Journal Entry #4, ch. 7

This response is about chapter seven, which focuses on effective lessons. The majority of the chapter discusses direct instruction, and the elements involved with each part of a lesson. The chapter also discusses how students learn to transfer concepts and the role discussions can play in the classroom. Overall, I was comfortable with all the material presented and enjoyed confirming that my lesson planning methods and strategies were supported by research.

As explained in the chapter, an effective direct instruction lesson includes seven steps: state the standard and spark the students’ interest, review prerequisite skills, present the new material, perform learning probes, allow independent practice, assess and provide feedback, and then practice regularly. I currently use direction instruction frequently in my classroom, and a majority of this chapter confirmed my previous understanding of the concept. I also assign homework in most subjects, and use that to review the previous day’s lesson before starting the new lesson. As explained in the chapter, I try to keep each subject’s homework to about ten minutes of practice.

One thing I learned from this chapter was the effectiveness of embedding videos into lessons. I have done this occasionally to hook the students into a new topic, but did not realize that was so effective in helping the students understand and retain concepts. I thought it was interesting that research indicated that most teachers could increase their rate of content coverage. I typically feel like I’m out of time to teach topics and rushing through them as the year progresses. The information about seat-work was also interesting. I try not do include a lot of seat-work because I think you can lose student interest pretty quickly if I’m not careful. I want to use the ratio of instruction to seat-work described in the textbook next year as I plan independent practice, especially in math, grammar, and reading.

        The main thing I took away from this chapter and want to apply to my teaching in the future is practicing and explicitly teaching students to transfer information. It was a little depressing reading about students who have excellent grammar skills in isolated practice, but don’t apply them to their writing. I really hope my students leave my classroom knowing how to apply their knowledge in various situations, but I want to be sure of that with my next class. I learned about the third grade classroom that explicitly taught students how to transfer information and look for similarities in problems, which I want to do next year. The goal of teaching is to prepare them to be successful in the real world, and using varied contexts in my examples will be essential.

        The final section of the chapter discussed the varied methods for class discussions, which I typically use in social studies and reading. I enjoy grouping students and having them discuss certain topics while I listen. It gives me a pretty clear picture of each student’s level of comprehension while giving them a break from listening to me. I use whole group discussions to cover complex topics and try to include a student from each learning level, as described in the textbook.