What is Direct Instruction Method?

Direct instruction method is an explicit teaching technique that is using lecture-style format where typically a teacher stands in the front of the lecture to teach the material. The courses using direct instruction method technique are well structured, sequential and organized by the teacher. By employing direct instruction technique, students can improve their learning process and absorb new material more quickly and effective than before. In addition, it is also more apparent that teachers can identify how much students have learnt and oftentimes the teacher can assess student’s performance more accurately.

The learning method that I decided to use for our team will be direct instruction approach. The reason why I picked this learning method is because we want to use explicit teaching techniques to teach specific skills to the students.

There are reasons why this approach is useful and is aligning to the topic because our team’s topic, Nanjing massacre, is an unfamiliar and relatively topic to those who are not Chinese. However, that doesn’t entail direct instruction method is the best strategy and doesn’t ensure it aligns with the topic 100% because the topic we select is relatively new and unfamiliar to non-Chinese audience. Regardless of whether it is aligning or not to the given topic, direct instruction is best suitable for audience with no prior knowledge to the topic.

In the process of utilizing direct instruction approach, we want to introduce students to the topic initially as the first step. This is to help students become familiar to the topic. Afterwards, we will provide past information and historical events as reference to guide students to continue familiarizing themselves to the topic while helping them establish a basic understanding of the topic. By guiding students through the topic, we can help them generate their own interpretation to the topic which will give them the chance to practice and perform. Doing so allows us to provide feedback on their understanding and how much students can apply the skills they have obtained from the topic.

Reference: Direct instruction – A practical guide to effective teaching

https://www.bookwidgets.com/blog/2019/03/direct-instruction-a-practical-guide-to-effective-teaching

Comments for Post #2:

Hi Abdul,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on direct instruction methods. The topic you chose is really interesting and the writing is thorough and engaging. The photos you posted in your blog #2 really helps me understand what direct instruction method is and how it is correlated to Parkinson’s disease and why it is a suitable method used in teaching. I have a question that I am wondering, what makes you choose Parkinson’s as your topic for the course? And do you mind explaining why it is a useful topic?