Teaching Strategies

Let’s start with SOLO taxonomy; students are classified into five categories; first category is pre-structural student who do not have the basic information about the subject matter and I think Direct Instructional (DI) could be useful in this situation with some technology tools/techniques to present the curriculum, this could be applied for example in teaching English as a foreign language for our foundation student, this approach would be effective for providing information or developing step-by-step skills; second and third categories are uni-structural/multi-structural  student who have the basic information but from one angle or multi angle but only as a Surface Understanding as the student is not being able to put this information together to form a solid knowledge and I think interactive lecturing could be useful in this case to increase the students engagement inside the classroom in order to foster deeper understanding of the course content through group discussion and practice by doing; fourth and fifth categories are relational/extended abstract student who have the deep understanding in the subject matter and I think Problem/Project based (PBL) approach could be used to develop to achieve the deep understanding and build the critical thinking skills needed in real life environment.             

Personally; I would go with a combination of the above approaches (DI, PBL, and Interactive learning)   as we have different levels of students in our classroom and to align ourselves with a level-3 teacher who is concern is about what a student does and the product or the learning outcome of the teaching.

Regarding Bloom’s taxonomy; I think a combination of PBL & interactive lecturing would be an essential teaching approaches in any classroom if we want our students to gain the creating, evaluating, analysis, applying, and understanding skills; I think that Direct Instruction (DI) could be useful in remembering and achieving understanding.

Regarding Assessments; for formative assessments (just-in-time information on what students know or can do) I would go with Case study, group activity, and researches which a reflection to the teaching approaches using PBL & interactive lecturing (also teacher & students can pinpoint to the concepts those are not clear yet or misunderstood (metacognition)); for summative assessments (reflect students understanding during the course or a unit (module)) I would go with projects which a reflection to PBL teaching approach as exam should test the ability to explain, relate, prove, and apply (same as the teacher intention).