This week’s reading was on Direct Instruction. As a math teacher, this is a strategy whose parts I have used often. I have used the focus activity, content presentation, modeling, checking for understanding, guided practice, independent practice, and mass practice. In the past, I’ve used the “looking back” section of the homework to have students do some distributive practice, but this has been very haphazard and I can do much better with some sort of reminder system to ensure I’m covering what my students need.
In the second case study of the chapter, the direct instruction math lesson follows a different lesson with manipulatives and diagrams. This makes sense that new concepts require more exploratory lessons. The exploration’s learnings can be formalized into mathematical rules and direct instruction helps with the practice. Direct instruction can be overly cognitively passive compared to other strategies that are higher up on Blooms taxonomy, such as concept attainment or the inductive model. However, there’s no question that practice with a wide variety of problems helps students gain confidence and understanding.
