Chapter 5: Beginning Lesson Delivery and Basic Models

Dr. Lakshmi loved literature and writing so much that she earned her Ph.D. in English by the age of 30. While she was not yet certified by the state to teach, she found a job in a local school division teaching AP and Dual Enrollment English. The beginning of the year had been very rocky. Dr. Lakshmi realized that while she had spent hundreds of hours in classes as a student and she was an expert in her content area, no one had ever explicitly taught her how or why to plan and deliver lessons in certain ways. Often she defaulted to long lectures, and was surprised when students became distracted and disinterested. She began her own investigation of teaching methods and resolved to teach herself what she needed to know–and also decided to find some local courses in teaching to be the best possible teacher she could be.

In previous chapters we discussed many critical components to planning instruction, including using backward design, considering what content we will teach and why, developing assessments, and constructing objectives. This chapter will delve into the main portion of your lessons: what you and the students will do during instruction. It can be tempting to start your lesson planning here, but remember that following backward design means that you will have to consider objectives and assessments before you get to this point. The content of this chapter as well as the next (Chapter 6) is designed to help complete the highlighted part of the lesson template; this section has to do with the main portion of the lesson.

Lesson Plan Template

Basic Models of Instruction

In Chapter 2 we discussed that a model of instruction is like a blueprint or a set of steps that the teacher and students follow during the course of one or more lessons. This chapter will introduce some of the foundational models of instruction that can serve all teachers and students well.

Direct Instruction

Direct Instruction is a deductive model: the teacher shares the rules, and the students follow the rules to perform the skill. Think of all of the things you know how to do–riding a bike, solving equations, addressing a letter, crafting an email, conducting a simple science investigation–these skills would be best taught through direct instruction. In one sample demonstration lesson, we teach students how to construct an origami model.

It is crucial to understand that the Direct Instruction model is not the same as a lecture. Consider the difference between these two scenarios:

• Teacher A follows the same structure nearly every day in their middle school history classroom. Students listen to a 30-40 minute lecture on a topic and complete fill-in-the-blank notes on a packet. For the remaining class time they read the textbook and answer questions or watch clips of historical films. On Fridays, the teacher gives a quiz on the content from the week.
• Teacher B uses the Direct Instruction model about once per week to teach students how to follow procedures that will lead to success on the benchmark Document-Based Question essay that students will take at the end of the quarter. Some of these skills include writing a thesis, understanding the arguments in primary sources, and analyzing sources. Because these skills build on one another, each time the teacher uses the model, they review the lessons that came before, and check students’ progress on those skills over time.

The main difference between these two teachers is that one is focused on content and the other is focused on process and skills. It is challenging for students to recall hundreds of discrete dates, people, and events for history (or similar, loosely connected details for any other content area) unless there is a reason to know them later. The reason should be more than simply preparing for a test. And while Teacher B is still preparing students for a test, the assessment involves a transferable skill that will be useful for other courses and general writing skills for the future. Direct Instruction can be very effective, but is best for teaching a skill that can be practiced. If you do want students to learn more about a simple concept, the Concept Attainment model is a better fit.

Concept Attainment

Concepts are everywhere in education. Learning new skills requires us to be aware of concepts; to learn about how to create an origami butterfly, one must have at least a basic understanding of the following concepts: origami, butterflies, symmetry, and models (such as building a model of something by following certain steps). They may use the same words for these things, but imagine teaching origami to someone who had never folded a sheet of paper along a symmetrical line–maybe a very young child. That student first needs to learn that foundational concept before they can move on to more complex concepts and skills.

As with most models, it can provide clarity to watch Concept Attainment model in action. In Appendix A, you will find a video of Jennifer Gonzalez from Cult of Pedagogy demonstrating a Concept Attainment lesson. To extend our above example of symmetrical folding, a teacher could prepare and show to students a set of positive examples of papers or objects that have been folded or divided along different lines of symmetry. A set of non-examples would be folded in other ways. Together the students could generate a hypothesis and definition of lines of symmetry. Other kinds of concepts that work well for this model are present in every content area, from prime numbers to primary sources to primary colors and beyond. Concepts that work for the Concept Attainment model have clear criteria that enable a teacher to select good positive and negative examples.

This kind of teaching takes time, and often teachers feel as if they don’t have the time to devote to a single concept when they have so much else they need to convey to students; however, this kind of time is well worth it. When students learn to ask questions about what they see, develop hypotheses, and work in a group, they are not just learning the concept, but also the skills of critical thinking and collaboration that will serve them well in the future. If you would like students to think more deeply about a concept they already know about, the Concept Development model is a good option.

Concept Development

The Concept Development model (Taba, 1971) is useful for students to work together with others in a small or large group to identify similarities and differences of a certain concept. For the first step, the teacher can provide a list of words or images related to the concept, or the students can generate this list. The following are the steps of the Concept Development model:

Concept Development is a model that serves a wide variety of purposes–the teacher can use it to see what students already know before beginning a unit of instruction, or they can use it to see whether students developed accurate and deep knowledge about the content of the lesson from previous instruction. The last step involves writing a generalization: What is a generalization? It is a simple statement that encompasses all of the ideas observed about a topic; for example, in a Concept Development lesson on state geography, students might state that most states have borders that are very different from the others, that some states are easily recognizable by their shape, and that other geographic features like rivers and mountains seem to affect the shape and size of states–especially the early ones. The kinds of concepts that work well for this model are ones that will lead to many words or phrases that students can think about, discuss, and categorize in different ways.

A Model Comparison

Table 5.1 compares the use of different models to teach about the same topic: writing complete sentences. All of the following lessons have the same Understand objective, but the Know and Do objectives vary slightly based on the goals and objectives of the lesson, the kind of knowledge, and the nature of the instructional model.

Table 5.1: Models Applied to Writing Complete Sentences

References

Estes T. H. & Mintz S. L. (2016). Instruction: A models approach (7th ed.). Pearson Education.

Taba, H., Durkin, M. C., Fraenkel, J. R., & NcNaughton, A. H. (1971). A teacher’s handbook to elementary social studies: An inductive approach (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley.