15 Classroom Teaching Strategies and Examples

What are teaching strategies, examples used in the classroom, and what are the positive influences on pupils and students?

Teaching is one of the professions that require applying new techniques if need be to engage and help young minds learn. The classroom is open for new teaching strategies, whatever the pupils or students need to learn and develop their reading, reasoning, or writing skills.

Teachers often use multiple teaching strategies to develop lesson plans suitable for students of different academic levels. Using multiple teaching strategies will enable students to understand the topic and improve their learning.

Classroom Teaching Strategies and Examples

What Are Teaching Strategies?

Teaching strategies or instructional strategies refer to the methods used by teachers to support their pupils or students through the learning process.

To help students understand a topic, a teacher will use a specific teaching strategy suitable for the topic.

Multiple teaching strategies are often used to achieve learning goals and support different types of students.

Educators may decide to use teaching strategies designed for English language learners. They may also use teaching strategies suitable for students with disabilities or students with ADHD depending on the need of the students.

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Classroom Teaching Strategies and Examples

Here are a few classroom teaching strategies and their examples.

Authentic Learning

Authentic learning is a teaching strategy that allows students to learn and understand the concepts in real life.

This type of teaching strategy allows students to acquire first-hand experience by learning a task. Engaging in a task will help students understand the importance of practicals.

The challenge with this type of teaching strategy is that it’s difficult to set up within a classroom.

Examples

An ESL educator provides conversational tasks for students to complete on the class field trip to the city.
The students complete the task by exploring the city, taking pictures, admiring the city’s cultural heritage, asking for directions, etc.
By the end of the day, the students come together to talk about their experiences.

Discovery Learning

Discovery learning is a teaching strategy where students are allowed to explore a resourceful environment to the right answers. It requires students to improve their prior knowledge with resources available in the newfound environment.

Students acquiring knowledge by themselves and not being told what to do is one of the benefits of discovery learning.

Although common challenges include time consumption and distraction as students are given free time to learn on their own.

Examples

The instructor provides the appropriate resource for students to learn and discover new things for themselves in the classroom.
The teacher provides the lesson objectives in the classroom (i.e. what is heavier Water or Sand).
At the end of the class, the students gather around to talk about what they have learned.

High Expectations

This involves demanding more from the students to improve their academic performance. High expectations don’t mean every student must meet a required standard, instead, it expects every student to better their previous best academic performance.

The benefit of this is to ensure that students continue to pursue academic excellence by improving their grades.

Some of the challenges is that teachers need to be more compassionate for their students.

Examples

High expectations are designed to measure students’ prior knowledge to determine their current state of development.
It makes students aim to achieve more, better than their current performance.

Parent and Community Engagement

Parent and community engagement involves building a relationship with students and their communities by bringing both parties together.

The benefit of this is that it allows students to see themselves as member of their community. This allows the students to know prominent members of their community.

Safety concerns are some of the challenges as teachers and members of the community will need to fill in forms and complete background checks as well.

Examples

The educator needs to find community members who are eager to come to the classroom.
The community members and educators will meet to talk about lessons.
Students get the chance to engage community members in a physical discussion.

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Unconditional Positive Regard

This involves instructors consistently and unconditionally perceiving students to be competent. The teacher’s responsibility is to encourage students when they fail, make mistakes, or misbehave.

When students receive unconditional positive regard, they understand that the teacher trusts their ability to improve despite their current performance.

Letting students know that inappropriate behaviours is unacceptable remains one of the challenges.

Examples

I know your performed poorly in school today but I expect you to come to school tomorrow and perform better.

Modelled Teaching

Modelled teaching is a type of teaching strategy where the teacher shows students how a task is done. The teacher demonstrates how the task is done by breaking it down into smaller simple steps.

This is one of the classroom teaching strategies where the teacher demonstrates with common examples.

The teacher will be in charge and also maintain control when a new idea is introduced to the class to ensure students clearly understand and follow safety procedures before trying it for themselves.

Fill-in the Gaps

This simple teaching strategy involves students filling in an incomplete text and it can either happen verbally or in writing.

Fill-in the gaps allow teachers to easily access their student knowledge. However, this teaching strategy cannot be used consistently as students also need to learn through challenging methods.

Examples

Paper cloze passages: stories where the key phrases are removed. i.e. ‘Can you finish this sentence? The first king of Israel was……?

Peer Assisted Learning (PAL)

Here the teacher allows the students to be in charge of the learning environment to explore and discover new things for themselves.

The students can clearly explain concepts among themselves because they are on the same level.

Peer-assisted learning is quite different from students being in charge of teaching.

Examples

Allow stronger students to pair with weaker students. Allow the stronger students to show their knowledge by supporting the weaker students.

Poster Presentation

A poster presentation is a better way to show intelligence at the end of a lesson. Pens, printing materials and posters should be made available for the students.

Poster presentations allow students to practice demonstration skills and it’s also a way of presenting knowledge to the class.

Examples

Allow students to work in groups to record their knowledge in an engaging way.

Two-Minute Presentation

Two-minute verbal presentations such as posters are a way of allowing students to show their intelligence at the end of a lesson.

Each student will be given two minutes to present their knowledge to the class based on a chosen topic.

Examples

The two-minute presentation method should be used for the final lesson on a topic.
Let the students ready their two-minute presentations by adding the notes to palm cards.
Make sure students have enough time to practice among themselves. Also, give them instructions on how to take extra notes on their palm cards.

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De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

This teaching strategy asks students to look at an issue from different perspectives.

The Six Hats

White Hat- provide the facts.
Yellow Hat- explore the positives.
Black Hat- explore the negatives.
Red Hat- express your feelings and intuition.
Green Hat- be creative.
Blue Hat- the manager who ensures all hats are on their lane.

Examples

Allow students to spend quality time brainstorming what they would say on the issue from multiple perspectives.

Democratic Vote

This teaching strategy tends to empower students in the classroom as they get to decide what happens in their classroom.

Allow students to voice their opinion on how they will learn in the classroom through their votes.

This teaching strategy can empower students, help them build trust, and give them a sense of ownership over the classroom.

Non-Verbal Gestures

Teachers can use non-verbal gestures to assist students learn in the classroom. It’s a powerful method that can be used even outside the classroom.

Examples

Nods of approval can send a clear message to a student that their excellent work is recognized.
Tapping a watch will indicate time and also remind students to pay close attention to time.

Associative Learning

Associative learning occurs when multiple ideas are introduced to a student that is reinforcing.

Examples

The educator provides students with rhyming pairs in other to help a student associate a word with another.

Also Read: 15 Analytical Thinking Examples (Tips for Students)

Cooperative Learning

This teaching strategy involves allowing students to work together. This occurs in small groups where the success of the group relies on student cooperation to achieve a common goal.

The benefits include minimizing destructive competitiveness in the classroom.

Some of the challenges is getting students to work together as a group.

Conclusion

Teaching is one of the professions that require applying new techniques if need be to engage and help young minds learn.

The classroom is open for new teaching strategies, whatever the pupils or students need to learn and develop their reading, reasoning, or writing skills.

Teaching strategies are appropriate methods teachers can use to deliver course materials and engage students in different practising skills.

Recommendations

References

HeplfulProfessor: List Of 107 Classroom Teaching Strategies (With Examples)
Study.com: Effective Teaching Strategies
Indeed.com: 15 of the Most Effective Teaching Strategies
KD Tanner – CBE—Life Sciences Education, 2013 –Structure matters: twenty-one teaching strategies to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity
KC Wise, JR Okey – Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 1983- A meta‐analysis of the effects of various science teaching strategies on achievement

15 Classroom Teaching Strategies and Examples

What Are Teaching Strategies?