Accountable Talk

By building students speaking skills, accountable talk has become a crucial component in class management, serving as a helpful way for students to voice their opinions, thoughts, and ideas when they are moving beyond the classroom. Accountable talk can be implemented by teachers as well as administrators, leading to growth, learning, and student ownership. The accountable talk involves meaningful conversations, which foster learning, as students are required to talk, listen, explain, affirm, expand, clarify, justify, and vocalize thoughts and opinions related to the text or topic at hand. Having responsible conversations also allows students to process lesson materials more deeply than in teacher-centered conversations. Using accountable talk for a cross-content group discussion can result in fading out of the teacher’s role as sole facilitator and ultimately allows students to direct the discussion themselves, making meaningful, relevant contributions (Frey, Fisher & Hattie, 2016). For groups of students to participate in accountable, instructional beneficial conversations, all group members must adhere to class discussions’ social protocols. Discussion strategies and activities (pairs, small groups, whole class, turning-and-talking, thinking-pair-sharing, fishbowl, inside/outside circle, jigsaw) are used by teachers to address all students learning needs.

Adapting to learning styles/multiple intelligences

Integrating learning styles and theories about multiple intelligences can minimize two great theories’ respective limitations, increase their strengths, and provide a few practical suggestions for teachers who wish to successfully integrate and apply learning styles and theories about multiple intelligences in the classrooms. Both theories argue that the dominant intelligence ideology suppresses our awareness of human differences, with learning styles focused on differences in learning processes, whereas multiple intelligences center on learning content and products (Westwood, 2008). The theory of multiple intelligences is also frequently
misunderstood, leading it to be used interchangeably with learning styles or applied in ways that may constrain students’ potential. Many teachers believe that this theory is a useful structure to use for their curricula, but there has been little research into whether this is the most accurate model of human intelligence or how successful it is at schools.

Cooperative learning

Cooperative learning, also called small-group learning, is one of the methods of education that helps students to master both academic content and social skills. Cooperative learning has been shown to be effective with all types of students, including those with gifted learning, general learners, and English Language Learners (ELLs), as it fosters learning and builds respect and friendships between groups of different students (Frey, Fisher & Hattie, 2016). Cooperative learning is an instructional approach where the teacher guides students in small groups toward common learning goals. Teachers working with students who are working in cooperative learning groups generally permit greater social interaction and may increase students’ cooperative skills.

Mastery Teaching

The mastery teaching approach suggests that the emphasis in instruction must be on the amount of time it takes different students to master the same material and reach the same mastery levels. In mastery learning environments, the challenge becomes providing sufficient time and implementing instructional strategies to ensure all students are capable of reaching the same learning levels. In contrast, a more typical instructional approach is to provide all students with roughly equal amounts of time to master a particular content without allowing for the differences in how well each student understands a subject matter or his level of mastery (Westwood, 2008). In using this strategy, teachers organize important concepts and skills that they wish students to learn into units to learn, each requiring approximately one or two weeks of instruction.