Authored by:
TeacherVision Staff
Last edited: September 18, 2021
This list provides a quick reference to effective teaching strategies to integrate into your classroom. These teaching methodologies are time tested to help you capture your students attention and motivate them to learn. Also included is a list of recommended teaching strategies for students with disabilities.
Effective Teaching Strategies
Strategies for Direct Instruction
- Specify clear lesson objectives
- Teach directly to those objectives
- Make learning as concrete and meaningful as possible
- Provide relevant guided practice
- Provide independent practice
- Provide transfer practice activities
Strategies for Students with Disabilities *
- Sequence – Break down the task, step by step prompts.
- Drill-repetition and practice-review – Daily testing of skills, repeated practice, daily feedback.
- Segment – Break down targeted skill into smaller units and then synthesize the parts into a whole.
- Direct question and response – Teacher asks process-related questions and/or content-related questions.
- Control the difficulty or processing demands of a task – Task is sequenced from easy to difficult and only necessary hints or probes are provided.
- Technology – Use a computer, structured text, flow charts to facilitate presentation, emphasis is on pictorial representations.
- Group Instruction – Instruction occurs in a small group, students and/or teacher interact with the group.
- Supplement teacher and peer involvement – Use homework, parents, or others to assist in instruction.
- Strategy clues – Reminders to use strategies or multi-steps, the teacher verbalizes problem solving or procedures to solve, instruction uses think-aloud models.
*Excerpted from Swanson, H.L. (1999). Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 14(3).
