Strengths-based Approach
Overview
A strengths-based approach is one where educators intentionally identify, communicate, and harness students' assets, across many aspects of the whole child, in order to empower them to flourish. Educators should consider all kinds of strengths, not just academic strengths, including for example, strong collaboration, creative thinking, problem solving, communicating, and other skills critical for success. This practice can be particularly beneficial for learners with learning disabilities whose strengths are often overlooked due to focusing on particular challenges. Strengths can be identified through both formal assessments and informal activities, such as reflective prompts or conferences. Educators can provide strengths-based feedback by asking probing questions to determine the skills and knowledge that learners already have. This practice encourages a mindset of leveraging strengths in order to solve problems or overcome challenges.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch as these students tap into their strengths and funds of knowledge about hip hop to make connections between science content and real-world learning as they participate in a regional competition.
Design It into Your Product
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Instructional Approaches Strategies
Writing can become personally meaningful when students have an actual audience and a real purpose for communicating with that audience.
When teachers provide explicit instruction in comprehension strategies and model when to use them, students learn how to flexibly apply them to make meaning of texts.
Explicitly teaching strategies for different genres, like narrative or persuasive writing, helps students write for different purposes and audiences.
Teaching students how to create and use strong keywords for Internet searching is critical for helping them know how to find accurate, relevant information.
Formal spelling instruction improves not only students' spelling skills but also their reading skills.
Seeing and using new words repeatedly and in many contexts is critical for Vocabulary acquisition.
Research shows that, along with traditional reading comprehension strategies, students use unique strategies to read the non-linear, hyperlinked structure of online texts.
Explicitly teaching strategies for planning, writing, and revising texts improves students' writing quality.
In guided inquiry, teachers help students use their own language for constructing knowledge by active listening and questioning.
Independent reading promotes literacy by emphasizing student choice with teacher support in selecting books, as well as by making time for free reading.
Through short but regular mindfulness activities, students develop their awareness and ability to focus.
Instruction in multiple formats allows students to activate different cognitive skills to understand and remember the steps they are to take in their literacy work.
Using multiple methods of assessment can help educators gain a comprehensive understanding of learner progress across a wide range of skills and content.
Helping students think about what they know about the topic of upcoming work helps activate their Background Knowledge or reveals gaps.
When students read models of the type of writing they are doing, they can identify effective elements to incorporate in their writing.
Through one-on-one conferences, teachers can provide individual support to each student to deepen comprehension and interest in reading.
