Question 1 Instructional Strategies

Describe how you would go about selecting and applying a range of instructional strategies and resources to a lesson in your main teaching area.

The aim of instructional strategies and resources is to activate students prior knowledge through the use of engaging strategies designed to focus learning, and stimulate students intrinsically to learn.
Maslow and Glasser believed for intrinsic learning to function basic needs must be met first ie. Belonging, love, freedom security , maslow states the physical needs must be met first before deeping stronger learning can be achieved. Creating a safe , secure and aethetically appealing learning environments where students have a sense of place and a creative stimulating learning experience.
Maslow and Glasser place this principal as the base of the structure for learning.



Maslow's motivation theory states that man's behavior is controlled by both internal and external factors. In addition he emphasizes that humans have the unique ability to make choices and exercise free-will.
Maslow described these needs as being hierarchal in nature, meaning that some needs are more basic or more powerful than others and as these needs are satisfied, other higher needs emerge.
Working in a Steiner school it is also important to acknowledge the beliefs and values of the school community.

Of the ten guidelines for teaching and preparing young people for the 21st Century prepared by Australian researchers Beare & Slaughter, eight refer to important features of Steiner Waldorf education:

1. Appropriate imagery - choosing metaphors with care and imagination
2. Teach for wholeness and balance - holistic paradigm;
3. Teach identification, connectedness, integration - epistemological inter-connectedness;
4. Develop individual values - value the individual;
5. Teach visualisation - development of the picturing imagination;
6. Empowerment through active hope - distinguish between faith and hope;
7. Tell stories - use story telling and mythology as powerful teaching tool; and
8. Teach and learn how to celebrate - celebrate festivals.

Or, to summarise the spirit of the above in the words of Rudolf Steiner:

The need for imagination,

a sense of truth
and a feeling of responsibility

---these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education.

Rudolf Steiner

Now we have established a safe community that allows our students to belong with Value and worth and addressed their basic needs
The next fundamental question is to establish, what outcomes are to be achieved and how these activities and tasks will be structured to stimulate understanding and intrinic development of the subject. what as the teacher, will demonstrate and assess what the students are to know, do and value. one cannot plan these activities and task without understanding how our children learn, how multiple intelligences theory effects the individual, how learning and understanding can be achieved and at what rate.

H Gardner theory of multiple Intelligences suggests that there are a number of distinct forms of intelligence that each individual possesses in varying degrees.







I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productve directions. an important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as humans beings in an inperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill.
Howard Gardner 1999: 180-181

Gardner's Principles:

1. Individuals should be encouraged to use their preferred intelligences in learning.

2. Instructional activities should appeal to different forms of intelligence.

3. Assessment of learning should measure multiple forms of intelligence.

Vygotsky's theory that our children learn through social interaction is a very valid point and social interaction should be applied and used as a resource, and a way of building deeper understanding and learning. through group activities such as jig saw learning , mind maps, debates, discussion and social research and learning ie.computer, digital media, www.

Vygotsky's major theme is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Vygotsky (1978) states: "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals." (p57).

A second aspect of Vygotsky's theory is the idea that the potential for cognitive development depends upon the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD): a level of development attained when children engage in social behavior. Full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction. The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.
Because Vygotsky's focus was on cognitive development, it is interesting to compare his views with those of Bruner and Piaget .

Merrill gives understanding and meaning to what our tasks and learning experiences must strive to achieve for higher learning and educational experiences for our students. what this theory addresses is that need as teachers not to forget Blooms and the three principles that now sit on top,Analyse, Synthesis, Evaluate.

Merrill's first and central principle of instruction is task-centered learning. Task centered learning is not problem-based learning, although it shares some features.

A task is a problem that represents a problem that may be encountered in a real-world situation. Learning objectives or samples of the types of problems learners will be able to solve at the end of the learning sequence may also substitute for a problem. A progression through problems of increasing difficulty are used to scaffold the learning process into manageable tiers of difficulty.

The five principles of instruction (Merrill, 2006)

The five principles of instruction