Slavin (2018) Chapter 7: The Effective Lesson

Describe
This week's reading focused on having an effective lesson. In this chapter, Slavin looks at different ways to deliver instruction. It focuses on the most important way to instruct students which is through direct instruction. Direct instruction is vital for students' successful learning.

Analzye
Effective instruction is a vital component a teacher should have. There are many ways to instruct students. The most effective way to teach students is using direct instruction. Direct instruction helps students retain information. Slavin (2018) states, "direct instruction is used to describe lessons in which you transmit information directly to students, structuring class time to reach a clearly defined set of objectives as efficiently as possible" (page 160). There are several parts of direct instruction; state learning objectives and orient to students to the lesson, review prerequisites, present new material, conduct learning probes, provide independent practice, assess performance and provide feedback, and provide distributed practice and review.  When stating learning objectives a teacher should explain the significance of the lesson the students will be learning this will also help orient the students to the lesson. When reviewing prerequisites one must activate the students prior knowledge. Then new material is ready to be presented. Slavin (2018) discusses how the lesson should be organized and clear for students to be able to understand. Next, you will conduct learning probes. "a variety of ways of asking for brief student responses to lesson content" (Slavin, 2018 page 168). Learning probes help to check for understanding and seeing if students are mastering what needs to be mastered. Next, independent practice is provided. Independent practice is where students get to show their mastery of newly learned skills by practicing them. Slavin (2018) states, Independent practice is most critical when students are learning skills such as mathematics......" (page 171). One important thing about independent practice is it should not be assigned until teachers know that students are fully prepared to practice the problems. Slavin (2018) states, "Independent practice is practice, not instruction, and the students should already be able to do most of the items they are assigned to do on their own (Freiberg & Driscoll, 2005)" (page 173). Independent practice will tell you if students are ready for an assessment. The next step of direct instuction is assess performance and provide feedback. Here we see if the students have mastered the objectives. There are many different assessments one can use such as oral questioning or a ticket out the door. Assessment should be given daily and should be followed up with effective feedback. The last part providing distributed practice and review, "increases retention of many kinds of knowledge (Greene, 2008)" (page 175).

Reflect
I believe the first thing to an effective lesson is effective planning. During a planning period one must decide what to teach, how to teach, when to teach, and what to use to teach before it can be instructed. I agree with Slavin that the most important instruction is direct instruction. In my classroom, I use direct instruction except it is broken up into different components known as explicit instruction. Explicit instruction consists of four components for its effectiveness; direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and assessment. This model can be changed around as necessary to fit the students needs. For example, if you see specific students are not performing well during independent practice you can jump back to direct instruction or if you see students are grasping the concept and do not need guided practice students can jump to independent practice. I have been teaching for two years and explicit instruction is proving to work for my classroom and my school. The way Slavin describes direct instruction, it matches up to the explicit instruction model with different titles. A lesson focuses on the teaching of concepts and it is a teachers' duty to teach their classroom using what works for them and their students.

  Slavin, R. E. (2018). Educational Psychology: Theory and practice (12th ed.). NY, NY: Pearson.