Knowing your Students

After my readings in Metzler, I have continued to learn about instructional strategies and model based teaching. I have noticed that these instructional strategies are very important in directing and focusing students on the unit content, but what I have found more importantly is that not every strategy is going to be successful with your students. My point is that an effective teacher understands their students and knows what kind of strategies to use with them. An effective teacher knows their students strengths and weaknesses, and will be able to choose the correct strategy to maximize their interest and therefor their learning.

Every student has their own needs and preferences, and by understanding your specific students characteristics, you will be able to properly plan for them with developmentally appropriate activities. In Metzler, Reichmann and Grasha identify three bipolar dimensions to verify a student's preferred learning environment.

They are...

-avoidant/ participant

-competitive/ collaborative

-dependant/ independent

With these three preferred learning environments, students are better understood by specifically determining a students preferred condition of learning. There is six different profiles that your students can be described as. They are...

1. The Collaborative student

2. The competitive student

3. The participant student

4. The avoidant student

5. The independent student

6. The dependent student

The model that you choose will be most effective when its environment profile matches the profile of the majority of the students in your class. That is why it is so important to really know and understand your students. Being a physical education teacher, I have over 400 students that I teach. There are 3 classes to every grade (K-5) in my school, which is a total of 18 classes. It takes time and patience to understand your students, but you can do several things to help. First is that you can speak with their classroom teacher and ask about their behaviors and attitudes in class. They can help you so much, and you will be able to take that knowledge into your planning for your next lessons. You can also speak with the school guidance councilor or psychologist, to help you with behavior students, or others who do not want to participate, to see if you can better understand what will motivate them or make them more comfortable. After recognizing your students you will be able to now plan appropriately and increase your students learning.