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Writing Lesson Plans
Teachers' Roles
Animations by S. Holtrop 1997
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A traditional view of the teacher is of someone who dispenses knowledge:
someone who Lectures,
tells, feeds, disseminates, covers material, teaches the subject matter
more than the students. The students sit passively while the teacher is
on show. Desks in rows and a blackboard and podium up front are an arrangement
designed for this role of a teacher. However, lectures are effective for
giving short sets of instructions, background information, guidelines,
or other information that is needed in a short time frame (e.g., before
doing a class project, lab, or group activity). |
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Demonstrations, on
the other hand, allow students to experience more fully the information
and concepts the teacher wants to impart during the lesson. Although the
teacher is still the center of the action and the dispenser of knowledge,
students can more easily see what they need to know and more efficiently
link it to prior knowledge in their own ways. Students remember much better
what they have both heard and seen (or even touched, smelled, or tasted)! |
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Listening
is a very important teacher role, something
that we don't usually think of in connection with the lecturer role, however.
Listening is crucial for assessment of learning (checking comprehension
and appropriate challenge level), for collaboration between teachers and
students (coaching instead of just judging), and for giving students a
real sense of ownership of classroom activities as well as for allowing
students to articulate and internalize the learning processes. Teachers
who listen can turn around and provide very effective support structures
to guide students on to the next level of challenge. |
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Empowering is really what teaching is all about. Ironically, though, many teachers
act as if empowering students means weakening themselves--their authority
as both a classroom disciplinarian and a subject-matter authority. But
maybe power is like love: the more you give, the more you get. |
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Obviously, teachers wear many hats:
friend, counselor, judge, mentor--hundreds of roles and different roles
for different classes, students, and extra curricular duties. The
above animations, however, are meant to show the different effects on students
of different teacher behaviors.
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Links to other Lesson Planning pages:
Lesson Plan Main Page
Anatomy of a Lesson Plan: Seven
Elements of a Lesson Plan (Hunter)
Anatomy of a Lesson Plan: Critical
Thinking (Bloom's Taxonomy)
Anatomy of a Lesson Plan: Multiple
Intelligences--7 Ways of Knowing (Gardner)
Anatomy of a Lesson Plan: Instructional
Scaffolding (Bruner; Langer & Applebee)
Teachers' Roles: What happens to
learning with different teacher behaviors?
Seating Arrangements: How do
different classroom arrangements affect learning?
Sailing Lessons: See how
teaching sailing is broken down into lesson components
Spoonfeeding: Don't!
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You can do a Google search on "lesson plans" (about 69 million sites!). So
narrow your search; e.g., "chemistry lesson plans". Or click on one of the lesson plan web sites below:
(Be sure to give credit for borrowed ideas if you're doing
lesson plans for a class!)
Dr.
Holtrop's Page |
