Instructional Strategies :

To help students become independent learners, we could support students with some strategies.

Active Learning :
1)   Exit tickets : Asking students to write down “What they learnt today?” , “What the found more
interesting?” , “How they will relate the learning to real-life situation” OR they can draw a picture
about what they learnt and think of it

2) Flipped classroom : Instead of lecturing and teaching lessons at class. A lesson based or related
video link can be shared or overview points print-out can be handed prior to the class day. During
class hours, the students can do activities like collage, painting, group discussion, presentation, quiz,
share ideas about topics chosen by spin wheel or ticket draw. Fun activities and engaging students
during class and keeping lesson learning before class at their off-hours.

3) Activity sheets and Learning logs : Students shall complete activity sheets based on the lessons
they learned and log their thoughts about the lesson and interact during class with fellow students

4) Muddiest Point : Students shall use index cards to write down the topic they found difficulty to
understand / comprehend anonymously. After all cards are collected, the students can choose any
random card which they have understood. The cards that are not picked have been avoided for
some difficulty in it. So, the teacher could identify the student’s understanding of the concepts and
prepare better ways to make them understand.

5) Reflection : The reflection prompt could be simple, like asking what they learned, or what they
found the most interesting. Or, you can make your prompt more application-based, like asking them
to connect what they learned to a real-life situation, or telling them to explain why what they
learned is important.

Assessment :

6) Grade as you go : Group activities and solving puzzles, worksheets can be given to assess the
student’s understanding and guide them to understand before moving to next topic

Group activities :

7) Peer instruction : Students can make diagrams, crafts and present it to class and talk about what
they learnt. It encourages involvement and interaction among students.

8) Role play : Having the opportunity to visualize, model or role play in dynamic situations promotes
curiosity, exploration and problem solving. It can aid students in working towards a greater
understanding of the material.  

9) Knowledge charts : Having students use pictures to fill in the missing blank spaces according to the
question / situation in chart sheet. This also improves their thinking and understanding.

10) Tiered activities : Each activity should have the same common goal of helping students
understand a specific element of the subject material. For example, it might be different
experiments that all explain the basic concept of physics. Place students in groups based on their
perceived level, or give a brief description of each of the assignments and let them choose which
level they feel most comfortable working in. Once completed, discuss and compare the results.

multi-sensory materials :
Visual and auditory learning :
Elkonin boxes in printed material :
Utilizing sound boxes or Elkonin boxes is a visual way for students to segment the individual phonetic
pronunciations they hear within a word or syllable.  Manipulating or moving tiles, chips, buttons,
beads into the boxes simultaneously engages visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities.

Spell cards, chart or activity sheet :

Visual illustration of words based on their phonetic pronunciation. Example : Mop and Map. Initially
writing the word “Mop” and then replacing “O” with A as “Map”. This helps students compare and
learn the pronunciation, difference in meaning

Math learning with sensory materials :

Classifications :

Visual - learning through watching and seeing;

Auditory - learning through listening and hearing sounds;
Kinesthetic - learning through physical activity or body movement (this involves the vestibular and
proprioceptive senses);
Tactile - learning through using the sense to touch;
Olfactory and Gustatory - learning through smell and taste.

Visual Techniques: Visual learners prefer vision in teaching. These techniques may include anything
from reading the text to the most creative visual arts such as posters, painting, video, or any artistic
visual design element used for teaching.
Visual techniques may also help support dyslexic readers and auditory and tactile learners. For
example, using pictures to show how to knit or sew, or writing musical notes on paper.

Auditory Techniques: Auditory learning strategies are meant to help a learner, who learns most
effectively by listening. These students prefer listening to the directions for a project rather than
participating in hands-on activities or they would like to listen to a lesson as compared to reading a
book.
Some examples of auditory processing techniques include the use of songs, music, audio tones,
rhymes, lyrics, dialogue, and clapping anything that involves the ear.

Tactile Techniques: Learning through touch is called tactile learning. Mostly coinciding with
kinesthetic learning, tactile instructions mostly involve fine motor skills.
Specific auditory techniques may involve the use of finger paints, coins, letter tiles, dominoes, sand,
poker chips, textures and raised line paper. Also, modelling materials such as plastic one or clay
create good tactile learning media.

Kinesthetic Techniques: These are also called learning by doing. Kinesthetic learners prefer learning
by motion and doing, using both gross and fine motor skills.
The kinesthetic technique is a way to effective instruction that occurs when learners engage in
hands-on experience. An example is when a child learns to ride a bike or use a swing. From clapping
in rhythm to jumping rope, anything that connects learning to body movement is kinesthetic activity.

Visualizing with beads or cereal :

Using beads, dried beans, or cereal as manipulative tool is a great way to have kids represent math
operations. For instance, kids might solve an addition sentence by adding two sets of beads
together. Manipulatives can also help kids develop number sense and understand amounts.

Building with colored cubes and tiles :

Kids can use cubes or tiles to build shapes. This gives them a concrete idea of the measurement and
properties of the figures they create. Tiles and cubes also work great when teaching number
patterns and operations. For instance, you can stack cubes in groups of 2, 4, 6, and 8. Then ask kids
to build the next stacks in the pattern, adding two cubes each time (10, 12, and so on). After the
pattern is complete, help kids make the connection between the stacks and the numbers they
represent.

Drawing math problems :

Drawing math problems is a good next step after working with hands-on materials like beads or
colored tiles.
For instance, ask kids to solve the multiplication problem 4 × 6 by drawing 6 groups of 4 apples. Or
kids can color in 4 rows of 6 square units on graph paper. When they’re finished, they’ll see 4 groups
of 6, or 24 square units colored in.

Tapping out numbers :

The act of tapping out numbers can help kids connect symbols to actual amounts, and “feel” the
value. This is especially useful for working with multiples.
For instance, ask kids to list multiples of 4. They begin tapping sets of 4, counting as they go. Every
fourth number gets a louder tap and is written down (“1, 2, 3, 4! 5, 6, 7, 8! 9, 10, 11, 12!”).

Putting movement into math :

Working movement into math practice is an engaging way to help kids retain what they’ve learned.
There are many ways to do this. For instance, kids can demonstrate angles by rotating their body
while standing in a hula-hoop.

Here’s another example. Write numbers on the outside of a large ball. (These could be whole
numbers, fractions, or decimals.) Pass the ball around. Each time someone catches it, they have to
do a math operation with the two numbers their hands land on.

Bundling sticks
One way to introduce kids to regrouping and place value is to have them bundle craft sticks together
in groups of 10. (You can also use coffee stirrers.)

Building with base 10 blocks

These blocks come in different sizes that represent 1000s (a “cube”), 100s (a “flat”), 10s (a “long”),
and 1s (a “unit”). Kids can form numbers with them to identify place value. (They can also use them
to perform operations, show regrouping, and find patterns.)

Using pizza slices

Cutting a pizza into slices is a great way to help teach fractions. You can make several pizzas out of
construction paper, then cut them into slices of different sizes. This way, kids can “see” fractions like
1/8 or 1/4 by selecting slices of pizza.

Colours in visual learning :

Using different colours in learning using chalk, crayons and poster colours in writing numbers,
letters.

Spray bottle or water gun :

During the warm summer months, a spray bottle or water gun is an amazing multisensory learning
tool. Is your child having trouble with sight words? Write a few with chalk on your driveway or the
sidewalk. Hand your child a spray bottle, and challenge them to wash away the. Find “some”! Wash
it away!

Playdough :
Playdough is SO amazing for use with reluctant learners. It’s squishy. It’s rollable. You can make
letters from it. You can roll balls with it and squish the balls as you sound out words. You can make
balls and squish them as your child counts them. Your child can practice scissor skills by rolling
“snakes” and snipping them with scissors.

Toys such as cars, basketballs, bouncy balls and dinosaurs:

Many reluctant readers see “literacy instruction” coming a mile away and shut down while refusing
to participate. They’ve already experienced failure, and just don’t trust this time will be any
different. But they might be willing to drive a car into a parking lot containing the letter that says
“/h”. Or stomp the dinosaur into the puddle labelled cat. By incorporating small toys, it seems more
like play and a reluctant reader may be more willing to try.

Benefits of Multi-sensory materials :

This kind of multisensory instruction techniques involving hands-on learning enables learners to:
Gain knowledge;
Make connections between what they already know and the new information;
Understand and solve problems
Use non-verbal skills of problem-solving.