Anatomy of Direct Instruction
EDTE 408 Principles of Teaching
Board Work
Begin writing the focus section for your
first “DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE”
Lesson Plan
Share with your diagonal partner
The Research Base: Direct
Instruction (Weinert and Helmke, 1995)
 The teacher’s classroom
management is especially
effective and the rate of
student interruptive
behaviors is very low
 The teacher maintains a
strong academic focus
and uses available
instructional time
intensively to initiate and
facilitate students’
learning activities
 The teacher ensures that as
many students as possible
achieve good learning
progress by carefully
choosing appropriate tasks,
clearly presenting subjectmatter information and
solution strategies,
continuously diagnosing
each student’s learning
progress and learning
difficulties, and providing
effective help through
remedial instruction
The Research Base: Direct
Instruction (Weinert and Helmke, 1995)
 Instruction in which the
teacher actively presents
information to students
and supports individual
learning processes is
more effective than
instruction in which the
teacher’s only role is to
provide those external
conditions that make
individual or social
learning success possible.
The Research Base:
Observational Learning (Bandura, 1986,
1993)
 People acquire new
 Teachers use modeling to
attitudes, skills and
behaviors by watching
and imitating the actions
of others.
 Teachers take advantage
of observational learning
when they model positive
attitudes such as tolerance
and respect for other
people
demonstrate complex
skills such as writing and
solving algebraic
equations
 Teacher modeling is one
of the most powerful
vehicles available for
teaching these kinds of
attitudes and skills
Teaching Skills: Goals
 Understanding
 Automaticity
 Transfer
Skills
Goals of Skills Instruction
Understanding
Automaticity
Transfer
Teaching Skills: Understanding
 To get students to not
only know how to
perform skills, but
also to understand the
logic behind them.
Teaching Skills: Automaticity
 Students can perform
skills effortless, even
unconsciously
 When skills can be
used with little mental
effort
 Learning to drive a
car is an example
Teaching Skills: Transfer
 Transfer occurs when
something learned at
one time is applied
later in another setting
 Example: Writing
skills learned in
English transferred to
writing assignments
in science
Planning for Skills Instruction
 Specify terminal
behavior (Outcomes)
 Identify prerequisite
skills
 Sequence subskills
 Diagnose students
Teaching Skills:
Traditional Approach
 Teacher First Explains
 Teacher Models the
Skill
 Teacher Guides
Students Through the
Initial Practice
 Teacher Provides for
Independent Practice
Teaching Skills:
Traditional Approach
 This transition from teacher
control to student autonomy
involves a gradual release of
responsibility
 Initially teacher is responsible
for identifying the skill,
explaining its functions, and
modeling its uses
 During instruction students
become more knowledgeable
and more autonomous
 If successful students no longer
need the teacher; they can
perform the skill on their own
Teaching Skills: Warning to the
Traditional Approach
Scaffolding: Providing
Instructional Support
 Teachers need to adjust their
teaching accordingly to
where students are in or to
build on student strengths
and accommodate student
weaknesses
 This is the support teachers
provide that helps learners
develop the skill
 In providing support, the
teacher metaphorically
becomes a scaffold for the
learner
Implications for
Skills Instruction
 The teacher must provide a learning environment
that is safe but challenging
 When success rates are too low, the scaffolding is
insufficient
 As success rates approach 80 to 90 percent, the
instruction is both challenging and supportive
 As students move higher, the need for scaffolding
disappears
 The teacher can move on, knowing the skill is
essentially automatic and can transfer or be
applied in diverse situations
A Skills Model for Effective
Direct Instruction
 This Model:
– Exploits the three modalities of
learning (auditory, visual,
physical)
– Teaches in small bits of time to
guard against Cognitive
Overload
– Series of Cycles one step at a
time
 Called Say-See-Do
– Found in Section 3 of Tools for
Teaching
– Will be trained later in the
Teacher Preparation Program