My rationale for choosing this assignment is because it demonstrates that I mastered the theory we studied and applied those theories in a real world application. This project also gave me the opportunity to practice before doing the real thing. This is valuable because I had the opportunity to see where the weak spots were in the content or in the way I presented the material. I think I did a good job of creating the material and presenting it in such a way that it would be a valuable learning experience for teachers who are looking for new ideas or for those who are seasoned and are running out of creative ideas.
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Click on the above link to view the ppt associated with this project.
Description
Effective Teaching Strategies for Basic Skills Instructors – The content of this workshop relates to practical teaching strategies for instructors who are participating in pre-service or in-service training. This would be an appropriate workshop for these instructors because they are new to teaching this population or they have been teaching for some time and are looking for new ways to teach the same content. This would not necessarily be a mandatory training but rather a training that would provide instructors with ideas for getting started or for those who are burning out from using the same ideas over and over again.
I selected the content of this presentation to illustrate using different teaching techniques that would appeal to different learning and teaching styles and that would be appropriate for adults. The ideas are examples and are used to stimulate the creative energy of participants.
Lesson Plan
The plan for this workshop is a Power Point presentation with activities built in for participants to sample some of the strategies and contribute their own ideas to share with the group. (see attached Power Point and talking points)
Rationale
I wanted this workshop to be experiential so instructors could try out the strategies as a way of learning how they might work with their students. I am considering this workshop a “work in progress” since I would like to actually use this for a real pre-service or in-service training some time in the future. This teaching experience gave me the opportunity to try it out to see if it might be a valuable opportunity for instructors who are learning or who are burning out.
Critique
I’m considering this presentation a rough draft. My original idea was to have a practical workshop for instructors to get hands on experience using strategies they might use with their students. I think, for the most part, I succeeded in that goal. I felt a little pressed for time because I didn’t know how long some activities would take or how long I should spend on them. Because of this, there wasn’t enough time to use some of the materials I had included and so I left them out. I think that may have created gaps in what I wanted to do but after viewing the video, I decided that since the participants didn’t know what the activities were going to be, they might not have noticed the difference. In the future, I’ll need to take that into account. There was also a 30 second video that I wanted the students to view and then critique. It didn’t occur to me until I started the workshop that I had no way of getting to the video once I got started with the Power Point. There was no internet connection available. I consider that a technical issue that I need to figure out how to get around in the future.
I mentioned at some point early in the workshop that the material we use in basic skills is about as exciting as reading a tax form and needs embellishing. Because of that, I was trying to use a teaching style that would involve everyone by contributing their creative talents in coming up with ideas regarding how they personally like to learn and what could be done with the material. I’m assuming that in any given group of workshop participants there will be a variety of learning styles and will get back valuable feedback to use in determining how people with different learning styles would relate to certain activities. I think I would let them spend time, maybe in small groups (if there are enough people) to come up with ideas after we had talked through some examples. I was really trying to get away from just making a presentation with the Power Point and doing all the talking. But I did want to make several points about adult learning in general. I think I accomplished that goal. One of the problems with basic skills instructors is that often their experience is in working in education with children so they don’t understand adults. They use materials and strategies that are not appropriate for this population. By including information about adults and how they learn etc. I think it provides an opportunity to look at teaching strategies in a different way.
I also felt like this was a rough draft because what I wanted to accomplish didn’t come across as smoothly as I had hoped. I used “um” a lot which I hate to do, referred to my notes more than I like to and didn’t look at the participants as much as I felt I should have. Now I know what I look like when I think I’m prepared but really need to practice more. I tend to do these things when I don’t feel as polished in a presentation as I would like. I think I can get over that with some more practice and revising the workshop to eliminate the things that didn’t work.
I’m also not sure what knowledge to assume the participants have coming to a workshop like this. For instance, I talked briefly about learning styles and the seven intelligences. I’m not sure how much time to spend on something like that. Those are topics that could have an entire workshop built around them, but I felt like I wanted to include something related to these because teaching strategies can be directly determined by the intelligences and learning styles of the students. So I think it’s important for instructors to be aware of this and to include this knowledge in their planning. Maybe what I said was sufficient to get those who want more information to learn on their own.
I liked that I spent several minutes talking with the participants about things that make them feel effective as a teacher; the things that make them feel successful. I didn’t follow through on any discussion with that and I think I should have. I’m not sure if that would be something I could necessarily use for a pre-service training since I would have to assume that some participants have never taught before, although I could ask those who have not taught to think about what an effective teacher would look like and go at it from that perspective.
I would definitely include a general discussion and brainstorming about how to teach more effectively regardless of what the learning styles and intelligences are. I spent some time telling the participants how things like establishing the right “state of mind”, creating new ways of thinking, reviewing, evaluating and celebrating learning are forms of teaching strategies. I would spend more time on having participants come up with those ideas and others themselves.
Overall, I think I accomplished my goal of teaching some strategies for basic skills instructors. By having the participants actually use several strategies they can try them out first hand, get a feel for how it would work with real students and get a sense of what kind of style the strategy would appeal to. I will probably continue to edit the workshop as I use it and come up with new ideas and points that I want to include. I think I would also like to take some of the concepts that I mentioned briefly and build stand alone workshops around those.
