Mrs. Strand has been a sixth-grade English teacher for eleven years. There are several students in the classroom that are not being successful though they seem to be capable and are on-task. Mrs. Strand invites a colleague in to observe her teaching so that she can get some peer feedback on how to improve her instructional methods. After the students leave for the day, Mrs. Strand and her colleague sit down to discuss the lesson. The colleague’s notes mention that Mrs. Strand lectured for more than half the block. Several of the students had raised their hands, and Mrs. Strand asked them to wait until the end of her lesson to ask questions. Those students did not ask their questions when she prompted for them at the end of the lesson. Additionally, she worked quietly at her desk grading papers while the students completed their independent work. They turned in their work and moved on to approved free-time activities. Which of the following strategies is NOT appropriate to address Mrs. Strand’s areas of weakness in her instructional delivery?
Explanation
Answer: B - In order to strengthen her instructional delivery, it would NOT be appropriate for Mrs. Strand to give the students a quiz at the end of the instructional period and assign mandatory tutoring to any students that do not pass. Frequent feedback is necessary to monitor student learning and adjust instructional delivery methods to meet the needs of each student in the class. By using only lecture, she is not addressing the needs of students that learn best by other modalities: kinesthetic, visual and tactile. Variety in activities increases student engagement, taps into the other learning modalities and increases the students’ exposure to a variety of learning opportunities that will help them scaffold their learning. Her current model does not allow students to learn cooperatively, which is proven by research to benefit students both academically and socially.
