Tod Emerson

EDTL 2760
11/30/2016
How can we design instruction that sticks?
Now that my experience at Bowling Green is over I like to reflect
different things that I have learned. As I have mentioned before, I was in a
classroom at Bowling Green High School and observed a teacher that
teaches popular culture classes and current event classes. I was there mostly
just for the popular culture classes. I learned a lot about how one could
design instruction that sticks.
How is the teacher using the five standards for authentic instruction?
As we learned in our readings throughout the semester, there are
multiple critical parts of an effective lesson. One of the critical parts is using
the Five Standards of Authentic Instruction (Newman & Wehlage, 1993). The
standards include higher-order thinking, Depth of knowledge, connectedness
to the world beyond the classroom, substantive conversation, and social
support for student achievement (Newman & Wehlage, 1993). I observed
multiple different aspects of this in my time at Bowling Green High School.
First, during the lesson about the history of radio the students were able to
experience a few of these standards. The lesson entailed a very depth of
knowledge about the history of radio including how a radio works, who

created the radio, and what practical uses the radio has had throughout
history besides that of entertainment. One way that students demonstrated
higher order thinking is students were analyzing how telegraphs were used
at sea and how they operated. One of the laws was that a ship needed to
have a telegraph that had a single 100 miles if further than 200 miles off the
coast. Students were able to come up with the question why it was 200 miles
off the coast and not 100 miles off the coast because if you are over 100
miles off the coast the single would not reach the coast. I found it interesting
that students were able to make connections like this and they were able to
do in large part because of the authentic instruction.
How does the teacher create a hook that effectively previews the lesson?
I thought my teacher did a very good job at this as he used multiple
different ways. Two ways that he commonly used to preview the assignment
was having students respond to images and music. According to Bower,
Lobdell, and Owens having students respond to images and music is an
effective way to preview an assignment (2010). This was very easy for the
teacher to do because with the teacher teaching popular culture classes. So
he would commonly open up class with a song or image previewing g the
class then had students discuss what will be covered that class. For example,
the one class was a lesson on different shows theme songs so he would play
a song from a show like the song from a show like Price is Right or How I Met
Your Mother and have students discuss what the song represents and what
they might be learning for the day.

My thoughts
I think overall my experience at the high school was very rewarding because
I have been so use to seeing teaching with from my mathematics education
background so this was the first time I had an experience in a social studies
class. I found that teachers could structure lessons many different ways to
create instruction that sticks with students. I think overall it is important for
teachers to formula the right way to teach a lesson. From focusing on a topic,
creating a hook, and then focusing on the design of the main lesson. I have
learned a tremendous amount about that this semester.