Sharing Successful Teaching: Physical Science in a Rural Classroom

Successful Teaching in Rural Classroom 7

Sharing Successful Teaching: Physical Science in a Rural Classroom

James Arnold

ED502-04

September 13, 2005

Sharing Successful Teaching: Physical Science in a Rural Classroom

Many teachers in rural areas describe their teaching experience as being completely different from any other environment that they have previously taught in. I am one of those teachers who is in his second year of teaching at a small, rural high school in South Carolina. In this essay, I will describe a success that I had in a lesson that I taught to a Physical Science class during my first year of teaching. I intend to convey a teaching strategy called didactic instruction with modifications that fellow teachers could learn from. Contrary to popular belief, certain research about the effectiveness of didactic instruction is disproved in this case study conducted by myself in my classroom in the fall of 2004. This is just one of many instances when research conducted on larger, wealthier geographical areas does not apply to low-income rural educational settings.

For background information, the class was composed of eighteen students. There were ten females and eight males. Racially, there were six Caucasian students, eleven African American students, and one Hispanic student. All of the students were from low-income families and were born and raised within an eight mile radius of the high school except for one Caucasian student who moved to the area when he was in the first grade. The farming community exists in northern Aiken County near the Ridge Spring-Monetta High School where I current teach. The lesson that I taught involved converting between different SI units of measurement using a technique known as conversion factors. Conversion factors are designed to allow a student to convert between different units of measurement without having to remember which term is supposed to be divided by what. In effect, it takes all the guesswork out of the calculations. In this particular lesson, the major success that I had came when I used a combination of didactic instruction in addition to maintaining high expectations for the students during their struggle with using conversion factors. Many of the students were completely confused when the lesson called for mathematical calculations. Many students had a phobia of math and were so scared that they did not want to attempt to solve the problems. Some of the students were so frustrated that they attempted to create methods for solving these problems rather than use the standard conversion factors.

I believe that by keeping my expectations that every student could learn the steps to the conversion factors allowed me to continue to try to teach the students the proper technique. The approach that I used caused me to lead the students in a step-by-step method to completing the problems. By staying with the students, it allowed me to break through some of their phobias toward math and actually get a few to correctly negotiate conversion factors. Any other person would have given up rather than deal with the frustration of repeating the same thing several times. This was an important event because teachers that give up on teaching a child, not only let that child down, but also leave the children of that child behind. I have found that a major part of the problem that I have in teaching certain students certain tasks, is that they have a negative view of education that began with their parents. I believe it is part of the teacher’s job to alleviate the negative stereotypes associated with teaching so that student will be more likely to come to school and graduate from high school.

Specifically, in having the students work out problems involving conversion factors, I had to perform several activities during one lesson. The first activity that I did was to have the students review a table in the textbook that has all of the prefixes that would be associated with multiples of ten such as “kilo-,” “hecta-,” “deci-,” and so forth. This chart consisted of the multiple of ten that each prefix stood for such as the prefix “kilo-“ representing 1000. Following reviewing the table, I wrote each prefix on the board and noted what each stood for so that I could account for the auditory/visual learners. I had several students who had reading comprehension problems according to IEPs and so I spoke what I wrote on the board so that they could understand. Following this, we converted sample problems and I walked the students through each step, stopping to assess their learning after each step. Each time through, another student grasped the concept. I repeated the process several times on the board while asking for frequent student feedback. This strategy was didactic instruction and should be used when trying to cover a large amount of material in a relatively short time, contrary to research that I have read.

In using this method of instruction, I was concerned with giving the students a clear and concise method for correctly using conversion factors. My main reason for leading the students through several examples was that each time we went through the process, the repetition would generate thought and the process would become feasible with every problem that was worked out on the board. I chose not to use cooperative groups because I did not want the students distracted by talking and other activities while in the group and not be able to grasp the lesson. No matter how a cooperative learning activity is planned, there is always time for students to get off task and begin doing other activities that are not a part of the assigned lesson. From my experience in cooperative learning, I have found that simple assignments are those that are best completed using the cooperative learning strategy. For the sake of this lesson, the confusion that could be generated using conversion factors would lead to student frustration due to the fact that there are four or five different interpretations of how to solve the problem and only one correct conversion method.

To keep the process simple, I chose to lead the class in solving these problems using the prescribed method that was illustrated in the textbook. I chose to didactically instruct the students in the process required to solve the problems just like a math teacher would instruct his or her class. From research that I have done, I have found that straight lecture or didactic instruction has been shown to be the least effective teaching strategy. My reply to the research is that it depends on what is trying to be conveyed to the students that should determine the teaching strategy. The teacher that gave me the idea was Mrs. Gale Johnson who teaches math across the hall from my class and allowed me to sit in on some of her classes to observe her teaching methods. I figured that since all the students in my class received math instruction from Mrs. Johnson, all would easily understand the process of conversion factors if I presented it in the same way as they learned any other mathematical application. This rationale was part of my theory of state-dependent learning in which I believe a person is more likely to remember an event if they are placed in the same environment and placed at the same mental state as they were when they first experienced the event.

The methods that I described earlier seemed to work very well. It was a combination of delivery method, high expectations, and repetition that made the lesson a success. From talking with Mrs. Johnson, I found that the students have to be shown how to perform every aspect of the computation, to include the proper method of using the calculators. In using the delivery method of Mrs. Johnson, I told the students how to solve the problems, illustrated it on the board, and even went step-by-step with using the calculator to get the desired answer. I noticed that the students had problems in remembering how to correctly input the numbers into the calculator so that they received the desired number and not the reciprocal of the desired answer. I believe that by instructing the students in mathematics just like Mrs. Johnson does, it enabled some of the students to grasp the concept just as they would with Mrs. Johnson. Several of the students commented that they felt like they were in Mrs. Johnson’s class twice in one day because of the amount of math that they had to do. In maintaining my high expectations for each student, I believed in my heart that each student had the ability to learn the correct process of using conversion factors to convert between SI units of measurement. By letting the students know how I felt, it gave them the confidence to continue working toward the correct answers. Ideally, I wanted all of the students to master conversion factors, but in actuality, there were a few students who would not attempt to correctly solve them and continuously tried to use other methods to arrive at the correct answer. These students continued the same behavior when with Mrs. Johnson. I believe the use of repetition allowed the students to see that the same process was used for every conversion problem. I wanted to lead the class in solving these problems because I knew that as an individual, I could use the same process continuously without deviation so that the students would have a standard to compare all their work to. This is why I believe didactic instruction was a better choice for instruction than cooperative learning. In cooperative learning, the students would be exposed to three or four different completion processes and would get frustrated and finally lose interest in trying to use the correct method of solving the problems.

The use of didactic instruction with the incorporation of repetition works well in certain situations. In courses such as mathematics, certain sciences, and certain social sciences, didactic instruction proves to work well when there is a large amount of information that may need to be conveyed to the students in a relatively short time. This is especially important when the course material is very complex and has to be simplified or in instances where there is a specific process that must be followed in order for a specific goal to be achieved. Examples would be following a recipe in a family and consumer science class, lab instructions in Chemistry, Biology, or Physics, or a timeline of events in History. As in all of the aforementioned subject areas, explicit instructions must be followed in order to achieve the desired results. When using the didactic instruction strategy, certain precautions should be noted when adapting this strategy into your own classrooms or educational settings. The three most important concerns that I have noticed with using this strategy are discussed below. First, the teachers must realize the appropriateness of the content used in instruction and should decide whether this strategy would work based on the content of the course material. For example, didactic instruction will not work if the lesson requires hands-on participation. In the studies that I read about the effectiveness of didactic instruction, they all were used when the desired activity needed to be taught in a hands-on approach. Secondly, teachers should also instruct the students in how to take notes or follow the instructions given when using didactic instruction. It is normal for early high school or middle school students to not know how to correctly take notes and follow a lecture. The human mind is constructed around the concept of comparison. Until a mind has been taught a certain task, it will never be able to comprehend it. Finally, teachers should not abuse the use of didactic instruction because this strategy leads to student boredom and disciplinary problems if students are continually forced to sit in their seats for extended periods of time. For didactic instruction to be effective, it has to be varied among other instructional strategies to prevent complacency.