Teaching by Doing
By Susan Mandel Glazer

I t was the fourth week of the new school year. Ms. Jones had just presented a social studies lesson and at the end of her delivery she directed, "Boys and girls, take out your journals and write down the most important facts." Nine out of 30 children in the classroom began to work. The others asked, "What are we supposed to be doing?" Twelve minutes of Ms. Jones repeating directions still left some children wondering what was expected of them.

What's going on?
The kids and their teacher were trapped in a teacher-directed classroom where the students were programmed to rely on their teacher for everything. They had learned, probably on the first day of school, that all decisions concerning what to do, when to do it and how to do it came from their teacher. Because Ms. Jones was in charge of everything from passing out materials to taking attendance, she was exhausted at the end of the school day.

What should she do?
Ms. Jones needed to learn how to guide her students to remember to follow directions. She needed to understand that if she explained, using words only, children must recode the oral language and make a picture in their minds of the action required without even seeing it. All of us, including children, need to see the actions expected and engage in hands-on activity in order to remember what to do. Instruction, therefore, must be modeled by you in order for kids to remember. As my friend Jane Sullivan says, "Show, don't tell."

Repeat!
Ms. Jones was in the process of directing her students to write in their journals. As the class came in from P.E., she sat at a table writing in her journal and speaking out loud. "I think I'll write about my trip to the supermarket," she said and wrote simultaneously. "It was a mess! It was a mess because I bumped into some cereal boxes and they all fell down. Then the manager came over and…" She wrote and talked out loud some more. One child immediately took out his journal. Three more of the third graders caught the message immediately. Within five minutes, all but eight of the 30 kids had placed their journals on their desks. Some wrote. Some looked around for a minute or two and then began to write. Several needed Ms. Jones to come to them and say, "I'm writing in my journal. You need to begin doing that too."

If your students don't get it after modeling, repeat the action desired and say, "I'm going to tell what I'm doing. Say it with me." If there's still hesitation, repeat and have the child say the behavior expected, again pausing so that they repeat with you. Continue this until each child says the directions on his or her own.

Encouraging independence
Ms. Jones realized that after three days of modeling, eight students were still finding it difficult to begin. She sat down at each table and began with Ariel. "I don't know where my journal is," Ariel said. She searched for her journal and watched and listened to Ms. Jones model.

"Let's see," said Ms. Jones as she opened her journal to a blank page. "I think I'll write about my feelings at the beach this weekend. I felt happy and my happy feelings made me want to dance on the sand and swim in the ocean," she said. When she repeated her statement, she wrote the words as she said them. Ariel watched for a bit and then said, "I think I'll write my feelings about the beach, too." She mimicked her teacher's text, but she was on her way to becoming independent. She had a model for following directions!

In 1996, Phyllis Fantauzzo – the school psychologist at the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in New Jersey – and I completed a study which focused on the difference in time that it took for children to get on-task. We discovered that, when provided with oral direction, 27% of the 3,000 students we observed were able to attend to their tasks and follow directions within a seven-minute time frame. Seventy-three percent of these children were writing and some were speaking out loud as they wrote in as little as four minutes when the teacher modeled the behavior. Soccer, basketball and scout leaders teach by doing. Model like a coach, teachers – it works!

Have a wonderful year.

Susan Mandel Glazer is the Director of the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrence, NJ.