Lesson Plan Part 2: Strategies for Direct and Indirect Instruction

Introduction

For the students to understand and comprehend the lesson well, the teacher will engage several styles of instructions including direct and indirect methods. A combination of two styles should be embraced to enhance comprehension and understanding of the lesson’s objectives for the class.

Students Description

The class presented for the teaching of the technology objectives is composed of an average of 35 students who have recently proceeded to the class from the previous one. The sitting arrangement represents three rows, each including 12 students sitting in pairs. This sitting arrangement allows the students to discuss class works and other complex assignments during the lesson time. It also enables the teacher to see all students at the same time, which makes class management easy. The class is composed of active students including18 females and 17 males. They all contribute to the educative process during the lessons as all teachers have complimented the class due to its proactive nature. The girls are all of the same age group, with maximum difference of three years between the youngest and the oldest one. The class demonstrates high competitiveness in different capacities as teachers have used different formations to enhance competition. For instance, a teacher of English language uses class rows to enhance competition while the Mathematics teacher uses sections. There are the front section across the rows, middle sections and the back section (back benchers), which are used during competitive class sessions. At the lesson of technology, the gender establishment is used to enhance competition amongst the classmates.

Grade 6 students have mastered the art of maximizing lesson comprehension through discussion and proactivity. They ask creative and qualitative questions to their tutors geared towards understanding the content. This characteristic has made teachers research for more information before starting a lesson. The characters and behaviors of the class students are diverse, with some silent students, moderately active and the noisy ones who are restless while the teacher is absent. There is cultural diversity in the class since it has over eight whites, six Latinos, four African-Americans, seven Hispanics, five Indians and other five students of different origins. It makes the class a good composition with a diverse cultural orientation. This advantage has enabled students in the class to cooperate with each other making the class lively, with diverse practical examples to learn from. The students have enough understanding of the contents to be taught including history of technology, mathematical applications, and English language, among other technological advancement examples such as the Citicorp Center case study in technology enhancement. Learning styles will include direct and indirect ones, engaging and giving assignments, among others to enable the students digest the content of the lesson.

Direct Instruction Strategies

To effectively enable the learners to grasp the concepts taught in class, teachers need to use both direct and indirect teaching methods. These methods engage straightforward and explicit teaching techniques for a specific skill, which implies that the teacher stands in front of the class while presenting the content of the lesson. The methods act as the primary mode of content presentation in most settings. The methods have clear goals, with strictly allocated time and continuous. The teacher provides the training with a structured interaction and a non-authoritarian command. Some direct methods to be used include the following.

Giving Notes

Giving notes in class is a direct way of teaching that can be used by the tutor to engage the leaners into the training process. This method will engage the students in writing the notes and thinking of the content while comprehending them. Note taking should be applied since the students need to remember the studying material thus furthering the objective of knowledge. It also enhances the learner’s capacity to remember and comprehend the information presented. This method achieves the objective of getting knowledge and being able to analyze information acquired. It is the main tool of instruction, and, therefore, the class will benefit from it.

Reading Resource Materials Like Textbooks and Workbooks

Direct methods involve engaging the tutor’s skills in teaching the grade 6 students. Direct methods should be used to enhance curriculum development and further objectives of the school education system. Encouraging the students to read from the textbooks and other reading materials is a direct teaching method. It engages the students through reading with the teacher and comprehending the lesson. This method can be applied to a class with the diversified class composition and nature of contribution. Reading learning materials and engaging all students in this process enables them to comprehend and apply the objective of gaining knowledge. The class represents a mixture of students of diverse origins and cultural perspectives. Thus, it is possible to get diverse ideas from them after reading the text books or other learning materials.

Lecturing

This method enables the lecturer/teacher to present information to the learners while they are writing it on their notebooks. It involves the learners’ listening to the information presented by the teacher and making short notes that allow them to remember it later. This strategy allows the learners to get knowledge and analyze information as they make voluntary short notes while the teacher is lecturing. This method is also applicable to the class as it comprises of smart students who can listen and make their own notes. However, the teacher has to supplement it through writing major points on the board.

Indirect Instruction Strategies

Indirect instruction methods emphasize teaching and learning of the intended objectives through patterns, concepts and abstractions. They are presented in the contexts of several strategies embracing concept learning, problem solving and inquiries. The strategies are geared towards enabling the learner to respond to different prompts in a similar manner thus increasing the range of instances, in which specific sequences, rules and particular facts are applied (Prenhal, 2014). Some instructional strategies using indirect model include use of advance organizers, conceptual movement that can include deductive and inductive styles, and utilizing examples and non-examples. It also involves engaging questions to guide in discovering and searching for more information, asking students’ ideas to enhance learning, asking the students to self-evaluate themselves and engaging them in group discussions.

The advantages of the indirect instructions in the process are inquiries and context that are applied while involving concepts. Some of the indirect strategies to be used include student self-evaluation, group discussions, and using examples and non-examples. Usage of examples and non-examples helps the students to define the non-essential and essential attributes of the lesson and make an accurate generalization.

Using Examples and Non-Examples

This method uses such steps as adding more examples to enable students gain more knowledge. It engages the students’ thinking and being a part of the class. It also involves reviewing varying concepts of the topic. Giving non-examples also makes the leaners think about the concepts and expand their knowledge base. It includes dimensions that are relevant to the concept being taught in class. It also includes explaining why non-examples and their characteristics and connections to the lesson are studied.

Using examples and non-examples with this class enables them to reason together and get the common examples within their reach and culture (Carninel, 2013). The objective of applying and analyzing is engaged here since the students will use what they have learnt in class, analyze the information and apply it using the non-examples.

Self-Evaluation

This process gives the students an opportunity to reason their responses and propose the change they need for the lesson. Through the suggested changes, the lesson becomes inclusive and engages the leaners to reason out their thoughts with their fellow students. The method can be conducted easily through a student-to-student exposition and then sharing with their teachers to enhance their understanding. This encourages students to study together and encourage themselves to comment on the accuracy of their classmates in their assignments (Mulligan, n.d.).

Self-evaluation method involves the students in reasoning out and evaluating their learning capacity. It revokes them and gives them time to assess and take the right procedures. The objective of comprehension is applied through this method as it tests the level of knowledge the learners have reached. The class includes a number of inquisitive students who can self-evaluate themselves.

Use of Group Discussion Across the Class Establishments

The approach implies groups’ engagement in exchanges that involve large numbers of learners. The exchanges are only interrupted by the teacher to review or summarize. Periodic interruption can be scheduled to allow the teacher evaluate the progress of the group. It can also be used to redirect discussions when it is needed. The best topics to engage group discussion are the topics that are not lawfully structured by workbooks and texts. It should also involve those topics that imply high degree of consensus among the learners. The tutor orients students regarding the objectives of the lesson providing new and other auxiliary materials and summarizing the lesson after the discussions.

This method was chosen since it encourages students to be involved in the learning process to the maximum. It also enables the realization of the objectives of learning the technology, getting knowledge, as well as comprehension analysis. As it has already been mentioned, the students in this class are proactive and engaging (Howard, n.d.). The composition and the cultural diversity of the class allow the teacher to use the method and engage the leaners. Mere teaching of the students demonstrates a high rate of forgetting while showing the learners what is being done enables them to remember.

Conclusion

Evidently, involving students through discussion, self-evaluation and giving examples enables them to understand and comprehend the information. Therefore, for the learners to benefit maximally, a combination of the two methods should be used to enable them understand and comprehend the materials taught. The teaching concepts of inquiry, problem solving and content attainment through indirect teaching and direct teaching should be enhanced. Students get information through transforming stimulus information into retorts. It requires them to elaborate and rearrange their stimulus materials. It is, therefore, recommended that both strategies be incorporated.