As special education teachers, one of our greatest challenges is to find strategies to stimulate our students so that they will stay on task long enough to learn. Many of them have short attention spans or behavioral problems that require we either be directly involved with them in one-on-one instruction or have them engaged in captivating activities--dead time can be the death of any semblance of order or control! The activities we provide need to be founded in good instructional theory and not mere entertainment. Mosaic can help us meet this challenge while providing meaningful activities. It can serve as a tutor, an incentive to promote independent learning, a cooperative learning activity, a whole language exercise, curriculum supplement, or as a reward. Mosaic can help improve the quality of the time students spend in our classrooms.
Instructional theories inform us that some essential aspects of learning are motivation (Weiner, 1985), achievability (Bandura, 1977), relevance and learner control (Keller, 1987). We know student success is not uncanny--it's can he want to, can he think he is able to, can he see why, and can he be in charge. We know our students should look forward to coming to our class. We are long on knowledge but sometimes short on "how to"s. Different students respond differently and what motivates one day may not the next. When one strategy fails we need to be able to use another and have enough variety so students do not get tired of doing the same type of activities. I have a hard time worrying about theory if my students are bouncing off the walls and bounding out the windows. The secret to successful teaching then is in having enough strategies to allow us to make use of good instructional theories.