Direct instruction is a teaching approach that is highly organized by instructors. The teaching content and style are entirely controlled by the teachers who are giving the class, so students only need to receive the information provided in the class and follow the steps of the content. Direct instruction is highly effective for learning objectives in the early grades (Kinder &Carnine, 2991). With direct instruction, teachers do not provide nonacademic materials to students, and the teaching focuses only on academic learning. Teachers provide modeling, instruction and feedback to students, and ask students questions to check that they understand the content (Gersten, Woodward & Darch, 1986). Instructors organize the learning tasks and lead students to efficiently complete learning tasks. Direction instruction is a kind of the traditional teaching approach which are used in various countries. The most important purpose of direct instruction is fully utilize students’ academic learning time, and make sure they can understand and master the learning materials. Students under this learning technique usually finish their homework with teachers’ guidance, therefore they are asked to reach a high level of grade in the course. In addition, teachers who use direct instruction usually structure and control the class by themselves, not students. This learning approach has less interaction between instructors and learners.
For our learning pod project topic, direct instruction would not be the perfect learning approach choice. Our chosen topic is Chinese tea culture, which is new to students who are unfamiliar with Chinese culture. This topic needs to provide a lot of extracurricular material to students and help them to understand the course content better because it contains many histories of China which are nonacademic content. Therefore, direct instruction may not be the first option of our learning pod project topic. Besides, our topic needs interaction between learners and teachers, so that students can perfectly understand the information that they have never learned before. The grade maybe not the most important in this topic is another reason why direct instruction would not be chosen. This topic pays more attention to the understanding of the Chinese tea culture rather than how high-level grades that students can get. As a result, direct instruction is not suggested with our learning design.
References :
Gersten, R., Woodward, J., & Darch, C. (1986). Direct instruction: A research-based approach to curriculum design and teaching. Exceptional Children, 53(1), 17-31.
Kinder, D., & Carnine, D. (1991). Direct instruction: What it is and what it is becoming. Journal of Behavioral Education, 1(2), 193-213.
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