Instructional Strategies

The Concept Attainment Model was developed by Jerome Bruner and his two colleagues, Goodnow and Austin. This model is a dynamic, interactive, teaching model that supports students' deep understanding of concepts and development of conceptual knowledge.

Benefits:

• Builds on Students' Prior Knowledge

• Enables Examination of Content from Different Perspectives

• Promotes Exploration of the Relationships Among Concepts

• Promotes Critical Thinking

• Engages Students' Curiosity

The Concept Development Model is able to be used in any subject area since organizing concepts by grouping them and then being able to identify how the concepts are related is essential to learning any content area.

Benefits:

• Teaches Thinking Skills

• Helps Students Retain Content Understanding

• Helps Students See Similarities, Differences, and to Identify Patterns

• Challenges Students to Exercise Creative Thinking

• Promotes Active Hands-On Learning

• Acknowledges and Builds on Students' Prior Knowledge

• Aids Student Expression

• Helps Teachers Learn More about Their Students

This model is commonly used in classrooms, also across any content area. Though students are place into groups, they are not just thrown into random groups. Instead, the teacher carefully decides which students should be placed where. This model includes using the general cooperative learning model, jigsaw, and graffiti.

Benefits:

• Influence Student Learning and Achievement Positively

• Help Students Learn about Cooperation and Value It

• Build Students' Social Skills

• Enhance Classroom Community

This teaching strategy is very beneficial in many different content areas. Most commonly though, it is easily put in with math content since most of math is following steps to solve a problem.

Benefits:

• Helps to Develop Thinking Skills

• Helps to Develop Automaticity

• Fosters Independent Learning

• Promotes Knowledge of Self

The Inductive Model can be used when teaching content from any subject area. This model is best applied when introducing a new concept, though it can also be used to assess the understanding retained over a concept.

Benefits:

• Fosters and Scaffolds Inductive and Critical-Thinking Skills

• Engages Learners in Identifying Patterns and Differences

• Supports Numerous Thinking Styles

• Promotes Deep Learning

• Allows Students to Demonstrate Their Own Learning

• Provides Students the Opportunity to Apply Their Learning

The Inquiry Model can be used when teaching content from any of the knowledge dimensions-factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge. Though, it is particularly strong when used to teach students the procedural knowledge of problem-solving and cognitive process skills.

Benefits:

• Develops Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, and Metacognitive Knowledge

• Promotes Active, Engaged Learning

• Develops Cognitive Process Skills

• Facilitates Student Understanding

• Encourages Students to Serve as Partners in the Learning Process

• Helps Students Learn to Appreciate Intellectual Property

• Supports Lifelong, Life wide Learning

The Integrative Model is a purpose-driven instructional model that supports students as they work to develop the ability to learn independently using various thinking skills. This model provides a structure that helps teachers guide students in a process of describing, comparing, categorizing, analyzing, examining, relationships, and making generalizations about organized bodies of knowledge.

Benefits:

• Develops Students' Critical Understanding of Content

• Promotes Development of Critical-Thinking Skills

• Supports Awareness of Relationships between Concepts

• Synthesizes Learning from a Variety of Resources

The Problem-Based Learning Model is an active learning model that allows students to learn and hone problem-solving skills, develop competence with academic content standards, and realize the relevance of applying content area learning for practical purposes.

Benefits:

• Promotes 21st Century Skills

• Fosters Student Understanding of the Complexity of Real-World Problems

• Promotes Long-Term Retention

• Motivates Students to Learn

• Activates Prior Knowledge

The Socratic Seminar Model is often best used with ages 7 and up in many different content areas. This model uses structured and well thought out questions to spark discussion in order to encourage students' development of critical thinking skills and exploring of ideas.

Benefits:

• Develops Factual, Conceptual, Procedural, and Metacognitive Knowledge

• Builds on Prior Knowledge

• Fosters Communication among and with Peers

• Promotes Student Exploration of Important and Complex Ideas

• Empowers Students

• Develops 21st Century Skills

The Vocabulary Acquisition Model is a teacher-guided instructional model that facilitates students' development of vocabulary in a procedural and inductive manner. This model can be used when teaching factual or conceptual knowledge types and stretches student thinking beyond basic levels of the cognitive process dimension. This model emphasizes the importance of deep understanding of vocabulary, which is the comprehension of a word's complexity and its relationship to other concepts.

Benefits:

• Fosters Deeper Understanding of Words

• Teaches Students to Examine Words' Morphology and Etymology

• Link to Prior Knowledge

• Addresses Various Learners' Needs

• Provides Practice in Different Contexts

• Promotes Transfer of Knowledge