Each of the following links will take you to a description of each of the teaching methods.  When you write lesson plans for this course, and when you write unit plans for this course, I expect you to use these teaching methods.  You must include the name of the teaching method you will be using in each lesson plan.  A good unit plan will have a variety of different methods in it.

TEACHING METHODS

In your EdCur 200.3 course, you will have discussed three different types of curriculum.  These might have been called transmission or technical; transactional or practical; emancipatory or transformational.  In your EdCur 200.3 course, you will have referred to the Saskatchewan Education document Instructional Approaches:  A Framework for Practice.  On page 12 of this book, instructional models are outlined.  There are four listed:  information processing (which I will call conceptual), behavioural (which involves direct instruction and most of you are very familiar with this method), social interaction (which I call co-operative), and personal.  If we substitute the instructional strategy of "experiential" for "personal", we can move along to a chart I find useful.

One should note that a person’s world view is involved in each of these levels.  If teacher and students believe that knowledge is constructed, rather than being “found” out there in the world, then this class would be more comfortable with transactional curricula, and conceptual and experiential models.  If teacher and students believe the primary role of the school is for people to learn to get along, then that class would be comfortable with a co-operative model.  The Saskatchewan science curricula are transactional, firmly planted in constructivist learning theory, and conceptually oriented.

On page 20 of Instructional Approaches:  A Framework for Practice, there is a Venn diagram outlining a number of different instructional strategies.  Examining the various instructional strategies is useful, but to be able to enact, for example, an interactive instruction lesson, I find that it is necessary to have a clear description of the instructional methods which fall within each group.  A typical error for pre-service teachers is to write in a lesson plan that the class will discuss concept X.  But when I read the lesson plan, I wonder what the students will know about concept X.  To my way of thinking, a discussion is not when one person talks.  A discussion involves multiple voices.  If the pre-service teacher were to use one of the described teaching methods, then that teacher would know what the students knew about concept X.  A lively discussion, with students involved in talking (!) could ensue.

The following table attempts to put the above instructional models, (skip instructional approaches), and teaching methods in families.