Authentic Teaching – Practices

Simple Effective Instructional Frame

Abderrazak Behhar

When talking about authentic teaching, I mentioned that one aspect that characterizes authentic teachers is their adoption of a simple and effective instructional frame.

Effective teaching, as Schmoker( 2011) explains in his popular book “Focus: Elevating the Essentials” is simple and consists of the common elements of a solid lesson known to all effective teachers.

Schmoker (2011) reminds us of these common elements :

“a clear learning objective with some effort to provide background knowledge or create interest in the topic, teaching and modeling, guided practice, checks for understanding / formative assessment and independent practice/ assessment.” (P, 53)

The way Schmoker (2011) describes effective teaching echoes the lesson design developed by Madeline Hunter in 1984. Hunter(1984) as cited in Marzano (2007) suggested that an effective lesson should have the following stages:

• Anticipatory set – a kind of warm up to hook students’ attention and activate their prior knowledge
• Objective and purpose – Explaining what is to be learned and why it is important
• Input – presenting the knowledge and skills needed to achieve the goal of the lesson
• Modeling – showing students various examples of the targeted knowledge and skills
• Checking for understanding – making sure that students are ready to carry out the learning tasks; that is to say, they know what to do and have enough prior knowledge and skills.
• Guided practice – monitoring students’ practice of the newly learned skills and knowledge.
• Independent practice – engaging students in independent practice.

It is very sad that this simple nature of effective teaching is now blurred with sophisticated terminology and instructional fads.

The practices of effective lesson planning should permeate the instructional practices; Marzano (2007) believes that the stages of Madeline Hunter’s lesson plan should be “routine components of every lesson” (p. 180)

The authentic teacher knows that effective teaching is not a mystery.

The authentic teacher knows that teaching in an effective way means teaching in a simple way.

The authentic teacher knows that teaching in a simple fashion requires creativity and flexibility.

 

References

Marzano, R. J. (2007). The art and science of teaching: A comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 

Schmoker, M. J. (2011). Focus: Elevating the essentials to radically improve student learning. ASCD.