Way to be Direct....

I am so glad there is a name for all those years of lecturing that teachers have given over the years...Direct Instruction. Direct Instruction is a teacher centered strategy of learning. Teachers give the basic skills and knowledge of the topic being taught, by astep by step process. It is a very structured and organize way of teaching. Five steps are usually involved: 1) Setting clear goals for students 2) Presenting sequence of well organized assignments 3) Give students clear outlines of the subject matter 4) Asking students frequent questions 5) Student practice what they learn. Also known as, "I do, you do, we do". There is a lot of criticism about Direct Instruction. It is not student centered, does not promote creativity, and focuses on the lowest level of Bloom's Taxomony, Knowledge. There are also positives involved with this. It guarentees specific learning outcomes, uses time effectivily, and easy to implement. Overall, I think it is very hard to avoid using this way of teaching, but while lecturing the class about a new topic the teacher should try to make it fun to keep the students from not listening. Plus it is importatnt to incorporate other strategies of teaching which is student focused and incorporates creativity, such as indirect.