Teachers Must Plan!

Teachers should define learning objective and they should be able to explain why it is important for a lesson to have clear learning objectives. Teachers should plan for instruction.

Teachers must plan for instruction in advance. Effective teachers have materials ready in advance and they align their curriculum with state standards. They should also state learning objectives and how students will demonstrate knowledge and skills. 

In addition, teachers should choose learning objectives. The Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive objectives is a useful tool for planning learning goals at six different levels of thinking: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

Then, to make sure that students have mastered information and skills, teachers can use three strategies: mastery learning, direct instruction, and computer-based instruction. 

Mastery learning is based on the idea that all students can learn school subject matter if given sufficient time; Teachers should present the lesson into small and discrete units and provide additional instruction and practice as needed. 

Direct instruction is an approach that uses a high degree of teacher control. Teachers should review the previous learned material before presenting the new knowledge in small and logically sequenced steps. Teachers should also provide independent practice and frequent follow-up reviews. 

Computer-based instruction is an important concept in cognitive learning theory because it reflects the behaviorist’s principles which are active responding, shaping, and reinforcement. 

Then, discovery learning is another teaching method which encourages the student to interact with their environment and derive information for themselves. By seeing something happening, students can encode it in their long term memory. 

Expository teaching promotes learning in several ways. First, students learn only when they are actively making responses. They also argue that students pay more attention when they are engaged in meaningful learning. Teachers should help students make meaningful connections among the things they learn by emphasizing its relevance to what students already know and to real-life examples. 

Then, teachers should also use computer-based instruction, online research, hands on and practice activities, cooperative learning, reciprocal teaching, and reciprocal questioning. 

Teachers must enhance students’ expectancies for success by trying to combine different kind of teaching methods. They should also provide the necessary support, resources, and strategies.