Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education/Chapter 10 Supplemental Materials/What constitutes an effective instructional method? 2

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Sept.23,2006

Effective Instructional Methods by Donna Pike, ECI 301

Designing effective instructional methods is like planning a road trip. You must know where you are starting and where you are going before determining how you will get there. In order to determine effective instructional methods, one must first determine what a student knows and needs to learn, how that knowledge will be assessed and finally, which instructional methods will best result in the desired goal.

On a road trip, you proceed from where you are at; likewise, with instruction, the teacher must begin with what students already know and need to learn. An elementary educator stated that when she first started teaching 15 years ago, she alone decided what to teach her students. The pitfalls of such a practice are obvious. The lack of standardization would mean that students would be all over the spectrum in terms of prerequisite skills and knowledge. Now, the autonomy of the teacher has given way to the standards-based reform movement. Though many teachers balk at state mandated curriculums, the educator mentioned earlier welcomes the standards, stating that it creates an objective standard that makes teaching easier. Standards provide teachers with a framework for knowing what prior knowledge students already possess and what students need to be taught. Though the standards movement remains controversial and continues to change, teachers must design their instruction around current state and national standards.

Traditionally, assessment is not designed until after the methods of instruction have been addressed. However, it is important to determine at the outset how you will measure student understanding. On a road trip, you need to know where you are going before you can determine how to get there. Likewise, you need to know how you will determine student attainment of objectives before you select instructional methods.

Currently, there is a trend called Understanding by Design, authored by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, which is a framework for designing effective curriculum.(1998) One of the guiding principles of Understanding by Design is to begin with the end in mind. A unit of study may include many engaging learning activities, but the teacher must first determine what the students should know and how their knowledge will be measured before deciding which instructional activities will yield the desired results. Assessment can occur in many forms. Some forms of assessment are observation of student participation in group instruction and discussion and completion of homework and authentic learning tasks. When a teacher begins with the end in mind, he/she can plan instruction so that the major ideas and themes that will be assessed are covered numerous times, in numerous formats.

Instructional methods are the route that you take on your road trip. There are many routes that you could take but not all are equally effective. The strategies discussed herein were selected because they are research-based and because they can be applied to most subject areas. The strategies to be discussed are identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking, creating nonlinguistic representations and using advance organizers.

Being able to identify similarities and differences requires that students pick out important characteristics of the subject being studied. This, of course, requires that the students know the subject on more than a superficial level. Using Venn diagrams, metaphors and analogies are all practical applications of this strategy. A Venn diagram is a graphic organizer for depicting similarities and differences. A student must understand the abstract relationship of two items in order to construct a metaphor. Analogies require students to identify the subtleties of items being compared and note relationships within relationships. (Marzano, 2001)

Like identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking requires that students have a deep understanding of what they are learning. The mental operations involved in summarizing and note taking include deleting, substituting, and keeping information. In order to summarize and take effective notes the student must determine what is important and then state or record the information in a succinct form. Two applications of summarizing and note taking are summary frames and webbing. A summary frame is a series of questions that the teacher provides to students to highlight critical points in a lesson. Webbing is a graphic organizer for note taking that emphasizes significant points and relationships by the size and arrangement of circles and lines. (Marzano, 2001) Often summarizing and note taking are considered “study skills” that do not warrant classroom instruction. However, these skills are powerful tools that can enrich learning.

Creating nonlinguistic, or visual, representations gives the brain an additional means for understanding information, assuring that knowledge can be recalled. A nonlinguistic representation can be as simple as leading students in a visualization exercise. In addition, it can take the form of a graphic organizer, a pictograph or a model. (Marzano, 2001)

Using advance organizers is a strategy that effectively primes the pump to maximize student learning. It prepares students to think about new knowledge before actually experiencing it. Though advance organizers can take numerous forms, two common forms are that of an outline of stated objectives and skimming. (Marzano, 2001) Skimming a text before reading it can create a framework for the brain to understand the information that is to follow.

It is important to remember when contemplating instructional methods that they are tools and that they will not all work equally well in all situations. Further, when thinking about effective instructional methods, it is impossible to think of it without considering the other components that complete a curriculum. Instructional methods do not stand alone, but must be considered in concert with learning standards and assessments. Like the road trip analogy, you must know where you're at and where you're going before determining how you're going to get there. Likewise, an instructional strategy is judged effective if it succeeds in enabling the students to meet the standards and demonstrate proficiency on assessments.

Sidebar

Brain research and education

There are many facets of effective instruction. Understanding brain research and how students learn can enable educators to design effective instruction.

Brain research has in recent years become a hot topic in education circles. Current brain research confirms scientifically what many educators have known intuitively for years. Some significant affirmations are that the brain perceives patterns, experience shapes the brain, the brain must reconstruct memories, and emotions are crucial to storage and recall of information.

The brain is designed to perceive patterns and make sense of the world, so helping students to connect new knowledge to prior learning will facilitate student retention of new knowledge.

In addition, concrete experiences that students have actually shape their brains, thus they will remember content that they are actively involved in learning.

The brain, however, does not store all information in one location. Therefore not only must students be actively involved in their learning, but they must also experience their new knowledge in numerous ways (through seeing, hearing, touching, etc.) in order to ensure that their brains have sufficient pathways to correctly reconstruct learning.

Finally, one of the strongest pathways for reconstructing memory involves emotions. The classroom environment must be physically and psychologically safe for learning to occur. In a threatening environment, the emotional functions of the brain dominate the cognitive functions so that real learning can not occur.

Essay Question

What significant factors do you think should be considered when designing instruction? Explain.

Multiple Choice

1. Mr. Smith wants to prepare his students to read about a new history topic. He could instruct his students to first _________ in order to create a framework for understanding.

   a.  check their homework
   b.  discuss the topic in small groups
   c.  skim the text
   d.  create a Venn diagram

2. Students tend to learn new information better when it is presented in various formats. With this in mind, Ms. Dobson plans to use nonlinguistic representations in addition to lecture and small group discussion to encourage student learning. Examples of nonlinguistic representations include all of the following except...

   a.  Venn diagram.
   b.  Summarizing.
   c.  Webbing.
   d.  Models.

3. Summarizing is an effective instructional method because it requires the student to analyze information and decide what to...

   a.  delete.
   b.  substitute.
   c.  keep.
   d.  all of the above

4. Mr. Gahaza wants to make sure that he presents key objectives to students numerous times throughout the current unit of study. _____________ will enable him to plan appropriate learning activities that will facilitate this goal.

   a.  Identifying objectives.
   b.  Buying the latest book of instructional strategies
   c.  Identfying objectives and forms of assessment.
   d.  Identifying forms of assessment.

5. As a new teacher, you are anxious to help your students maximize their learning potential; thus, you plan for

   a.  students to experience new information in a variety of forms.
   b.  students to be confused by too many learning activities.
   c.  students to incorrectly reconstruct and recall new learning.
   d.  a and b
   e.  b and c
              

Bibliography

"How can research on the brain inform education?" Retrieved September 22, 2006, from SEDL Web site: http://www.sedl.org/scimath/compass/v03n02/brain.html

Marzano, R., Pickering, D. & Pollock, J. (2001) Classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998) Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Ryan, K. &Cooper, J. (2004) Those who can, teach. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin

Wolfe, P. (2001, August) "Brain research and education: fad or foundation?. Retrieved September 22, 2006, from brainconnection.com Web site: http://www.brainconnection.com/content/160_1

Multiple choice answers

1. c

2. b

3. d

4. d

5. a