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Introduction to Models of Teaching Activity There are twenty scenarios illustrating different instructional strategies. In your group you are expected to come up with answers to these questions about each. To do this, you should select a group leader, and a group reporter, then divide the labor so that you can complete the work within 90 minutes assuring that each member understands the 20 strategies, and the classification scheme. There are twenty scenarios illustrating different instructional strategies. In your group you are expected to come up with answers to these questions about each. To do this, you should select a group leader, and a group reporter, then divide the labor so that you can complete the work within 90 minutes assuring that each member understands the 20 strategies, and the classification scheme. 1. What is the purpose or purposes of this instructional approach or strategy? What kind of learning is called for in the strategy? i.e. There are two dimensions to teaching purposes:- a) the content dimension,- and b) the behavioral dimensions - In this question, you should be answering what learning purposes the teacher intends in terms of the content to be taught, and the behavior to be practiced. An example of an answer to this question would be: "In this strategy, the teacher is aiming at getting students to analyze a story in terms of its basic elements. Thus "to analyze" would be the behavior, and "story grammar" would be the content. 2. Provide your own imaginative description of the actual learning experiences of students who are subjected to this strategy. e.g. the students will be required to think about what went on in the previous lesson and see what relevance it might have to what is to follow. This experience may be thought of as a genuine inquiry by some students, and as a guessing game by others. They also might experience the teaching part as burdensome, yet some may find it interesting. 3. How are the learning experiences organized? e.g. The learning experiences are organized as a teaching exercise for students requiring a grasp of the continuity of a textbook chapter. 4. How could you evaluate whether the learning purpose or purposes have been achieved through this strategy? e.g. I could observe students in the classroom, and notice the level of attention in them, and the ways they connect the information they are discussing. I could interview a few students, and ask them about how they felt when they were involved in this exercise, and if it seemed to change their way of thinking about history. could check their answers with their answers on essay type questions. After answering these questions, try to organize the 20 strategies into a classification scheme using any graphic organizer that works for your team. RETURN TO COURSE DOCUMENTS PAGE
#1 Fifth grade The teacher stands in front of the class and asks students to open the history book to page 41, the middle of the chapter. The teacher notes the title of this section of the chapter, and asks students to predict, on the basis of the title, what this section will be about. This starts a discussion of the first part of the chapter, and inferences based on that discussion. Then students are assigned the teaching role, one by one, each is to read a marked passage aloud from the text, ask other students test-type questions about the material, summarize the section, and ask if anyone could clarify the material further. Then another student takes the role, etc ... While students are doing this, the teacher has been copying down the test-type questions the students have been developing, and after the material has been completed, uses these questions to review the material and to write the chapter test. After the review, the teacher makes up a trial test based on the questions she has written down. The students take the test, and in groups of three, correct each others' work. This is followed by a whole class discussion of the trial test, which is followed by 'the test, made up of some of the remaining questions the teacher has written down.
#2 Primary grades Each morning, the teacher begins class by gathering children around her in a circle on a large rug. They all close their eyes in silence, and take five slow, deep breaths. Softly, they begin to say together ,"I am a special person. My teacher knows I'm special. I can do great things. I shall do great things. I will learn all I can to become all I can. I will become a better writer. I will become a better thinker. I will really be ready for school today." The children then turn to each other, shake hands, and say, "Good morning, I'm glad you're here today."
#3 Fourth grade The teacher gives a set of problems for homework. When reading these homework papers, the teacher writes comments about each incorrect problem guided by the following questions: l. What was the key error? 2. What was the probable reason for the error? 3. How can I guide the student to avoid the error in the future? 4. What did the student do well that I should note? The teacher times this assignment so that the papers can be returned the day after they were handed in, and spends time going over her comments with each student. Based on the teacher's corrections, the student is assigned to redo the paper. Students are graded on these papers, which they may redo again if they are not happy with their grade.
#4 Second grade The teacher notices that Michael does not pay attention very long to anything. She observes him carefully during math. On average he comes up to her or calls out for help ten times during a forty minute work period, and only works ten of those minutes on his own. She explains her observations to Michael and says she wants to work out a new system. Michael must try at least three problems before asking for help. When he does need help he should raise his hand, and the teacher or aid will be there as soon as they can. While he waits, he can use his other hand for an art project he really likes to work on, or for mere doodling, which he also enjoys. The teacher and the aid try to pass by Michael, and notice his work, complimenting him for keeping at it. Every time Michael follows this procedure he gets a point. Every time he gets three problems correct he gets two points. The points total up for a day, a week, a month, so that Michael can get things from the classroom store, which is run on a point system. For two points, for example, he can get a pencil. For ten points he can get a weekend with no homework etc ....
#5 Third grade The teacher calls a classroom meeting. She asks students to think up some rules for classroom behavior. Students call out various rules ' like "No spitting on the blackboards." but also some others like "When the teacher gives the 'pay attention' signal, everybody must stop talking and listen." The class comes to consensus on five rules for the next two weeks. The consensus includes consequences that students must pay for the violation of each rule. For example, when a student does not obey the 'pay attention' sign, he or she must write a letter to a member of his or her family about what the class did in math today. The teacher administers the consequences when violations occur. The class is governed by these rules until the next classroom meeting. One consequence that the teacher insists upon is called the "Peace Table". Students are instructed to go to this table when they have conflicts with each other. They have been trained to follow these steps: 1. Cool. down before your speak. 2. Take turns speaking and listening. 3. Before you express your feelings, paraphrase what the other person said until she is satisfied you have really understood her. 4. Use "I" statements such as, "When you do this, I feel like, and do . . . " 5. List options which may solve the conflict. 6. Agree on one of the options. 7. Sign an agreement on a piece of paper or seal it with a handshake. The teacher assesses each students behavior each marking period, and assigns two grades: one for the keeping of classroom rules, and another for conflict resolution.
#6 Fifth grade Three times a week, the teacher has a discussion of music. The whole class listens to a piece of recorded music, sometimes provided by students, sometimes by the teacher. No type of music is excluded. Whatever people like, they can bring. But the teacher makes sure that at least one third of the time the music is of high quality. The teacher prepares for these discussions by reading books like Aaron Copland's What to Listen for in a Music, or one of the several fine instructional sets of recordings now being produced. The teacher asks questions like: What did you feel when listening to the music? What in the music made you feel that way? What instrument made that sound? How does this or that instrument produce its sound? Was that sound acoustic or synthesized? Does that make a difference? if so, what difference does it make? What do you thing of the melody? Does the melody remind you of anything? Is it in a major or minor key? Does that make a difference in what you feel? Count the beats. What "time" do you think the music was written in? What difference does that make? Could you dance to this music? (Part of the discussion may be actual dancing to the music) What kinds of chords were used in the music? Did they vary in any patterns that interested you? etc .... The teacher accepts all answers about feelings as valid, while insisting on discussion of the music that has been played, and not wandering off on to music in general. The teacher insists that factual responses be based on fact (the key the music is in, the tempo, etc ....) The teacher gives no test nor grade on this material.
#7 Fifth grade The teacher stands in front of the room, and divides the class into "learning pairs". He lectures for five minutes on the concept of "characters" in a story. For five minutes, student A in each pair teaches student B what the teacher said. Questions from the whole group are then raised, and responded to both by the teacher and the students. The teacher then follows the same procedure for "actions" in a story, for "problem" in a story, and for "resolution" in a story. Students are assigned to read a short story for homework. They discuss it next day (first in their "learning pairs", then as a whole class) in terms of "characters", "actions", "problem", and "resolution". Then they are assigned to write a paper about the story addressing the same topics. The papers are read in the learning pairs for revision purposes, and handed in at the end of the week. The teacher assesses these papers in terms of criteria he has provided to students ahead of time, and which are contained in a rubric he has developed.
#8 Seventh, eighth or ninth grades A teacher Poses this problem to the students: Scientists have developed a food additive that increases the weight of cattle, making their meat both more nourishing, and more plentiful. But there is only a limited amount of the additive available. Students must decide how the additive will be divided among the needy nations of the world. Congress has set up the following criteria for receiving nations: They must not be a terrorist nation; they must have a reasonable supply of beef cattle; they must not be vegetarians; and they must have a population of over 3 million. Using their existing student government structure, the students must set up their class in the best way possible to gather the information they need to make a good set of decisions and come to an agreement about which nations should get the food additive. This lesson may take several weeks to complete, and the teacher evaluates the whole class with a group grade based on criteria that are published in a rubric
#9 Fourth grade A teacher has students doing work at their desk and the lightbulb over her desk blows out. "What happened?", a student asks. "The light blew out" says another student. "But what does that mean, 'the light blew out?" the student persists. The teacher unscrews the bulb, and passes it around the room. "Can you develop a hypothesis about what happened?" she says. What's inside the glass?" asks a student. "Could you ask that another way" says the teacher. "Is there air inside?" asks a student. "No," responds the teacher. "Is there a gas inside?" asks another student. Teacher: "yes". Student: is it inert?" Another student:" Is that little wire made of metal?" After dialogue like this, students develop hypotheses, and gather reference books together to verify their theories. Then the teacher asks them to write a brief narrative of the steps they took to solve the problem, and an interpretation of why some steps worked and-others did not.
#10 Ninth grade The teacher leads a discussion of the chapter in Lancelot Hogben's book, Mathematics for the Million, "Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization". To prepare for this discussion, the teacher lists a number of fact questions, interpretive questions, and evaluative questions about the text. He begins the discussion with an interpretive question which remains truly puzzling to him, and uses the other questions for backup questions, insisting that students base their discussion on the material in the chapter. The teacher also insists that students who have not prepared cannot participate in the discussion, Instead, he gives them the job of observing the discussion, analyzing the kinds of questions the teacher asks, and recording who speaks, how many times they speak, and to whom they speak. These notes are used later as the basis of a further discussion, critiquing the discussion of the text.
#11 High school The teacher stands before the literature class, and lectures, students are not permitted to take notes. Students are informed ahead of time that there will be pauses in the lecture during which they may write. They may summarize, write questions, write reactions, or write anything else about the lecture during these pauses. After the lecture, students are directed to share their writing with one learning partner. After a few minutes, there is a whole-class discussion, during which students are invited to talk about what they learned from the lecture, from their writing, and their sharing. The teacher follows this procedure for four days, and on the fifth day gives a written test based on the lectures and the discussions.
#12 Fifth grade The teacher stands in front of the room, and has each student read aloud from the science text, one paragraph, in turn around the room. After completing a section of the text, the teacher asks questions of the class about the content of what they have read. Students are then asked to write out their answers to the questions at the end of the chapter. The teacher gives a test based on the questions at the end of the chapter.
#13 8th grade The teacher lectures for twenty minutes about an historical event. Students are given a few minutes to write outcome sentences about what they learned from the lecture: "I learned...." The teacher then goes through the classroom student by student, giving them the option of reading their outcome statements or taking a pass. The class discusses the outcome statements, and the teacher sums up the lecture and the outcome statements, emphasizing the points she wants to emphasize. The students then are given an opportunity to revise their outcome statements, or write new ones. They are evaluated on these outcome statements.
#14 9th grade The teacher does the odd numbered algebra problems on the board assigning the even numbered problems for homework. The students come in the next morning, exchange papers with the student next to them, and the teacher gives out the correct solution, the students marking the incorrect answers. The papers are passed back to the teacher so he can record the results. The students' scores on these daily problems count for 1/3 of their grade. Another 1/3 is accounted for by the weekly tests, and another 1/3 by the exam.
#15 Third grade The students read the authentic Grimm fairy tale: Cinderella. The teacher divides the class into groups of 7. She has an aid lead one group, volunteers from the community lead two other groups, and she leads the other group in discussion. To prepare for the discussion, the teacher wrote out a series of fact questions, interpretive questions, and evaluative questions about the material. She asks step by step, "What happened in the story... then what happened..." etc. After they go through the story, the teacher begins to ask interpretive questions which genuinely puzzle her, such as, "Why did Cinderella pray to her mother?" "How do you think she felt about her two step-sisters' having their eyes scratched out at the wedding?" She gets students to talk to each other about these issues while controlling the students to keep on the text, and use evidence from the text for their opinions. Students are graded on a simple "Excellent", "satisfactory", "unsatisfactory" scale based on the observations of each discussion leader.
#16 3rd grade. Students are given the following story taken from a sample IGAP test: Emma and Paula boarded the plane and took their seats near the window. After a short wait, the passengers were told to fasten their seat belts. Soon the girls heard the deep rumble of the engines, and in no time the plane was headed into the sky. Emma had never flown before. Once the plane was in the air, she was surprised to see how small everything looked below. The girls were excited about the trip. It was summer and they were going to spend two weeks at their grandparents' new home in Los Angeles. There would be much to see since the girls had never seen the ocean or Palm trees before. Their grandparents even had orange trees, heavy with fruit, growing in the backyard.
On newsprint, in many colors, the teacher webs students' emotions about the story. She does this by writing a key word from the story like "airplane" in the middle of the newsprint, and having students call out their feelings and sensory images about the plane. Then the teacher divides the class into three groups. Members of group 1 must draw a picture to represent the story. Members of group 2 must design and perform a dance to represent the story. Members of group 3 must represent the story in drama, using their bodies and words imaginatively. The artists say what their pictures represent. The dancers perform their dance. The actors present their drama. Then the whole class discusses their reactions to the story and its representations. The assessment the teacher makes is immediate. She has a rubric which contains all her criteria for each performance. Each student has a copy of this rubric at the outset. Before the performances, the teacher collects these rubrics, and during the performances she fills them out for each student, and passes them out at the end of the class. These become part of the students' grades in language arts.
#17 8th or 9th grade The teacher tells students she wants them to help each other learn, and that listening to each other is the first step to this. They then brainstorm the class, writing on the board what good listeners do, and what bad listeners do. Then the teacher has students find a new partner, and they name each other A and B. All the A's tell all the B's about somebody who is a fairly good listener for 90 seconds. Then the teacher asks for A's to tell her if their B was a good listener even though this was the first time they tried this. And the whole class discusses what they learned and what were the problems. At most, this is a five minute discussion. Then the teacher has the A's and B's reverse roles, talking about what they just experienced, people they know, anything that comes to mind. Then they again talk about who was a good listener, and review the whole process. After a few days, the teacher has another whole class discussion about listening and the effect of the exercise the first day. After a few more days, they have another practice session, focusing on controlling the urge to interrupt. Finally, after still a few more days, the teacher says, "some people are good tutors because they ask "how may I help you best" or "am I going too fast?" or "do you want to take a break?" then the class breaks into small groups of three, and they discuss "What do good tutors do?" After five minutes, the whole class is led by the teacher to consensus on four or five of the most important things good tutors do. A group is assigned to make a wall chart listing four or at most five things good tutors do.
#18 Second grade The dance of the molecules The teacher has the students stand, spreading their arms out, to find their individual space in the room. They stand in place, but let their bodies sway, saying, "I am water, cool clear water". On signal, they begin to shiver, and draw closer together, saying, "I'm getting colder" until they all press together in the center of the room and are silent, the teacher declaring, "You are ice!" "Now I’m going to heat you up, and heat you up, and heat you up some more". Gradually the students move out to their earlier positions, but then get farther and farther apart, "Now we’re steam" (This works better in the gym) and they run fast in all directions spread far apart. The students have been studying molecules and states of matter. The dance of the molecules occurs after they have studied water, ice, and steam. After the dance, they draw pictures of the molecules of water in each of its three states. They are evaluated on the accuracy of their representations.
#19 Middle or High School. The teacher has students write letters to corporations asking them for samples of their products. Then he has them write to local government agencies to obtain some public service, such as a stop sign at the corner, etc .... Finally, he has them write to their congressman, or senator, or the president, or to a local newspaper about some issue of national importance. Each letter is written through a process of planning, writing, and revision in groups of three students, and the letters are discussed in the class at large both for their content, style, and for their writing effectiveness. As products from corporations arrive, services are improved, letters get published in the newspaper, or responses from the president or the congressmen come in, the class discusses these responses in terms of the specific character of the letters written to those corporations, politicians, or newspapers. The letters are evaluated and graded by the teacher in terms of traditional norms of grammar, punctuation, adherence to proper form, style, etc ....
#20 7th or 8th grades On the wall the teacher has a poster with "Five Essential Questions". l. How do we know what we know? 2. What's the evidence? 3. What's the viewpoint? 4. How else may it be considered? 5. What difference does it make? The class is two hours in length, and students are considering the debate in congress over deficit reduction. All relevant newspaper articles from the past two years on this topic are field and available, as are clips of video-tapes from McNeil-Lehrer, and audios from a variety of sources. Some students have been assigned to talk to the offices of their senators and representatives, and several scholarly articles on the national debt are also available. Five learning groups are formed. Group one has the task of finding data and developing an argument for the conservative republican position. Group two has the task of developing an argument for the liberal democratic position. Group three has the job of finding out possible ways to compromise between the positions. Group four has the task of discovering from past budget debates in U.S. history what the enduring themes are, and how they have been dealt with by the different political parties. Group five has the task of studying various economists, and their views of the national debt. Each group has a designated leader, recorder, encourager, presenter, and researchers. The hope is that the class will come up with a position paper on this problem and send it to their congressmen and to the president. Each group reports on the state of their work towards the end of each class, and the final product is hammered out by an editorial board of one representative from each group. Agreement is by consensus. It may take a month. It may take less. Each student is evaluated on his contributions to the project as a whole.
Sources for the Scenarios Adler, Mortimer, The Paideia Proaram, 1985 This book outlines three ways of teaching and provides a systematic way of understanding modes of teaching that is simpler than Joyce, Weil and Showers. It also has a wonderful list of books to use for seminars k-8 in all subject matters. Apple & Beane (eds), Democratic Schools ASCD, 1995 An in-depth look at some schools which believe that democracy is the form of education. Dreikurs, Rudolf,Maintainina Sariity in the Classroom (1968) A seminal book on classroom discipline. The principles behind classroom meetings are defined and elaborated. Dreikurs follows Alfred Adler, holding all behavior is purposeful. Harmin, Merrill, Inspirina Active Ltaarning (1994) ASCD Probably the best simply written book for today's teacher. Hundreds of ideas you can use tomorrow morning. Good to share with resistant colleagues Joyce, Weil, and Showers, Models of teaching 1992 This book, in many editions was the basis of this course. It is an outstanding scholarly treatment of the field of instruction. Rose, Mike, Possible lives', 1995 Rose travelled throughout the United States in search of excellent teaching, and found it in cities, suburbs, and in rural schools. The stories are quite powerful, and helpful. Wood, George, Schools that Work 1993 Plume Books Another book filled with stories of good teaching. Wood, however, has a thesis that the way we educate children will affect the way they think about the political order, and the way they will behave as citizens in the future.
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