Strategies

These individual strategies might be used within any other method or approach they are frequently intended to help foster maintain creativity.

Blackboard

Blackboard (or chalkboard, whiteboard, poster board, projector etc.) is a strategy to provide visual structure during a lecture or discussion.

Debate

Debate is a cooperative learning strategy in which students organize planned presentations for various viewpoints.

Dialog journal

Dialog journal is a strategy that uses journals as a way for students and their teachers to communicate regularly and carry on a private conversation.

Field experience

Field experience is a planned learning experience in the community for students to observe, study, and participate in a real-life setting; FE uses the community as a laboratory.

Flowchart

Flowchart is a graphic organizer strategy in which students depict positioning and role relationships.

Free writing

Free writing is a strategy for encouraging students to express ideas in writing.

Graphic organizer

Graphic organizer is a visual representation of abstract concepts and processes; students transfer abstract information into a more concrete form.

Group read

Group read is sharing a reading to promote better understanding.

Interactive language task

Interactive language task is a strategy in which at least two students work together to accomplish a meaningful activity.

Interview

Interview is for honing organizational and planning skills.

Jigsaw

Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy in which everyone becomes an expert and shares learning so that eventually all group members know the content.

Know - want to know - learned (K-W-L)

K-W-L is an introductory strategy that provided structure for recalling what the student knows regarding a topic, noting what the student wants to know, and finally listing what has been learned and is yet to be learned.

Laboratory investigation

Labortory investigation is a strategy that involve students with their environment. The students propose a question, develop a hypothesis, explore methods for investigating the question, choose one of the methods, then conduct research and draw conclusions based on the information gathered.

Language experience approach

Life experience approach is a strategy in which students, as a group, describe an experience in their own words orally (using a first or second language) as the teacher records their history. The story serves as the basis for follow-up activities.

Learning cycle

Learning cycle is a sequence of lessons designed to have students engage in exploratory investigations, construct meaning out of their findings, propose tentative explanations and solutions, and relate concepts to their own understanding.

Learning log

Learning log is a strategy to develop structured writing.

Literature, history and storytelling

Literature, history and storytelling is a process for using scientists' autobiographies and biographies to connect social context to their data. History comes alive through the eyes of a scientist.

Mini-museum

Mini-museum is a strategy for creating a focused exhibit.

Modeling

Modeling is a representation of a concept: may be concrete, such as a ball-and-stick model of an atom, or abstract like a model of weather systems.

Numbered heads together

Numbered heads together is a cooperative strategy in which students work in small groups to review information.

Predict, observe, explain

Predict, observe, explain is a strategy in which the teacher shows the class a situation and asks them to predict what will happen when a change is made.

Problem solving

Problem solving is a strategy in which students apply knowledge to solve problems. This approach facilitates scientific thinking.

Reflective thinking

Reflective thinking deals with reflecting or thinking about what was learned after a specific lesson . . . an activity usually finished by writing about it.

Role-play and simulation

Role-play and simulation allow students to assume the identity of another person. Simulations further use role-playing to involve students in situations that require a group of people with two or more points of view to formulate a common decision.

Think, pair and share

Think, pair and share is a cooperative strategy to help students develop their own ideas and build on the ideas of others.

Venn diagram

Venn diagram is a graphic organizer strategy for creating a visual analysis of information representing similarities and differences between concepts, objects, etc.

Webbing

Webbing is a graphic organizer strategy that provides a visual of how words or phrases connect to a topic.