Teaching Strategies

This is just a space in case you have questions or comments on the different taxonomies we discussed!

The meta from today:

• I wanted to do one variation on the group work from last time to show how the same type of activities can be changed to keep it interesting enough that students have to follow directions and pay attention to what is going on in the room. You can also modify any exercise in a number of ways, so this was one example. The first one focused on the abstract and the group work was a way to draw similarities across topics. The second group activity focused on each group learning about one model and understanding it enough to teach others. It was much less about trends.
• The reason that there was a focus on how each taxonomy could inform your teaching is because they were all fairly abstract. This was to help the learners who need concrete examples and reasons why.
• I’m not sure that I’ll do this or not since we tend to be in paper saving mode, but with students I might print out the collaborative handout and pass it out at the beginning of the next class as a quick refresher before moving on.
• We’ll do something different in the next class. I don’t want anyone to get too settled in.

The groupwork went so well in the last class that I wanted to do a slight modification in today’s. Lest anyone get too settled, we’ll do another type of activity next week.

Today’s main goal was for everyone to learn a little about taxonomies; enough so that you can think back on it later if there was something that struck you. The secondary goal was for everyone to be able to think through how these taxonomies could influence their teaching. If we’d had time for a 15 minute discussion, we would have focused on how these taxonomies could interplay in your teaching, and how you can pick the best ones to focus on for a given topic. If that’s interesting to you, feel free to start the discussion in the comments!

The group task of the day was for each group to learn about their taxonomy, to contribute to the “handout” for the class, and to discuss, as a group, three ways that you do (or can) use this understanding of learning to encourage a stronger learning environment. The concluding presentation included an explanation and one example of how these models could include your teaching.

You can find the handout here.