We left the Direct Instruction Strategy/Behavioral Model behind this month and delved into more unfamiliar content information.
We were asked to consider the question of "Why direct instruction is not enough?"
A very pertinent question that was initially hard for me to answer. I found that by then end of the month and after doing the readings and the in-class exercises, I could answer that question easily. Direct instruction is an excellent method of conveying BASIC information in its repetitive format but does nothing for the higher levels of thinking. Students must be able to not only absorb the facts of a concept, a strong foundation in the basics is crucial, but must also be able to apply, synthesize and evaluate the information into new and unique concepts. That is what the Information Processing Model and its corresponding methods of instruction generate among the students.
Simply put, DI is the foundation and IPM lessons are the tools to build the rest of the house!! Within an IPM lesson, students learn to ask questions about real-life problems, working teams to generate ideas about how to solve those problems, reach into their creativity on a variety of levels and think, not merely absorb.
(November content reflections)
Although DI teaches the basics, student don't have to carry around basic knowledge about concepts like they used to. In our information age, they can just look it up!!
But thinking skills, inquiry-based learning, must be taught now more than ever.
If our job as teachers is to educated our students, then we are duty-bound to teach them how to think so that they can one day educate themselves.
The IPM lesson do take longer to prepare and combined with the curriculum requirements might be impractical to use all of the time. It would be negligent of modern teachers to not incorporate IPM lessons periodically, even in small portions as an extension of a DI lesson.
There are countless methods with which to use the IPM. Certainly, after a bit of experimenting with some of them, teachers could find a method they are comfortable with and make a few lessons that incorporate it.
Ironically, since we missed a class on this topci, I found myself wishing for some Direct Instruction on the Information Processing Model!
