Thinking About My Practice with Christine Syme

Teaching Pedagogy



Deliberate Acts of Teaching (DAT)

The term instructional strategy is used to mean a deliberate act of teaching that focuses on

learning to meet a particular purpose.

When teachers interact with their students they use a range of deliberate acts of teaching. They

use them to develop students’ knowledge, strategies and awareness in terms of learning.

The importance of deliberate, strategic teaching cannot be over emphasised. However, much learning is incidental, and improved student outcomes result from both planned ad incidental learning experiences.

When using instructional strategies, teachers should be aware they need to do the following:

Modelling

Modelling is providing a model of how a good learner works by demonstrating and articulating how a solution was derived – thinking aloud as a process is followed.  Modelling often involves providing the language that the learner needs.

Prompting

Prompting is encouraging the learner to use what they already know and can do. Prompting may take the form of a strong hint, a clue, or a gentle “nudge” to help students use their existing knowledge and strategies to make connections and reach a solution. A prompt often takes the form of a question and involves allowing “wait time” to give students the opportunity to develop and express their own ideas.

Questioning

Questions are a productive way of bringing out what students know and can do, so that they can apply their expertise to their tasks. Questioning can be used to build student knowledge, and encourage thoughtful discussion and critical thinking.

Feedback

The purposes of feedback are: to affirm, to inform, to guide future learning.  Feedback is most effective when it relates back to specific learning goals and to the ultimate goal of enabling students to monitor and regulate their own learning.

Telling

At its simplest level, telling means supplying what the student needs, such as an unknown word or piece of knowledge. The idea is to fill a gap at that moment to enable the student to move on.

Explaining

Explaining can be thought of as an extension of telling. Teachers may explain the task itself, or they may explain the content of a learning activity. For example, the teacher may explain: what they want the students to do, how a certain task will help the students to achieve a particular goal, the background to a topic (for example, as an introduction to an activity).

Directing

Directing is simply giving a specific instruction.