Teaching Strategies for Life

The purpose of the Teaching Strategies for Life component is to develop and provide a comprehensive archive of open source and free-shared project-launch blueprints as teaching strategies that are:

● Available to everyone
● Adaptable to almost any curriculum
● Part of a global collaboration of indefinite evolution and expansion (add your ideas here)
● Used within the One Community Education Program to teach the Curriculum for Life Component

 

RELATED PAGES

EDUCATION OVERVIEW   ●   HIGHEST GOOD SOCIETY   ●   OUR OPEN SOURCE PURPOSE

WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE TO EVOLVING THIS EDUCATION PROGRAM WITH US

SUGGESTIONS    ●    CONSULTANTS    ●    PIONEERS    ●    COLLABORATIVE NOTES

TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR LIFE

The styles, strategies, and approaches we are outlining are for both the comprehensive Education for Life Program and as part of the One Community Social Architecture. To create this, we have started with components from the philosophies of the well known alternative teaching methods of Maria Montessori, Waldorf, Carl Orff Schulwerk, Reggio Emilia Approach, Howard Gardner’s 8 Multiple-Intelligences, and Bloom’s Taxonomy and then expanded beyond them. The teaching styles outlined here are meant to be adaptable and applicable for adults teaching children, adults teaching adults, children teaching children, and children teaching adults.

SPECIFIC SYSTEMS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS

Montessori   ●   Waldorf   ●   Orff Schulwerk   ●   Reggio   ●   Multi-Intelligence   ●   Bloom’s Taxonomy

 Ever-expanding Teaching Strategies for Life List

This list is meant to expand indefinitely. If you have something you’d like to add to it, please visit our suggestions page. You are also invited to view and comment on our on-going notes specific to this component and found in our Open Source Teaching Strategies for Life Back Office Page.

• “Crazy Creative Combo Cooperative” – Teach to another or give a presentation to interpret how a curriculum point or points, chapter of book, etc. was important using any one, or two, or more of these creative formats: Poem, Play/Act It Out, Essay or Bullet point, Picture, Song, Sculpture or Building, Computer Presentation, Origami or Tessellation (Ex.: 7 element tessellation), Cooking Project, Make Up Your Own, ??

• “Curious Copycat” – Leading a learning exercise with intent of students “copycatting” a chosen leader and then asking and answering questions to deepen understanding. (Idea source was Waldorf)

• “Freedom Learning” – Create an environment filled with as diverse as possible of a selection of imagination and curiosity stimulation learning materials revolving around your curriculum choice. Depending on the age of the student, curriculum being taught, and the teaching aids, the idea to be learned can be collaborated on with the student or not. An expansion on this idea is to have the student(s) create their own Freedom Learning environment and explain/demonstrate how it works. (Idea source was Montessori)

• “Game Genius” – Design a new game to teach the curriculum. Select the specific strategy to teach the information, the number of players, a scoring system, and then choose and/or design a board or any other tools needed to help play the game. When it is complete, the game is played by students and then discussed and/or collaborated on to evolve it further.

• “Heart of the Subject” – Expressive movement art to poetry, music, plays using learning and application of moods and emotional states combined with representative pitch, tone, rhythm, grammar, etc. to teach the emotional and artistic heart of a subject and/or component of curriculum. (Idea source was Waldorf)

• “Infinite Immersion” – Curriculum learned with maps, food, dance, song, stories and history together – the goal is to gather the most diverse information possible about a topic and incorporate all the senses and learning styles for a full immersion experience. (Idea source was Montessori)

• “Leading expert” or “Become The Subject” – Example: History → Each child is assigned a piece (Ex. – Battle of Gettysburg) and becomes the expert on that piece. At the end of the week every student would make a report on a different piece of the subject (which would be a different student) and then present it to the rest of the class. To make it more fun and interactive, students can dress up, act it out, transform the room into the environment to demonstrate their piece and engage the whole class in learning and problem solving. (Idea source was Waldorf )

• “Metaphor Magic” – Choose a well known story or statement about any curriculum component and explore this as a metaphor for life, a different curriculum component, and/or teaching tool. An example of this would be: Nutrition –> “treating your body as a temple” –> What does “a temple” mean to different people? Is this a good metaphor for each individual? What else could we use in place of “temple” and why? How could we use our ideas in other areas of our life/could this metaphor be a metaphor for other curriculum? Could we create a totally different metaphor for this curriculum based on other curriculum – ex. “body as a math equation, body as history, body as ????”?

• “Power Play” – Teachers, students, or a collaboration between the two combine music and instruments, movement, singing, dancing, chanting, drama, speech, and anything else an individual would consider “play” into lessons that create new paths to interaction, involvement, and immersion to learn by being in the conversation. (Idea source was Orff Schulwerk)

• “Rampant Relationships” – Choose, or have the child choose, seemingly unrelated curriculum or topics and explore, expand, teach/demonstrate, and/or creatively improvise the relationships between as many components as possible. (Idea source was Reggio)

• “Remarkable Replacement” – This idea came from thinking about adlibs and looking at an adjectives list. Take any subject foundation (say Math, Chemistry, Art, Music, etc.) and substitute it’s components with the information you are learning. Ex. History converted into a math problem, chemical bond, art piece, musical composition, etc. or Addition converted into a musical piece or Reading/Writing converted into an Earth Sciences Piece — say you teach how clouds create rain with story lines coming from clouds that tell the important information. Student demonstrates what they created with a new (related) information source or student(s) teach their new format to another student

• “Season Smart” – Curriculum is created integrating the timeframe of season and with specific reflection upon how the season affects what may not appear to be season related curriculum. An example of this might be discussing history and how it may have been different in a different season. Or how the current season, or a different season, may be affect a science experiment… or impact the story in a book… or specifically contribute to a math lesson. Students and teachers collaborate together for an entire season on diverse ideas to integrate natural, social, recreational, and historical seasonal specific ideas, information, and related changes (Idea source was Montessori)

• “Story Magic” – Teacher or Student tells a story about how you learn/learned ________. Incorporate multiple curriculum points and multiple story aids (props, pictures, technology, etc.). Consider making it metaphorical for added critical thinking and teacher challenge.

• “Thoughtful Teacher” – Student decides on what they feel will be the best way to document (write, photograph, draw, story) or otherwise demonstrate their learnings to show/tell/teach the experience/learning to each other, teachers, and their parents. As part of this exercise the student also shares why they chose the method they chose. (Idea source was Reggio)

• “Transcendent Technology” –  Children use technology to teach something in a new way: create a presentation, identify a new resource and incorporate it as a teaching tool, ??

• “Truculent Time” – Timed Creative Exercises: 25-60 seconds or 10 mins on one big or small element of anything working either individually or in groups. Consider working to a point and then rotating projects or groups to evolve the work of another.

• “Weekly Wonder” – Curriculum Theme of the Week – Weekly overarching curriculum theme incorporated into all lessons for the week as the Weekly Wonder focus. In addition to the planned theme related curriculum, students and teachers brainstorm the week before on ways to contribute to the next week’s “Theme Wonder” with theme related dress, theme related sharing, theme related social architecture suggestions, creative writing, art, additional research, and anything else they can think of.

THIS PAGE IS ALWAYS EXPANDING – CLICK HERE IF YOU HAVE A SUGGESTION TO ADD