Chapter 3 Teacher as Designer I: Teachers Toolbox

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Chapter 3 Teacher as Designer ITeachers
Toolbox

• Learner Analysis
• Writing Instructional Objectives
• Analyzing Topics and Tasks
• Instructional Strategies

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Learner Analysis

• Not all students learn the same way
• Classrooms need multiple forms of instruction
• One way to meet the needs of the students is to
  adapt the learning environment to various
  learning preferences

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Student Learning Variables(Dunn and Dunn, 1978)

• Variables can be changed to enhance the learning
  environment for students instead of creating a
  variety of instructional materials.
• The four variables that can be changed within the
  classroom are
• environmental (sound, light, temperature)
• emotional (persistence, motivation, structure)
• sociological (how students work w/others)
• physical (the way students perceive information
  and the styles they prefer for learning)

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Determining Student Learning Preferences

• Dunn and Dunn inventory designed for use in
  grades 3 to 12 students response produces a
  profile of how the student prefers to learn.
• Web-Based Inventories provides several learning
  profile inventories that students can take
  on-line (ex.- Personal Learning Style Inventory)
• Note Learning preferences are more important
  than learning styles

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Changing the Learning Environment

• Environmental changes
• An open-ended lesson can create more noise found
  in a typical classroom therefore teachers need
  to plan ahead for those students who may get
  distracted.
• Smaller tasks need to be planned for those
  students who may have short attention spans.
• Set up the classroom in such a way that it
  promotes group work
• Design the classroom in such a way that it
  enhances student activities.

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Writing Instructional Objectives

• Behavioral objectives (Mager, 1984)
• Identify specific behaviors you want the student
  to demonstrate
• Magers behavioral objectives contain 3 parts

• Action verb and related content
• Criteria
• Conditions

For ex. Given a right triangle, the student(or
learner) will correctly calculate the length of
the hypotenuse.
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Analyzing Topics and Tasks

• Once the teacher has defined what the students
  will learn, he/she must determine what the
  students will master.
• There are two types of content

• List of topics Topic Analysis
• List of steps Procedural Analysis

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Instructional Strategies

• These are the methods or tactics the teacher will
  use to assist the students in mastering the
  content needed to achieve the units objectives.
• An instructional strategy has two components

• Presentation how will the teacher present the
  information to the students?
• - Material should be made concrete through
  the use of words or with pictures
• Generative strategy what method will be used to
  help the students develop an understanding of the
  information?
• - Strategies should help the student
  construct meaningful understandings of the new
  information and link it to information they
  already know