Instruction is interactive - modeling, demonstrating, guided practice
DEFINITION: Teachers model behaviors or skills.
Modeling
The Role of the Teacher - The teacher demonstrates by thinking aloud the process used.
The Role of the Student - Students participate by actively attending to the demonstrations.
DEMONSTRATION IN THE CLASSROOM
The demonstration method of teaching shoes learners how to do a task using sequential instructions with the end goal of having learners perform the tasks independently.
Demonstrations can be used to provide examples that enhance lectures and to offer effective hands-on, inquiry-based learning opportunities in classes or labs. Used in classes of all sizes in multiple grade and subject areas, demonstrations are most commonly found in science and technology courses.
When using the demonstration model in the classroom, the teacher, or some other expert on the topic being taught, performs the tasks step-by-step so that the learner will eventually be able to complete the same task independently. The eventual goal is for learners to not only duplicate the task, but to recognize how to problem-solve when unexpected obstacles or problems arise. After performing the demonstration, the teacher's role becomes supporting students in their attempts, providing guidance and feedback, and offering suggestions for alternative approaches.
GUIDED PRACTICE
What it is and is not...
Guided practice is an activity that provides students the opportunity to grasp and develop concepts or skills and requires teachers to monitor student progress. Guided practice is not simply assigning a worksheet, problems or questions to be completed in class.
Teachers should use guided practice...
- following and as an additional check for understanding
- prior to closure
- to determine the level of mastery
- to provide individual remediation
Guided practice can look like and sound like...
- An activity in which each student is individually accountable to demonstrate understanding
For example:
1. A set of questions or problems that require students to work through the new learning.
This can be accomplished individually or by using cooperative learning strategies. Remember... it's group work and not cooperative learning unless there is individual accountability! No group grades.
Ideas for pairs/teams: Pairs Check, Flashcard Game, Roundrobin or Roundtable (Rally, if pairs), Sages Share, Fan and Pick, Find Someone Who, Numbered Heads Together, Showdown, Team-Pair-Solo, and Team Word Web.
2. Students creating a mind map related to the learning objective.
The teacher is continuously moving around the room and monitoring students working individually, in pairs or as teams. This is critical for assessment of learning and related decisions concerning the need to reteach. Without monitoring, the activity becomes independent practice and the teacher may not realize the students are encoding incorrect information and/or skills! According to Fredric Jones, author of Positive Classroom Instruction, effective monitoring by the teacher during guided practice can improve classroom discipline and decrease failure experiences for students. While monitoring students, teachers need only to "praise, prompt, and leave!"
Note: Brain research is telling us that we have a window of approximately 6-8 hours to correct inaccurate information/skills before it becomes permanently encoded. What are the implications of this for teachers? A check for understanding and guided practice must be implemented PRIOR to sending students home with independent practice. If this does not occur, teachers will have a very difficult time decoding the incorrect skill/knowledge of their students!
Guided Practice
The Role of the Teacher - The teacher scaffolds help and provides support and corrective feedback.
The Role of the Student - Students do the work with help from the teacher or other sources at predetermined points.
Guided Practice
Guided Practice is a form of scaffolding. It allows learners to attempt things they would not be capable of without assistance. In the classroom, guided practice usually looks like a combination of individual work, close observation by the teacher, and short segments of individual or whole class instruction. In computer based or internet based learning, guided practice has come to mean instructions presented on the learner's computer screen on which they can act. This action may be to perform some task using a program that is running at the same time, or it may be to interact with a simulation that is embedded in the program or web page.
Posing questions that gradually lead students from easy or familiar empales to new understandings is a teaching strategy known as Guided Practice (Rosenshine, 1979, 1983). The strategy is effective for teaching thinking skills as well as content. Consider a language arts example (Harmon, 1994)
- "Using the [so-called] Question, All Write strategy, the teacher asks all students to write the plural of "fox," a plural they already know. As soon as students begin writing, the teacher writes "foxes" on the board, so students can see the correct answer soon after they finish writing. Students correct their own work and, if necessary, make changes so their work is correct. The teacher avoids discussion at this point.
- The teacher then calls out the next word, another easy word or perhaps one that may be less familiar or that may lead to a new plural-making rule. Students begin to write the plural of the word and, as they do so, the teacher writes the correct plural on the board. "If you didn't get this one, don't worry," she says, "The next one may follow the same rule." Her aim is to reassure students and keep them alert to discovering new understandings.
- The teacher continues this process at a brisk pace, avoiding extended discussion. The emphasis is on learning by practicing and observing and thinking. While students are working, the teacher glances about, getting a sense of how well students understand. If understanding is low, the teacher inserts extra explanatory comments as appropriate and strives to make subsequent words easy enough so students do come to understand." (pp. 44-45)