Other Teaching Techniques

Direct Instruction/Lecture

Advantages

 Teacher controlled
 Many objectives can be mastered in a short amount of time
 Lends to valid evaluations

Disadvantages

 Teacher controlled
 Student involvement is limited to the teacher
 Depends in part to rote learning (repetition from memory, often
without meaning)

When to use?

 When the objectives indicate effectiveness

 When the teacher determines that it is the best use of time & effort

Six steps in Direct Instruction

 Review previously learned material

 State objectives for the lesson
 Present new material
 Guide practice with corrective feedback
 Assign independent practice with corrective feedback
 Review periodically with corrective feedback if necessary

1. Review previously learned material

 A short review before/with the new lesson’s interest approach
 Check & grade previous homework
 Put problems on the board (can be part of bell-work)
 Re-teach if necessary

2. State objectives for the lesson

  Students should know what is to be taught
 Stated Clearly
 Written on the board
— Handed out
 Follow the objectives
 Use them to develop evaluations

3. Present new material

 Your teaching depends on your analysis and preparation
 Organizing Content
 From general to specific
 From lower level objectives to higher
 From previous information to new material

Lectures

 Be aware of attention spans

 Be aware of the number of major points made
 Be repetitious
 Review and summarize

Demonstrations

 Learning Activity, experiment, demonstration

 WOW em’!
 Allow students to practice immediately

4. Guided practice with corrective feedback

 Guided and independent practice
 Teacher controls & monitors guided
 Teacher evaluates & corrects independent
 Questions should be prepared in advance

5. Assign independent practice with corrective feedback

 Homework
 A formative step… not a summative step
  Worksheets

6. Review periodically with corrective feedback if necessary

 Check homework promptly
 Base new instruction on results
 Re-teach if necessary

Brainstorming

Situations for use:

 Generate ideas (quantity is more important than quality)

 Students have some level of experience

Planning Required:

 Formulate the question

 Plan for recording ideas

Brainstorming Steps

 Pose question to class

 Generate ideas with group
 Accept all ideas (do not criticize)
 Go back to summarize
 Discard “unacceptable” or unworkable ideas
 Determine the best solution(s)

Supervised Study

 Common technique used in problem solving instruction, but certainly

not the only technique appropriate for problem solving instruction.
 Also a major technique used in competency-based education
programs.
 Often misused technique. A really bad form of this technique is: Read
the chapter in the textbook and answer the questions at the end of the
chapter.
 Would be classified as an individualized instruction technique
Situations Appropriate for Use

 Discovery or inquiry learning is desired

 Access to good reference materials (textbooks, extension publications,
web resources, industry publications, etc.)
 Students may need to “look up” information
 May be alternate answers that are acceptable
 Many structured lab activities are actually a form of supervised study

Strengths:

 Provides skills in learning that are useful throughout students’ lives.

They need to know how to locate and analyze information.
 Recall is enhanced when student have to “look up” information, rather
than being lectured to.
 Students have to decide what information is important and related to
the question posed.
 Opportunity for students to develop writing and analytical skills.

Weaknesses:

 Easy for students to get off-task.

 Students may interpret questions differently and locate incorrect
information (practicing error).
 Unmotivated students will do the absolute minimum.
 Students tend to copy information from sources rather than analyze
and synthesize information
 Requires more time than lecture
 Relies on students being able to read and comprehend information at
the appropriate level

Procedures in Conducting Supervised Study:

 Teacher develops a list of study questions for students to answer.

 Resources and reference materials are located or suggested to
students as possible sources of answers.
  Students are given time in class to find answers to the questions and
to record the answers in their notes.
 Note: Due to time constraints, teachers may want to assign different
questions to specific students, so that every student is not looking for
the same information.
 Summary consists of discussing the correct answers to the questions
with the entire class.
 Note: Teachers must be careful to emphasize that incorrect answers
must be corrected.

Role of the Teacher:

 Develop a list of study questions that focus on the objectives of the

lesson
 Develop the anticipated answers to the questions-it is important that
the teacher have a firm idea of what are correct or incorrect answers.
 Establish time frame for completing the activity. Students need to feel
a sense of urgency, so don’t give them more time than you think they
will need.
 Supervise during this activity. NOT A TIME TO GRADE PAPERS, MAKE
PHONE CALLS, PLAN FOR THE NEXT LESSON, OR LOCATE THE
ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS IN THIS LESSON!
 Assist students in locating information, but do not find it for them.
 Keep students on task and eliminate distractions.
 Plan for reporting of answers

Small Group Discussion

Also Called:

 Buzz Groups
 Huddle Groups
 Phillips 66
— 6 people per group
— 6 ideas to be generated
— 6 minutes

Advantages:

 Increased participation
  Good for generating ideas
 Cooperative activity (students learn from each other)

Planning Required

 Clearly form the question or topic

 Develop a plan for grouping the students
 Plan for reporting
 Summarize the activity (what they should have learned)

Conducting Small Group Discussion

 Write question or topic on board or handout

 Give specific instructions on how the group will operate
 Establish time limits
 Circulate among the groups to help keep them on task (Not as a
participant!)
 Give warning near end of time allocated
 Reports: Rotate among the groups for answers

Games

Situations for use:

 Motivate students
 Reviews
 Check for understanding

Strengths:

 Active learning technique

 Appeals to competitive students
 High interest level

Planning Required

 Game must be developed by teacher

  Rules must be established. Try to anticipate all potential situations that
might occur. You do not want the effectiveness of the activity to be
destroyed by arguments over rules.
 Develop a plan for determining teams
 Develop plan for keeping score
 Determine rewards-make them appropriate (usually very minor in
nature)

Types: Games may take a variety of forms, but most often they are modeled
after:

 TV game shows
 Sports
 Home board games

Field Trips and Resource Persons

Situations for use:

 First hand experiences are needed

 Need expertise

Planning Needed:

 Objectives
 Trial run/visit
 Special considerations (safety, grouping, etc.)
 Summarize (don’t give up responsibility!). It is critical to know what the
students have learned from the activity.

Tips:

 Provide advance organizers (report forms, fact sheets)

 “plant” questions among students
 Assign students to begin the questions
 With-it-ness – The teacher knows what is going on in the classroom at
all times. Seemingly, the teacher has eyes in the back of his/her head. This is
not only when the teacher is in a small group setting, but when he/she is
presenting a topic or students are working as individuals. It can be as simple
as looking around the room frequently or making sure your back is never
turned to the class. It is not necessary to know what the teacher knows is
going on-it is what the students believe she knows

Other Helpful Info on Student Control

The Hawthorne effect is a phenomenon in industrial psychology first

observed in the 1920s that refers to improvements in productivity or quality
resulting from the mere fact that workers were being studied or observed.

Pygmalion effect (or Rosenthal effect) which refers to situations in

which students performed better than other students simply because they
were expected to do so.

Placebo effect, the phenomenon that a patient’s symptoms can be

alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, apparently because the
individual expects or believes that it will work.

John Henry Effect has also been identified: an experiment may spur
competition between groups, precisely because they are conscious of being
part of an experiment. The term “halo effect” describes what happens
when a scientific observation is influenced by the observer’s perceptions of
the individual, procedure, or service that is under observation. The
observer’s prejudices, recollections of previous observations, and knowledge
about prior observations or findings can all affect objectivity and must be
guarded against.

JACOB KOUNIN All of this came about from an incident that happened
while he was teaching a class in Mental Hygiene. A student in the back of the
class was reading newspaper, the newspaper being opened fully in front of
the student so that he couldn’t see the teacher. Kounin asked the student to
put the paper away and pay attention. Once the student complied, Kounin
realized that other students who were engaging in non- appropriate
behaviors (whispering, passing notes) stopped and began to pay attention to
the lecture. This gave him an interest in understanding classroom discipline
on not only the student being disciplined, but also the other students in the
classroom. This is the effect that became known as the “Ripple Effect”