Starting your teaching career or looking to revamp your instructional approach can be both exciting and overwhelming. As a new teacher, mastering effective instructional strategies is crucial for creating a successful and engaging learning environment. For veteran teachers, refreshing these strategies can bring new energy and effectiveness to your classroom. In this article, “8 Essential Instructional Strategies Every New Teacher Should Master,” we will explore key techniques that can help you enhance your teaching practice, manage your classroom more efficiently, and support your students’ learning more effectively. Let’s dive into these essential strategies that will set you up for success in your teaching journey.
Strategy #1: Why are you teaching what you’re teaching?
Knowing what you are teaching and the reason behind teaching it is an essential part of instruction. Having clear objectives for each lesson provides you and your students a roadmap.
Why it’s Important
- Provides a framework for you when designing the lesson plan.
- Enables you and your students to remain focused on the task at hand.
- Defines clear expectations for your students and helps them to understand why they’re learning it.
- Allows you to better assess your students.
How to Implement
- Consider what action you’d like your students to achieve. Do you want them to be able to explain, analyze, or create something?
- Be specific. Ensure the objectives are clear and tangible. How are you able to measure the objective?
- Align with standards. Does your objectives match up with curriculum standards?
- Share with students. Now these objectives and goals are useless unless you can share them with your students. What should students know/know how to do? (Bonus: Why should they know/know how to do it?).
- Refer regularly. Throughout the lesson, refer back to these objectives with students to ensure students (and you) are staying focused on the task at hand.
Strategy #2: Make Learning Relevant
Making the instruction relevant to students, or activating prior knowledge, is a great way to help students connect with the new information you are giving them. Think of a brain like a set of shelves and the knowledge is what you are storing on those shelves. Each shelf represents a specific category that the student is familiar with; thus, the more shelves you can connect the new information to will help them to better retain it.
Why It’s Important
- Students can make more meaningful connections to the new knowledge.
- Students are more engaged and motivated in your class.
- Improves comprehension and retention of the new information.
How to Implement
- Pre-Assessments: Getting an idea of what students already know can help guide you in developing relevant lessons and activities for the unit.
- Possible tools: KWL chart, Poll, or Survey.
- Brainstorming Activities: When in the midst of a lesson, students may not automatically see the connection between your content and their lives. But, there are activities you can facilitate to help students draw connections.
- Possible activities: Use visual aids (create a diagram or infographic) or create a mind map.
- Take on a different perspective: Sometimes it takes someone else pointing out the way it all connects for students to see it too.
- Possible strategies: Use analogies or facilitate discussions (with a purpose in mind).
Strategy #3: Differentiate & Scaffold Instruction
Differentiating instruction can be a challenge—but necessary part—of instruction. When you look at your lesson, you may feel like you cannot change anything because that will take away from the essence of the lesson. But, if students can’t connect with the content or effectively demonstrate mastery in it, what good is instruction really doing? Tailoring instruction to students is easier than you might think.
Why It’s Important
- Increases student engagement and motivation.
- Addresses the varied learning needs of all students in your classroom.
How to Implement
- Get to know your students: When you first get students in your classroom, it is important to get to know them. You may get a roster in advance and some recommendations for accommodations, but it is always good to get some insight from your students as well.
- You should assess what students know; this will give you insight on how to structure your lessons to best meet any gaps or build up on knowledge they know well.
- Develop a learning profile with the types of learning styles, interests, and preferences they have. In other words, getting an idea of their learning profile will help you structure voice and choice activities and projects that can help students learn according to their interests and abilities.
- Make your instruction flexible: The content you teach will likely not change, but how you teach it will impact how your students perceive it.
- Vary complexity: Allow students to learn the content on different levels. This could be done through different forms of scaffolding within the same activity/worksheet (e.g., using sentence starters or hints), or students can work their way up different stations that have varying levels of complexity.
- Differentiate Process: Among different subjects, there may be a variety of ways students can get to the answer (or answers). Offer various ways for students to engage with and process information. For example, instead of using a worksheet, you may facilitate a gallery walk to practice analysis of different mediums. Or you could offer both.
- Voice & Choice: Giving students a say in their learning enables them to be more motivated in it. This can be done by asking students to create a final project, but they have options in how they demonstrate their mastery of it. For instance, instead of having all students present their research, they may choose to demonstrate their knowledge by showing how they would use the skill. This approach also enables students to not only comprehend content but also apply it.
- Assess Often: By assessing students often (with formative assessments), you can best gauge if your instruction is benefiting your students. You can use such approaches as exit slips or quizzes.
Strategy #4: Formative Assessment
Assessments are an essential part of the learning process. From the second you stepped into the education field, the term “assessments” was one you’d hear in almost every educational conversation. Oftentimes, you’d go more in depth in this discussion by talking about whether an assessment is formative or summative. A formative assessment is an evaluation of how students are progressing towards a specific objective while a summative assessment is an evaluation of how well students have mastered the objective. While both types of assessment are important, a formative assessment acts as guiding lights for students and teachers regarding the success of the lesson/learning.
Why It’s Important
- Allows teachers to identify and address misconceptions in instruction.
- Helps students become aware (and responsible) of their own learning progress.
- Informs students and teachers of their understanding of the content (and gives an opportunity to give feedback or instruction modifications for instruction.
How to Implement
- Teacher-Led: There are variety of approaches teachers can use to assess students’ current understanding of content. These approaches often ask students to answer a specific question in relation to the content. For example:
- Bellringers or Exit Tickets
- Digital Quiz (e.g., Kahoot, Quizlet, Quizizz, Gimkit, etc.)
- Observation (What do you see in your students’ progress (according to the observable actions you set early on)).
- Peer-Guided: In some cases, students can more easily share their answers when they can corroborate it with their peer. Or a peer can help you give feedback. For example:
- Think-Pair-Share
- Peer Review Assessment
- Self-Led: Practicing reflection is a good skill all students should practice regularly. Reflecting often enables students to identify areas where they don’t feel confident and be able to advocate for themselves and their learning (which is very important for the times the teacher does not implement a formative assessment at that moment). For example:
- Classroom Poll (Students give thumbs up or down for understanding or not)
- Quickwrite & Questions (Jot down what they know and what they still want to know… kind of like a KWL chart).
Strategy #5: Asking the right questions.
Asking the right question will define how much thinking your students really have to do. It comes down to closed- and open-ended questions. When a question is closed-ended, there is only one answer. Oftentimes, those questions are surface level for students. Open-ended, on the other hand, challenges students critical thinking and/or problem-solving skills because there may be multiple answers (or a more elaborate answer). By asking the right questions will determine how deep your students go into their learning.
Why It’s Important
- Engages students in the lesson.
- Promotes discussion and deeper exploration of the content.
- Helps you determine what students know (and correct misconceptions).
How to Implement
- Quality Questions: If the questions aren’t quality, then they serve no purpose in your classroom.
- When YOU ask the questions, you could follow Bloom’s Taxonomy to help guide what cognitive level you want students to be at.
- Ensure that those questions are open-ended to encourage deeper thinking.
- Probe for deeper understanding with follow-up questions.
- Encourage STUDENTS to create their own questions about the content. Challenging them to make questions open-ended will also encourage deeper thinking.
- When YOU ask the questions, you could follow Bloom’s Taxonomy to help guide what cognitive level you want students to be at.
- Queries: When directly asking students questions about the content, it is important to consider how you ask them. The below strategies may help students if they are not confident in their answers (that they wouldn’t want to say it aloud), or they help you to better gather accurate data.
- Ask students to write down their answers and hand them in.
- Ask students to Think-Pair-Share their answers.
- Practice good wait time to give students a chance to answer.
Strategy #6: Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork
When you can, try to incorporate cooperative learning in your instruction. A teacher at any level must meet a variety of standards that are aligned with a specific content area, but some of the standards merely aim to develop students as individuals. One of which is developing how students interact with others. Thus, creating opportunities to develop students’ social skills will help them grow as a person and can help them develop in the subject matter you are teaching.
Why It’s Important
- Encourages development of interpersonal skills.
- Builds a sense of community and encourage within the classroom.
- Provides opportunity for peer teaching and collaboration.
How to Implement
When implementing cooperative learning, there are some essential practices to utilize to best serve your students and your instruction:
- Group Formation: Students may choose who they work with or you may differentiate groups based on their abilities.
- Objectives & Roles: You still want to make the goals clear to the students, but in achieving them you may have students fulfill specific roles in order to achieve them. (Create role titles with descriptions to help students).
- Activities in Action: Ensure that the tasks you create foster interdependence (e.g., projects, discussions, etc.). As students are going through the activity, circulate the room and provide guidance as needed. Lastly, have the groups reflect on their collaboration through group and individual reflections.
Strategy #7: Tech Integration
Whether you like it or not, technology is apart of world thus it has become apart of education. While I don’t know what technological resources that you have available to you, I would recommend you integrate technology when you can. With the right tools, technology can support differentiation and engagement and make the learning process more streamlined.
Why It’s Important
- Easy access to variety of resources and information.
- Supports and enhances student engagement and needs.
- Streamline administrative tasks and assessments.
How to Implement
- Take Learning Beyond the Classroom: There are variety of resources available on the internet that allow students to explore different parts of the world or experience a unique lecture or concert.
- Possible Resources:
- Virtual Field Trip
- TED Talk
- Possible Resources:
- Engagement & Collaboration: There are different resources that enable students to become more engaged in the content or be able to collaborate.
- Possible Approaches:
- Gamification (e.g., Class Craft, etc.)
- Collaboration (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Google Suites Sharing, etc.)
- Possible Approaches:
- Differentiation & Assessments: Accommodating for learning can be difficult, but technology can help to streamline the process for students and teachers.
- Possible Ideas:
- Assistive Technology (e.g., text-to-speech, audiobooks, etc.)
- Digital Assessments (e.g., online quizzes as formative assessments, etc.)
- AI Tutor to help guide students with content if you are not nearby.
- Possible Ideas:
Strategy #8: Reflective Teaching
Remember, reflection isn’t just for your students, it is a great habit for you to get into too. Reflecting on your teaching practices and effectiveness, will help you become a better teacher in the long run.
Why It’s Important
- Promote growth in you as a person and professional.
- Identifies areas of improvement and/or weaknesses in teaching practices.
How to Implement
- Self-Reflection: Since teaching is a very independent job, it is important to practice regular self-reflection in your teaching. Some class periods and school days fly by, so there are a couple of ways to ensure you keep up on your self-reflection. For example:
- Keep a teaching journal.
- Video record lessons.
- Set personal goals.
- Experiment (and reflect) on new methods.
- Outside Feedback: Even though the job of teaching is very independent, that doesn’t mean they are alone in it. They can turn to their students or colleagues for support when seeking improvement. For example:
- Seek student feedback (e.g., course survey)
- Analyze student data.
- Ask a colleague or admin for peer observation and feedback.
- Participate in professional development.
Mastering these instructional strategies is key to creating an engaging and effective learning environment. From clear objectives to reflective teaching, each approach contributes to student success and teacher growth. Remember, great teaching is an evolving practice—stay flexible, reflective, and open to new methods.
