Instructional Strategy Ideas

Teachers are always looking for something to 'hook' their students.  Here's a short list of my favorite strategies to get high-leverage results.

Classroom strategies -- Reading Rockets gives examples of classroom strategies for phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing

Task Cards or Choice Boards -- give students flexibility to learn independently on their own schedule by allowing them choice of tasks to show proficiency of a concept.

High Yield Literacy Strategies -- great list of strategies and graphic organizers to use for specific skills

Glossary of Instructional Strategies  -- thorough list of terms and strategies

Whip around  -- after instruction, have students quickly go around the room and state a fact or idea.

Pause and reflect -- have students pause every 3-5 minutes to talk with a partner about their learning.

When reading a passage, -- have students create questions, outline the sequence of events, give them a checklist of key points, agree/disagree T chart

Independent connections -- allow students to find connected texts to what you are learning in class

Pause and reteach -- have students pause after learning a big idea and reteach to a partner.

Student modeling -- have a student model the correct way to accomplish a task.

Non-examples -- have a student model a non-example of how to complete a task.

Survey -- have students create a quiz or review for their group members to complete.

Circle retell -- have students sit in a circle and retell a story or sequence of events.

Sporting event -- divide students into 2 teams, put a line down the middle of the board.  Students try to get the ball to move to their side by answering questions to make a goal.

Stump a classmate -- have students craft questions they think will stump their classmates.

Fishbowl -- as students ask great questions throughout a lesson, write them down and review with these questions at the end of learning.

Exit tickets --  I was surprised when...; I think I will...; I would have liked...; Now I understand...; I wish...; I could be more successful if...; I learned that...

Spot the error -- have students write questions or sentences with errors and see if their classmates can spot them.