I always feel guilty when my lessons
involve me delivering information more than students developing concepts and
ideas on their own, but with the large amount of content we are expected to
cover now, I find myself using direct instruction more and more. Slavin (2012)
states that, “recent research has supported the idea that direct instruction
can be more efficient than discovery in conceptual development” (p.185). This
realization makes me feel better about my primary delivery of information and
with the variety of lecture structures of direct instruction, I believe
students can still benefit and be engaged with these lessons.
The seven basic parts of a direct
instruction lesson are a common sense approach to teaching. Direct instruction
lessons involve orienting students to the learning objective, reviewing
previous skills and concepts, presenting new information, asking questions that
check for understanding and correcting misconceptions, providing independent
practice and assessing independent practice, and providing distributed practice
of the new material (Slavin, 2012). This structure allows teachers to
continuously evaluate the needs of students through questioning and encourages opportunities
for immediate feedback. It also ensures that teachers identify students’ levels
of understanding and who needs remediation of skills or concepts. It usually
takes me more than one day to progress through all the steps of this type of
lesson, due to the fact that my grade level is departmentalized and our classes
are approximately one hour in length. The first day usually consists of
reviewing prior knowledge, presenting new information, and guided practice,
leaving the second day for independent practice, assessment, and feedback.
I found the section of Chapter 7 on
how learning is transferred to be very insightful. Slavin (2012) states that
both teachers and students get wrapped up in preparing for tests, and forget
about the main purpose of school, which is to provide students with the skills
and knowledge to function effectively in adulthood. I believe this is true, and
see examples of this daily, especially with math skills and concepts. I plan to use the information presented in
the chapter in the future, by teaching students to transfer skills to new circumstances
when possible and to be conscious of relationships among situations. I believe
children and adults who understand real-world application of skills and
concepts are at a great advantage and as teachers we must provide students with
opportunities for problem-solving experiences.
This week’s discussion on the levels
of preparation and participation in small versus whole-group discussions was
also interesting and insightful. Many peer posts stated that both require a
great deal of preparation due to the fact that whole-group discussions require
knowledge of the subject being discussed and small-group discussions require
picking groups members, assigning roles, and creating questions. Most posts
also seemed to agree that both discussions require participation from the
teacher as well. As an elementary school teacher, I believe whole-group
discussions require more teacher participation because students at this age are
still learning how to voice opinions and viewpoints based on knowledge and
often need more direction to stay focused on the subject being discussed, while
small-group discussions are more student-led with specific questions provided
by the teacher. I believe both types of discussion are important and make
lessons more interesting for students.
Direct instruction does require a
structured, teacher-led approach to teaching, but is necessary at times. It can
be efficient and effective, and incorporates what we know are good teaching
practices. I believe direct instruction can also still be engaging for students
with the use of teacher demonstrations, visual elements, and discussions, which helps take away the guilt I associate with this teaching approach.
Reference
Slavin, R. E. (2012). Educational
Psychology: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson
Education.
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