaffold my students’ knowledge acquisition.
For example, if a student has not met a fourth grade standard, I may have to reteach
this standard for mastery before introducing the fifth grade standard I am
focusing on. Always, I am to remember to center my instruction around the
learner. During the planning of
classroom experiences, I will plan for the best way to deliver important
content incorporating methods and strategies will be most effective for students’
learning and achievement.
Piskurich, G. (2015). Before you do anything: Pre-instructional design activities. Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right (pp. 107-202). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.
Works Cited
Gurlitt, J., Dummel, S., Schuster, S., & Nuckles, M.
(2011). Differently structured advance organizers lead to different initial
schemata and learning outcomes. Instructor
Science. Doi:
10.1007/s11251-011-9180-7.
Think pair share image -
You tube video -
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IxWrXmTL-s
