The lesson delivery is a component of the SIOP Model that is just as critical as the techniques used help facilitate student learning. This chapter emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the details when administering a lesson plan. First and foremost, it is mentioned that the key to delivering a lesson is good preparation. It is not good enough have an idea of the direction one wants the lesson to go in, but to have a plan on how to execute that lesson.
In order for the teacher to stay focused on his or her lesson, the SIOP Model tells the teacher to continuously refer to the lesson’s objectives. Just as the objects will aid the teacher in staying on task, this chapter emphasizes the importance of teacher’s explicitly displaying these content and language objectives for the students to see and to refer to throughout the lesson. During the teaching scenarios it is stated that students “need to have a clear, explicit understanding of what the expectations are for a leasson” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008). Objectives that are given explicitly and are displayed for students and the teacher to see at the beginning, as well as during the lesson as well, allows both to evaluate their role in the lesson – are they staying on task?, are the pacing themselves to the allotted time?, etc.
Although it may seem obvious why teachers should explicitly incorporate the objectives in the lesson, the article also acknowledges two common reasons why teachers may not display them – an inability to write the objectives in a way that the students will understand them and fear of not accomplishing the objectives. Both of these concerns are addressed. Firstly, the SIOP Model discourages teachers from writing the names of each benchmark, but using language that is appropriate for the age level that they are teaching. Secondly, if the objectives are not accomplished, this provides the perfect opportunity for teachers to discuss with their students why the goals were not reached – not being on task, confusion, engaging questions, etc. By doing these things, teachers actively engage their students in the learning process.
Engaging students is a critical element of any lesson plan. The Lesson Delivery component of the SIOP Model emphasizes the importance of teachers engaging their students 90 to 100% of the time. This requires students to be paying attention and on task as well as demanding that teachers provided meaningful activities that are related the lesson’s objectives. If the students are actively attending to an activity that is fun but does not correspond to the objects, then students are not being engaged.
In order to help teachers facilitate student engagement, the article mentions three aspects of which the teacher needs to be cognoscente and appropriately apply. Allocated time, engaged time, and academic learning time need to be addressed when considering the lesson delivery component of sheltered teaching instruction. Allocated time is the amount of time that the teacher decides to allot to the subject matter as well as the individual academic activities. Engaged time is the time that students are “actively participating in instruction during the time allocated” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008). Academic learning time is the time students actually spend on activities that are correlate to the information that the students will be tested on – i.e. activities that are directly related to the objectives.
Lastly the article mentions how important it is for the teacher to be aware the lesson pacing. The pace at which the teacher decides to teach relies on lesson’s content and level of his or her students’ background knowledge (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2008).
Task:
Feature 25 mentions that teachers often waste time in class because they are ill prepared, have poor classroom management skills, spend too much time on announcements and passing out handing in papers, etc. What aspects of your own teaching are you most confident in regards to students’ engagement? What aspects do you find to be most difficult to address? What features of the whole Lesson Delivery component do you find most difficult to implement?
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Engaging students in the lesson is no doubt a difficult task. While the teacher may be doing an excellent job, it ultimately up to the students whether or not they wish to actively participate and learn. I have not had much formal teaching experience, and I know that when that time comes, it will indeed be a challenging task for me to fully engage my students. I think that I need more experience teaching in order to figure out what works and what does not through trial and error. I am confident that I will be able to easily identify that students are not engaged, it’s just a matter of how I am going to engage them that is difficult. I certainly believe that it is important to state and restate the lesson objectives throughout the lesson for the same reasons discussed in the original post. This is something that I will have no problem following through on. I also believe that I will do a fine job preparing and organizing the lesson so that I will successfully utilize allocated time, engaged time, and academic learning time. Again though, it is going to take some trial and error before I get it right.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciate the way in which teachers are suggested to address the lesson objectives; in regards to not reaching the objective(s), I like the idea that this stimulates an interactive assessment and communication between students and teacher as to why the goals were not met. I’m not quite sure how to phrase it, but seems like such a practice would allow for a more trusting and respectful relationship between the students and teacher. It helps students stay more on track during the lesson, and it also allows them to practice their language speaking when participating in this class discussion.
I feel most comfortable with the lesson preparation aspect of lesson delivery. Spending a great deal of time on preparation makes me feel confident for any task, especially teaching. I feel that lesson preparation should be viewed as a cycle. First, the teacher prepares the lesson, then once the lesson is delivered there are undoubtedly kinks that need to be worked out, questions that were unanticipated, etc. Finally, when the teacher is preparing for the next lesson, he or she should take these kinks, questions, etc. into account, making the lesson more thorough.
ReplyDeleteI feel that SIOP's definition of active engagement is the most challenging to achieve. Although 90-100% active engagement/participation is certainly helpful for optimal learning, it is very daunting to prospective teachers! Because each student in the class has a different set of prior knowledge, interests, and attention span, it seems almost impossible to keep each student engaged at all times. However, this problem can possibly be corrected through the lesson preparation cycle discussed previously; once the teacher delivers a lesson, he or she can see where some students lost interest, got confused, etc. and adjust it to suit their needs. Teachers also need to spend time getting to know their students on an individual basis, when possible, to try to target the lessons to their needs and interests.