Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
As a teacher it is important for me to understand my students and their educational needs so that I can design instruction and activities that resonate with them and lead to effective learning experiences. Understanding student growth and development leads to the use of several methods of instruction and differentiation for students that lead to improved learning. While every learner and group of learners is different some common strategies that I have used to help students learn are scaffolding, giving the opportunity for extension of learning, using hands on activities and movement, and embedding learning in story and context.
One example of a learning activity that I provided for my students in the 491 practicum was a lab using smarties on a piece of coloured construction paper where students would close their eyes, shuffle the smarties, then open their eyes and quickly “hunt” the smarties to demonstrate the selective advantage of camouflage that the smarties that had a similar colour as the construction paper possessed. Students hunted 15 of their 40 smarties then analyzed the survival percentage of different colours and then considered how this phenomenon would play out in a natural environment. This activity allowed students many ways to access the idea of selective advantage including using manipulatives, movement, and story to work through how a selective advantage works. I was able to scaffold my student’s knowledge with this activity before walking my students through a story about different coloured moths in England during the industrial revolution to build towards a knowledge of natural selection and its result on populations.