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Developing Story Good Instructions Lead To Good Results

LPH

Flight Director
Flight Instructor
Note: This post is not complete. I decided to publish an incomplete draft and edit as time and energy permit. Feel free to make suggestions.

Some teachers love to "wing-it." They waltz into a classroom and spout off instructions - or maybe flip on a PowerPoint. To them - the dance makes them good. Others might argue that only the results matter and if everyone can reach a certain threshold on a test then the instruction was good.

The current data on public schools are evidence that learning is not consistent between classrooms and not always happening. Despite the waltz, some students do not learn.

Robert Heiny is describing learning at EduClassics. This is an important read for all teachers. The information can help a teacher not get in the way of learning. Borrowing from his work, teachers will be able to improve their own instruction.

How do you start?
You can start by asking yourself, what are the components to good instruction? You could use a search engine and find a full-spectrum of opinions. You could just read below and find a great way to improve instruction - I call it the CURED approach.

CURED: From Bad to Good Instruction

Close your eyes and imagine being in the classroom. What do you want to see happening?

Now start to write down your plan. Lesson planning is not a waste of time if you record your thoughts - from start to finish. You may use a piece of paper, the presenter notes in a PowerPoint slide, the notes section in a Flipchart, or a webpage. Writing it out allows you to own the instruction. It's yours now.

Clear
Is your written work clear.

Understandable
Will your students understand the instructions?

Routine
Are your sequences always the same so the students know the pattern?

Explicit
Never leave an instruction to chance.

Detailed
Has every detail been imagined and recorded?
 

Robert Heiny

Research Scientist of Learning and Education
Flight Instructor
CURED! I like it. It's an insight loaded acronym.

Here's a suggestion that puts research resported descriptions of learning from lessons into the CURED frame (hmm, that's better than into a cold frame :rolleyes:): use a learners' view (ALV) to plan and instruct lessons. ALV contrasts with teachers' views about learning and emphasizes a learners' view of learning. The prepositions ''about'' and ''of'' make the difference as between lessons that say, "You can and should learn this," and lessons that show learners steps to take to learn "it."

Thanks for mentioning Classic Education at EduClassics.com. It's an exciting part of Tux Reports Network for me. It introduces and features ALV as an enduring, integral part of lessons, whether developed and offered by teachers or occuring naturally during daily life, even in the 21st century with so called collaborative and 21st Century learning.

We all know that in the end after removing all of the symbols and sirens people learn one person at a time no matter the context or venue. In this way, learning is a personal survival mechanism. EduClassics.com consists of behavioral science descriptions of this mechanism in and out of schools and how teachers therapists, and software developers manage it.
 
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