Reflecting Upon Different Approaches to Instruction

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Reflecting Upon Different Approaches to
Instruction
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Two Approaches

• Teacher-centred
• Learner-centred

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Teacher-centered Instruction

• Objectives and learning activities specified by
  teacher
• Focus on well-defined content
• Teacher takes primary role in guiding learning

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Direct Instruction

• A teacher-centered strategy designed to help
  students learn procedural skills

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Examples

• Adding two-digit numbers
• Finding longitude and latitude of cities
• Finding the area of a rectangle
• Writing fractions as percentages

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Steps in Direct Instruction

• Introduction and review
• Presentation
• Guided Practice
• Independent Practice

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Lectures

• to acquire information not readily accessible in
  other ways
• to integrate information from a variety of
  sources
• to understand different points of view

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Lecture-discussions

• Combination of short lectures supplemented with
  teacher questioning
• Able to assess student background knowledge
• Students are active and involved
• Promotes meaningfulness and encourage elaboration
• Allows monitoring of learning progress and
  adaptation

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Learner-centered instruction
Learners at the center of the teaching-learning
process
Teaching for understanding
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Learner at the Center

• Background knowledge
• Cognitive processes
• Motivation
• Development and individual differences
• Social environment

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Teaching for Understanding

• Involves
• explaining
• finding examples
• justifying
• generalising
• relating parts to wholes
• Helping students construct and verify their own
  understanding

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Discovery Learning

• A strategy that provides students
• with information they use to
• construct understanding.

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• Unstructured discovery
• Learners construct understanding on their own in
  a natural setting
• Guided discovery
• Teacher identifies a content goal, arranges
  information so that patterns can be found, and
  guides students to the goal

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Inquiry

• A strategy in which facts and
• observations are used to answer
• questions and solve problems

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Steps to Learning by Inquiry

• Identifying a question or problem
• Forming an hypothesis to answer the question or
  solve the problem
• Gathering data to test the hypothesis
• Drawing conclusions from the data
• Generalising on the basis of the conclusions

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Cooperative Learning

• Students working together to help each other
  learn (Slavin 1995)
• Students working together to accomplish shared
  goals (Johnson Johnson, 1994)

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Components of Cooperative Learning

• Positive interdependence
• Face-to-face interaction
• Individual accountability
• Interpersonal skills
• Group processing

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Types of Cooperative Learning Activities

• Student Teams-Achievement Divisions
• Jigsaw
• Round Robin
• Think-Pair-Share / Think-Pair-Square
• Numbered Heads Together

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The Project Approach

• An in-depth study of a topic
• Incorporated into the school curriculum
• Encourages active participation
• curiosity and learning
• interaction with people, objects and environment
• Content of topics drawn from childrens life
  experiences

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Knowledge

• contents of mind
• facts, concepts, information, stories
• making sense of experience
• a powerful disposition
• adults responsibility to help children make
  deeper and accurate sense of experiences

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Skills

• abilities that enable us to perform tasks
• e.g. recognising sound of letters, adding,
  drawing, categorising
• systematic procedures to help children acquire
  basic skills
• drill and exercises
• application
• social skills (e.g. turn-taking, negotiating
  skills)
• communicative skills (e.g. expressive, reasoning,
  elaborative)
• avoid phony conversations with children

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Dispositions

• tendencies to respond across events and
  situations
• inquisitiveness, persistence at task,
  independence, resourcefulness, intrinsic
  motivation, helpfulness, responsibility

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Feelings

• feelings of acceptance, confidence, sense of
  self-worth
• dangers of mismatch between competencies and the
  curriculum tasks
• failure has dynamic consequences
• self attribution or learned stupidity

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Stages of a Project
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Phase 1 Planning a Project

• Choose a topic
• Create topic web
• scope of topic
• List research questions

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Project Topics

• Children
• Local community
• Local events and current affairs
• Place
• Time
• Natural phenomena
• Abstract concepts
• General knowledge

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Asking Good Researchable Questions

• Information questions
• What? Who? When? Where?
• Explanation questions
• How? If-Then? Why?
• Discussion questions
• Views, feelings, argument
• Speculation questions
• What if?
• Prediction, creativity, elaboration, imagination

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Phase 2 Developing a Project

• Collecting data
• field trip / library / internet search /
  interviews / observation / experiments
• Recording data
• audio or visual recording, drawing, sketching,
  construction, writing, rubbings

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Sources of Information

• Primary source
• learning directly from their own and another
  persons first hand experience
• experiments in class
• field trips
• explanation of an expert at site visit
• interviewing expert visiting class
• video conferencing / email queries

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• Secondary source
• learning indirectly from material organised or
  presented by others
• school library, resource room, neighborhood
  library
• books, brochures, films, videos, advertisements,
  menus
• museums
• internet websites

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Methods of Recording Data

• Writing (e.g. adverisement)
• Sketches / Drawings / Maps (e.g. food)
• Rubbings (e.g. cart wheels)
• Numbers (e.g. aisle numbers, prices)
• Measures (e.g. size of freezer)
• Diagrams (e.g. layout)
• Processes / Sequence / Procedures (e.g. stacking
  cans)
• Photographs (e.g. people)
• Items to bring back

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Phase 3 Concluding a Project

• Displaying and representing information
• charts, graphs, drawings, models, maps, plans,
  photos
• Culminating event
• sharing and presenting project
• review and evaluate

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Representing Data

• Numbers / Shapes
• Part-whole / Sorting
• Comparisons / Differences
• Sequences / Bar graphs
• Pie charts / Scale
• Map / Timeline / Cross-section / Sequence