Module Five Instructional Organisers
MODULE FIVE
Instructional Organisers
Aims for this session
•
•
•
•
To develop participants’ awareness of the role Instructional
Organisers and how they influence the teacher’s wise
selection of classroom interventions
To develop participants’ knowledge of specific examples of
Instructional Organisers
To further refine participants’ understanding of the
interplay between Instructional Organisers and Instructional
Concepts, Skills, Tactics and Strategies in classroom practice.
To extend participants awareness of relevant research
findings and conclusions
Instructional Intelligence involves
awareness of…
•
•
•
•
•
Instructional concepts
Instructional skills
Instructional tactics
Instructional strategies
Instructional instructional organizers
– Collectively, these concepts are known as
pedagogy
Instructional Organisers
• Organisers are frameworks or bodies of research that
assist teachers in organising an array of skills, tactics
and strategies into a coherent set of teaching
methods
• They are the lenses that clarify or enhance thought
about how we instruct
• They increase teacher wisdom about the teaching
and learning process, based on the needs and
inclinations of the learner
Instructional Organisers
•
•
•
•
Multiple Intelligence
The Human Brain
Culture and Ethnicity
Emotional
Intelligence
•
•
•
•
•
Children at risk
Learning Disabilities
Learning Styles
Gender
Child Development
Concept and skill relationship
• Why do we need to be aware of the difference
between concepts, skills, tactics, strategies and
organisers?
• Many experienced and effective teachers might not
consciously realise the complexity around something
as simple as asking a question so as to involve all
students
• Do they need to?
Concepts and skills
• Without clear understanding, we are less able to
thoughtfully meet with student needs
• We can “do” skills, e.g. providing wait time for
students to think about questions
• We cannot “do” concepts, e.g. motivation, varietywe must do things to make these concepts come
alive
• These things we do are skills, tactics and strategies
• We need to articulate our practice to be effective
• Instructional concepts - safety, social
justice, interest, accountability etc.
• Instructional skills - wait time, framing
questions, probing
• Instructional tactics - Think Pair Share,
Venn Diagrams, Word Webs
• Instructional strategies - Concept
Mapping, Academic Controversy
• Instructional organizers - Multiple
Intelligence, Bloom’s Taxonomy,
learning disabilities, gender, culture, at
risk factors
The key point is to sense how the GREEN ones interact …
and how the RED areas guide the teachers thinking and
action of the green areas -- to create an impact.
Impact understood as ‘power’
• Power is a term that tells us how much of a
difference an innovation makes.
• Power generally increases as you shift from
skills, to tactics, to strategies.
• Strategies are researched based approaches
supported by a theory - the most complex and
powerful.
Our instructional task
• We need to move from being tacitly skilled in
a limited number of instructional methods to
being explicitly skilled with a higher number
of instructional methods to increase learning
and to facilitate teachers differentiating their
instruction to meet diverse students’ diverse
needs.
Integrating methods
• How do wait time, framing questions,
think/pair/share, concept attainment,
safety, accountability, active
participation, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Brain
Research, etc., work together?
• Our conscious integration of these
methods is the art of effective teaching
Everything a teacher does can be
classified into four areas …
•
•
•
•
Information provided
Activities assigned or selected
Questions asked
Responses to students’ efforts
Madeline Hunter
The Concept of Motivation
Why investigate motivation?
• To understand the factors that increase the
chances students want to be involved in
learning
• To see that motivation is just as important as
having students actively involved and
accountable
Why integrate motivation into lessons?
• When students are motivated to learn, they
learn more and learn it faster. They are also
less likely to misbehave.
• Attribution Theory: unless students attribute
their successes and failures to their own
efforts, little or no long-term transfer of the
motivation to learn will occur
What does research suggest?
• There are six concepts that we as teachers can
control in the classroom that increase the chances
students will be motivated. However:
• Students must learn that their success or failure
depends on their effort
• If students who work hard do not achieve success,
alternative strategies must be employed
• Intrinsic motivation can be affected by teacher
Success
• If students regularly experience success and
have a healthy self-concept, they need to have
successful experiences 75% of the time
• Students who do not experience success and
who do not have a healthy self-concept need
to experience success 90-95% of the time
How can we affect success?
• Teachers need to teach at the correct level of
difficulty
• Teachers must actively involve the learner in
meaningful learning
• Skills: framing questions with learner in mind,
applying wait time
• Strategy: Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Tactic: think pair share
• Organiser as appropriate
Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Remembering – recall, recite
• Comprehension/Understanding-explain,
provide examples
• Application-act on understanding
• Analysis-compare/ contrast, pull apart
• Synthesis-reinvent, create, look at in a new
way
• Evaluation-judge based on criteria
Concern
• If zero concern exists, there will probably be
zero learning
• Too much concern can lead students to
becoming frustrated
• Too little concern can lead to students
becoming bored
• How can we control concern?
How can we affect concern?
• Increase accountability
– Framing the question, wait time, checking homework
• Increasing visibility
– Moving around the room increases chances students will
be involved in the lesson
• Consequences
– When students know they can enjoy the fruits of their
effort, they are more inclined to complete the task
How can we affect concern?
Time
• If students know how much time they have to complete
a task, they are more concerned about the intensity of
their effort
Help
• If students know that avenues of help exist, their level
of concern is reduced
• Guided practice
• Value of peer learning
Meaning
• The more the learning relates to the students’
past, present or future learning, the greater
the chances the students will be involved in
the learning
• Connecting to learning already stored in the
brain
How can we affect meaning?
• Mental Set at beginning of lesson-providing a
hook to arouse students’ curiosity
• Sharing/ discussing/ negotiating the purpose
of the lesson increases chances students will
want to participate
• Drama, role plays, field trips, discussion, films/
videos/ ICT workshops etc.
Positive feeling tone
• Making learning environment a safe one increases chance
students will want to continue learning
• Appropriately responding to students incorrect/ partially
correct responses, silly responses, guesses is important
• Impact on brain when threatened or placed under stress
(Davidson and Cao, 1992)
• Uncaring environment has negative impact on student
learning (Soar and Soar, 1979)
• Research on gifted children reports that students want
teachers who care about them outside the classroom walls
(Stelmaschuk, 1986)
Interest
• People are motivated to do things that they find
interesting
• We attend to things that are novel, varied, vivid
• Teachers who demonstrate humour and enthusiasm
create interest
• Enthusiasm increases student academic engaged
time (Mary Collins, 1978)
• Enthusiasm identified as a key characteristic of
effective teachers (Ken Macrorie, 1986; William Hare,
1995)
Knowledge of results
• When we know that what we are doing is
being done well, or needs to be improved, and
when we know what we must do to improve,
we are motivated to continue
• Monitoring students’ learning and adjusting
teaching (checking for understanding) is
important
• Assessment and feedback
Motivating students
• It is through our awareness of how organisers,
skills, tactics, strategies and concepts can be
integrated that we learn how to motivate
students effectively
• Being able to judge how best to integrate
these factors that makes us effective teachers
• Mastering “the artful science” of teaching
Motivation and the enthusiastic teacher
• Research literature reports that when teachers
are enthusiastic, students more likely to be
focused on the information presented.
• Humour and enthusiasm rank first in over 80%
of responses by teachers asked to characterise
their own great teachers (Bennet study)
What communicates enthusiasm?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Vocal delivery
Word choice
Humour
Eye movement
Facial expressions
Gestures
•
•
•
•
•
Movement
Energy level
Acceptance
Variety
Novelty
Role of organisers
• Relates to specific bodies of knowledge rooted
in research
• Each body of knowledge is a lens through
which we see our students’ needs and the
diverse ways in which they learn
• Being aware of these bodies of knowledge
helps us to make wise decisions about how we
design learning environments
Examples of organisers
•
•
•
•
Multiple intelligences
Emotional intelligence
Learning styles
Research on the human
brain
• Gender
• Culture and ethnicity
• Children at risk
• Learning disabilities
research
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Child development
research
Multiple intelligence
• Originated with Howard Gardner in the 1960s
• Reminds teachers that students bring different
strengths to a learning situation
• Educators focused on logical-mathematical and
verbal-linguistic
• We as teachers are by default socialised into not
responding to the reality that students have different
problem solving and creative skills
• Each person possesses each of the intelligences and
can develop each one
Multiple intelligence
• Linguistic
• Musical
• Logical-mathematical
• Spatial
• Bodily-kinaesthetic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalistic
Points to consider
• What are the implications of this research for
educators?
• Moral imperative? Legal imperative?
• How can I vary my teaching practice to reflect
my deeper understanding of multiple
intelligence and how students learn?
• Effect on student motivation?
Appealing to visual learners
• The material that follows relates to the case
study ‘Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War,
1963-1968’, which is a case study in the topic
The United States and the World, 1945-1989’
in the Leaving Certificate history syllabus.
• See the syllabus at www.eduaction.ie and at
www.hist.ie
Teaching history: Lyndon Johnson
and Vietnam, 1963-1968
• Complex political issues
• Need to make issues
meaningful for students
today
• Need to arouse curiosity
with a “hook”
• Power of visual image
The Great Society
TIME magazine
“Man of the Year”,
1 January, 1965
To consider
• How might the use of the preceding visual
images impact on student learning?
• How does your knowledge of concepts and
organisers affect your view of the
effectiveness of using images such as these?
Brain research
• Very influential body of research emerging in
brain research
• Like other organisers, being aware of this
research can help us to make wiser choices
about how to create meaningful and powerful
learning environments for our students
Key ideas about brain research
• The brain is “holistic”
– We do not teach to one side or area
– Structuring activities to nurture right or left side
not supported by neurologists
• The brain’s goal is survival
– Functions more effectively in an environment
where it is challenged but safe
– Connects to interpersonal intelligence, emotional
intelligence
Key ideas about brain research
• Emotion is powerfully connected to thinking
– When students are emotionally engaged, they are
more likely to retain the learning in long-term
memory
– When lesson is meaningful, novel and varied,
students more likely to be successful and
interested
Key ideas about brain research
• The brain remembers what is important
– If learning not meaningful, relevant, authentic, the brain
will get rid of it
• The brain needs to make connections
– Needs to sense relationships and analyse
– Brain is a pattern seeker
– Value of such tactics as Venn diagrams, Mind Maps, Time
Lines etc.
Key ideas about brain research
• Intelligence is mediated/ enhanced by social
situations
– Brain needs to experience talk
– Value of co-operative learning
• The brain is hardwired for “Experience Expected”
situations
• The brain is also wired for “Experience Dependent”
situations
– Dendritic area increases throughout life, but most
intensely when young
Key ideas about brain research
• Brains that live in enriched environments have
40% more neuron connections than brains
that live in bland environments
• Neurons more efficient with practice
• Dull, boring environments cause loss of
dendritic connection
• Students need to actively and meaningfully
engaged in relevant tasks
In conclusion:
• Important to bear in mind:
– the effective use of instructional strategies (e.g.
groupwork, co-operative learning) and tactics (e.g.
Venn diagrams, round robins, brainstorms etc)
depends on how well the teacher invokes an
interplay between concepts (e.g. accountability,
motivation), organisers (e.g. multiple intelligence,
brain research) and skills (e.g framing questions)
Final word
– NB: The key to effective teaching is how we
consciously integrate all these methods to
improve student learning
• We as teachers must move from being:
“accidentally adequate”
to
• “consciously competent”.
Instructional Organisers
Aims for this session
•
•
•
•
To develop participants’ awareness of the role Instructional
Organisers and how they influence the teacher’s wise
selection of classroom interventions
To develop participants’ knowledge of specific examples of
Instructional Organisers
To further refine participants’ understanding of the
interplay between Instructional Organisers and Instructional
Concepts, Skills, Tactics and Strategies in classroom practice.
To extend participants awareness of relevant research
findings and conclusions
Instructional Intelligence involves
awareness of…
•
•
•
•
•
Instructional concepts
Instructional skills
Instructional tactics
Instructional strategies
Instructional instructional organizers
– Collectively, these concepts are known as
pedagogy
Instructional Organisers
• Organisers are frameworks or bodies of research that
assist teachers in organising an array of skills, tactics
and strategies into a coherent set of teaching
methods
• They are the lenses that clarify or enhance thought
about how we instruct
• They increase teacher wisdom about the teaching
and learning process, based on the needs and
inclinations of the learner
Instructional Organisers
•
•
•
•
Multiple Intelligence
The Human Brain
Culture and Ethnicity
Emotional
Intelligence
•
•
•
•
•
Children at risk
Learning Disabilities
Learning Styles
Gender
Child Development
Concept and skill relationship
• Why do we need to be aware of the difference
between concepts, skills, tactics, strategies and
organisers?
• Many experienced and effective teachers might not
consciously realise the complexity around something
as simple as asking a question so as to involve all
students
• Do they need to?
Concepts and skills
• Without clear understanding, we are less able to
thoughtfully meet with student needs
• We can “do” skills, e.g. providing wait time for
students to think about questions
• We cannot “do” concepts, e.g. motivation, varietywe must do things to make these concepts come
alive
• These things we do are skills, tactics and strategies
• We need to articulate our practice to be effective
• Instructional concepts - safety, social
justice, interest, accountability etc.
• Instructional skills - wait time, framing
questions, probing
• Instructional tactics - Think Pair Share,
Venn Diagrams, Word Webs
• Instructional strategies - Concept
Mapping, Academic Controversy
• Instructional organizers - Multiple
Intelligence, Bloom’s Taxonomy,
learning disabilities, gender, culture, at
risk factors
The key point is to sense how the GREEN ones interact …
and how the RED areas guide the teachers thinking and
action of the green areas -- to create an impact.
Impact understood as ‘power’
• Power is a term that tells us how much of a
difference an innovation makes.
• Power generally increases as you shift from
skills, to tactics, to strategies.
• Strategies are researched based approaches
supported by a theory - the most complex and
powerful.
Our instructional task
• We need to move from being tacitly skilled in
a limited number of instructional methods to
being explicitly skilled with a higher number
of instructional methods to increase learning
and to facilitate teachers differentiating their
instruction to meet diverse students’ diverse
needs.
Integrating methods
• How do wait time, framing questions,
think/pair/share, concept attainment,
safety, accountability, active
participation, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Brain
Research, etc., work together?
• Our conscious integration of these
methods is the art of effective teaching
Everything a teacher does can be
classified into four areas …
•
•
•
•
Information provided
Activities assigned or selected
Questions asked
Responses to students’ efforts
Madeline Hunter
The Concept of Motivation
Why investigate motivation?
• To understand the factors that increase the
chances students want to be involved in
learning
• To see that motivation is just as important as
having students actively involved and
accountable
Why integrate motivation into lessons?
• When students are motivated to learn, they
learn more and learn it faster. They are also
less likely to misbehave.
• Attribution Theory: unless students attribute
their successes and failures to their own
efforts, little or no long-term transfer of the
motivation to learn will occur
What does research suggest?
• There are six concepts that we as teachers can
control in the classroom that increase the chances
students will be motivated. However:
• Students must learn that their success or failure
depends on their effort
• If students who work hard do not achieve success,
alternative strategies must be employed
• Intrinsic motivation can be affected by teacher
Success
• If students regularly experience success and
have a healthy self-concept, they need to have
successful experiences 75% of the time
• Students who do not experience success and
who do not have a healthy self-concept need
to experience success 90-95% of the time
How can we affect success?
• Teachers need to teach at the correct level of
difficulty
• Teachers must actively involve the learner in
meaningful learning
• Skills: framing questions with learner in mind,
applying wait time
• Strategy: Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Tactic: think pair share
• Organiser as appropriate
Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Remembering – recall, recite
• Comprehension/Understanding-explain,
provide examples
• Application-act on understanding
• Analysis-compare/ contrast, pull apart
• Synthesis-reinvent, create, look at in a new
way
• Evaluation-judge based on criteria
Concern
• If zero concern exists, there will probably be
zero learning
• Too much concern can lead students to
becoming frustrated
• Too little concern can lead to students
becoming bored
• How can we control concern?
How can we affect concern?
• Increase accountability
– Framing the question, wait time, checking homework
• Increasing visibility
– Moving around the room increases chances students will
be involved in the lesson
• Consequences
– When students know they can enjoy the fruits of their
effort, they are more inclined to complete the task
How can we affect concern?
Time
• If students know how much time they have to complete
a task, they are more concerned about the intensity of
their effort
Help
• If students know that avenues of help exist, their level
of concern is reduced
• Guided practice
• Value of peer learning
Meaning
• The more the learning relates to the students’
past, present or future learning, the greater
the chances the students will be involved in
the learning
• Connecting to learning already stored in the
brain
How can we affect meaning?
• Mental Set at beginning of lesson-providing a
hook to arouse students’ curiosity
• Sharing/ discussing/ negotiating the purpose
of the lesson increases chances students will
want to participate
• Drama, role plays, field trips, discussion, films/
videos/ ICT workshops etc.
Positive feeling tone
• Making learning environment a safe one increases chance
students will want to continue learning
• Appropriately responding to students incorrect/ partially
correct responses, silly responses, guesses is important
• Impact on brain when threatened or placed under stress
(Davidson and Cao, 1992)
• Uncaring environment has negative impact on student
learning (Soar and Soar, 1979)
• Research on gifted children reports that students want
teachers who care about them outside the classroom walls
(Stelmaschuk, 1986)
Interest
• People are motivated to do things that they find
interesting
• We attend to things that are novel, varied, vivid
• Teachers who demonstrate humour and enthusiasm
create interest
• Enthusiasm increases student academic engaged
time (Mary Collins, 1978)
• Enthusiasm identified as a key characteristic of
effective teachers (Ken Macrorie, 1986; William Hare,
1995)
Knowledge of results
• When we know that what we are doing is
being done well, or needs to be improved, and
when we know what we must do to improve,
we are motivated to continue
• Monitoring students’ learning and adjusting
teaching (checking for understanding) is
important
• Assessment and feedback
Motivating students
• It is through our awareness of how organisers,
skills, tactics, strategies and concepts can be
integrated that we learn how to motivate
students effectively
• Being able to judge how best to integrate
these factors that makes us effective teachers
• Mastering “the artful science” of teaching
Motivation and the enthusiastic teacher
• Research literature reports that when teachers
are enthusiastic, students more likely to be
focused on the information presented.
• Humour and enthusiasm rank first in over 80%
of responses by teachers asked to characterise
their own great teachers (Bennet study)
What communicates enthusiasm?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Vocal delivery
Word choice
Humour
Eye movement
Facial expressions
Gestures
•
•
•
•
•
Movement
Energy level
Acceptance
Variety
Novelty
Role of organisers
• Relates to specific bodies of knowledge rooted
in research
• Each body of knowledge is a lens through
which we see our students’ needs and the
diverse ways in which they learn
• Being aware of these bodies of knowledge
helps us to make wise decisions about how we
design learning environments
Examples of organisers
•
•
•
•
Multiple intelligences
Emotional intelligence
Learning styles
Research on the human
brain
• Gender
• Culture and ethnicity
• Children at risk
• Learning disabilities
research
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Child development
research
Multiple intelligence
• Originated with Howard Gardner in the 1960s
• Reminds teachers that students bring different
strengths to a learning situation
• Educators focused on logical-mathematical and
verbal-linguistic
• We as teachers are by default socialised into not
responding to the reality that students have different
problem solving and creative skills
• Each person possesses each of the intelligences and
can develop each one
Multiple intelligence
• Linguistic
• Musical
• Logical-mathematical
• Spatial
• Bodily-kinaesthetic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Naturalistic
Points to consider
• What are the implications of this research for
educators?
• Moral imperative? Legal imperative?
• How can I vary my teaching practice to reflect
my deeper understanding of multiple
intelligence and how students learn?
• Effect on student motivation?
Appealing to visual learners
• The material that follows relates to the case
study ‘Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War,
1963-1968’, which is a case study in the topic
The United States and the World, 1945-1989’
in the Leaving Certificate history syllabus.
• See the syllabus at www.eduaction.ie and at
www.hist.ie
Teaching history: Lyndon Johnson
and Vietnam, 1963-1968
• Complex political issues
• Need to make issues
meaningful for students
today
• Need to arouse curiosity
with a “hook”
• Power of visual image
The Great Society
TIME magazine
“Man of the Year”,
1 January, 1965
To consider
• How might the use of the preceding visual
images impact on student learning?
• How does your knowledge of concepts and
organisers affect your view of the
effectiveness of using images such as these?
Brain research
• Very influential body of research emerging in
brain research
• Like other organisers, being aware of this
research can help us to make wiser choices
about how to create meaningful and powerful
learning environments for our students
Key ideas about brain research
• The brain is “holistic”
– We do not teach to one side or area
– Structuring activities to nurture right or left side
not supported by neurologists
• The brain’s goal is survival
– Functions more effectively in an environment
where it is challenged but safe
– Connects to interpersonal intelligence, emotional
intelligence
Key ideas about brain research
• Emotion is powerfully connected to thinking
– When students are emotionally engaged, they are
more likely to retain the learning in long-term
memory
– When lesson is meaningful, novel and varied,
students more likely to be successful and
interested
Key ideas about brain research
• The brain remembers what is important
– If learning not meaningful, relevant, authentic, the brain
will get rid of it
• The brain needs to make connections
– Needs to sense relationships and analyse
– Brain is a pattern seeker
– Value of such tactics as Venn diagrams, Mind Maps, Time
Lines etc.
Key ideas about brain research
• Intelligence is mediated/ enhanced by social
situations
– Brain needs to experience talk
– Value of co-operative learning
• The brain is hardwired for “Experience Expected”
situations
• The brain is also wired for “Experience Dependent”
situations
– Dendritic area increases throughout life, but most
intensely when young
Key ideas about brain research
• Brains that live in enriched environments have
40% more neuron connections than brains
that live in bland environments
• Neurons more efficient with practice
• Dull, boring environments cause loss of
dendritic connection
• Students need to actively and meaningfully
engaged in relevant tasks
In conclusion:
• Important to bear in mind:
– the effective use of instructional strategies (e.g.
groupwork, co-operative learning) and tactics (e.g.
Venn diagrams, round robins, brainstorms etc)
depends on how well the teacher invokes an
interplay between concepts (e.g. accountability,
motivation), organisers (e.g. multiple intelligence,
brain research) and skills (e.g framing questions)
Final word
– NB: The key to effective teaching is how we
consciously integrate all these methods to
improve student learning
• We as teachers must move from being:
“accidentally adequate”
to
• “consciously competent”.