No tags yet.
In our PIDP 3260 textbook "The Skillful Teacher" by Stephen Brookfield, he shares ways to lecture creatively in Chapter 6.
Some main takeaways from the chapter:
1. The most dynamic classrooms combine lecture and discussion to appeal to all learners and get students engaged with learning in a variety of formats. Both have their place.
2. Lecture provides a broad understanding of a topic in a short amount of time. Lecture, with examples of typical obstacles to student understanding, is reassuring to the learner and catches up those students falling behind.
3. Model learning practices by lecturing and then having periods of quiet work time. (for example, 1 minute reflection for every 15 minutes of lecture) This helps build critical thinking and focus. It also allows the instructor to clarify any questions or comments that arise in the subsequent lecture period.
4. Keep students engaged by warning them that you will insert a deliberate error in lecture for their identification and ask them what it is. Discussion can follow. Walking around the full space of the classroom also encourages alertness and engagement.
5. Lecturing for 10-15 minutes on separate ideas encourages students' grasp of a concept. This also works well for online lecturing. If you record in 10 minute chunks, you can easily add or expand 10 minutes of lecture on an additional topic to aid with student understanding.
6. You can use twitter to collect student response to a lecture following a 10 minute lecture component. This serves the same purpose as the 1 minute paper, but is faster to collect and also serves as a digital archive for future planning.
7. Other tips: begin and end with questions, introduce alternative points of view, model inquisitive behaviour