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In this workshop you will examine the fundamentals of preparing to teach a lesson and review numerous instructional strategies that can be used as-is or modified to fit the style of a particular student or teacher.
In this lesson you will learn how to best provide closure to your instruction to help students solidify their learning including:
A crucial part of every lesson is the closure. The best closures include a summary of the objectives for that lesson, make connections between prior and future lessons, and provide direction for future lessons.
Lesson closings also serve to prevent discipline problems. When meaningful instruction completely utilizes the time allocation, the opportunity for student disruption is minimized. Conversely, students will consistently seek non-educational diversions if the lesson ends early and the teacher fails to provide additional structure. Next to the beginning of class, the end of the lesson is the time period where most student disruptions take place. New teachers will need to develop their ability to add closure to a lesson in order to promote student achievement while reducing the threat of student discipline problems.
The lesson summary should be used as another opportunity to provide repetition and increase student retention of the lesson objectives. Good lesson summaries rework the lesson objectives while involving the students as active participants. Do not underestimate the value of the insights students will provide. We will now review a few strategies for summarizing your lessons.
A useful technique to help students develop a fuller sense of a lesson is to have the students reflect on their learning. Reflection offers the students the opportunity to establish links between the lesson and their prior and everyday knowledge. Metacognitive reflection also allows students the opportunity to “unpack” their own thinking and thought patterns which helps the students align curricular content with their style of thinking and remembering.
Most students have not really thought about how they remember important items and therefore do not have a technique for recalling information stored in their memory. A few students will always claim that they can remember vast amounts of information by simply listening to the teacher. While this may be true in the moments immediately following a lecture, the reality of the first exam generally proves this statement incorrect. Most students require a more active approach to learning, including such active items as: note-taking, concept maps, drawings, and discussion.
Teachers can promote reflection by asking the students to describe how they arrived at an answer. Likewise, teachers can ask their students to analyze their thinking by explaining how they would summarize the content of the lesson, or the major points of the discussion. The teacher can also play “devil’s advocate” and challenge the students to describe their thought pattern as they describe their response to the teacher’s challenge.
Teachers can plan reflective discussions as either a whole group or small group activity. The idea is to have the students discuss what they have learned so that they can learn from each other and help clarify their thinking. The reflection activity is most successful when the teacher has provided a foundation where students feel at ease when asking questions and discussing their level of understanding. Without this level of student respect, student reflection may be hindered. Teachers increase the impact of the reflection activity by modeling student respect. In building student respect, it is important to listen carefully as students engage in learning and respond to them with authentic interest. Teachers multiply the strategy by encouraging students to respect one another’s ideas.
Reflection activities will also allow the teacher to determine the effectiveness of the lesson. For instance, if during the reflection time, no students appear to have a grasp of the lesson, then the teacher will know to address those specific concepts in the next lesson.
Depending upon the amount of time remaining in the class period and the intent of the teacher, students should be asked to recite or demonstrate their interpretation of the lesson objectives. This practice provides vital instructional insights and is an excellent use of class time. If a lesson ends early, the extra time is well spent when students are asked to think about their own level of understanding. A simple recounting of the lesson objectives is further magnified by asking those students to respond who may not have been as active during the lesson as the teacher would have preferred. This is also a mild preventative discipline strategy.
Carefully listen and observe the students’ summary of the lesson. The quality and completeness of their responses will determine the extent to which the material will need to be reinforced in subsequent lessons.
When students are asked to summarize the lesson in their own words or actions, it requires them to think beyond the simple repetition of the teacher’s lecture. Although this technique is sometimes initially difficult for students, with perseverance students learn to internalize and personalize their learning.
One of the most valuable sources of information is the quality and consistency of student responses regarding the lesson objectives. It is a direct indicator of the degree of student mastery that occurred as a result of the lesson. If the teacher asks the class to summarize the main points of the lesson and no one is able to do it correctly, what does that tell the teacher? Likewise, if all of the students are able to provide a summary that demonstrates a clear understanding of the objectives and their connection to prior learning, then the teacher receives a different message. The summary can also be viewed as a means for the teacher to assess student learning in a formative manner that is also non-threatening.
Do not become so frozen in lesson planning that future lesson plans cannot be adjusted to accommodate information gained by the teacher when students provide responses of the lesson summary.
To conduct a Summary-Go-Round at the conclusion of the lesson, the teacher asks the students to write something they learned from the lesson based on the objectives for that lesson. The teacher may prompt the writing by giving the students a stem such as, “An idea that was new to me…”, or, “I was surprised to find out that…”, or “I still do not understand…” In a Summary-Go-Round the students create the summary and present it to their group or the class in a systematic fashion so that all students have a chance to respond. The teacher can select as many student responses as time allows.
Repetition is a necessary ingredient for the learning and recollection of information, especially new content. It is hard for students to ignore the opportunity to learn when five or more of their classmates orally present or demonstrate the intent and major points of the lesson. The repetition provided by numerous student responses may sound like overkill, but it confirms understanding. Also, when students are encouraged to create the summary in their own words, they can present the material in a variety of different ways that may reach the student who did not fully understand the teacher’s presentation. Students are sometimes the best teachers. This technique also encourages student involvement throughout the lesson since the students will want to be prepared to present to their classmates.
The Summary-Go-Round technique can also be used to have students contribute their thoughts and understanding during the lesson for certain curricular concepts, not just at the closure of the lesson. This will help get the students involved. The same procedure works for both scenarios.
A good way to determine the effectiveness of a lesson is to have the students complete exit slips at the end of the class and deposit them in a container as they exit the classroom. Also known as the “ticket out the door” strategy, exit slips are a mini-communication device between the students and the teacher. They contain insight into the inner thoughts and progress of individual students. They can also be collectively evaluated to give the teacher insights into how well a lesson was received by the students.
In some cases, exit slips may be a response to a particular teacher question such as, “list one new thing that you learned today.” In other cases, teachers may allow students to comment on aspects of the lesson, such as whether they enjoyed it or the degree of comfort they felt in working with new equipment. The content of the exit slips is determined by the type of information the teacher seeks to obtain. It is important to give students adequate time to complete the exit slips before they proceed to their next destination or the exit slips may be ineffective.
Exit cards can be an effective transition into the next lesson. Before the teacher returns the cards during the next class, he or she can mark five cards which invite the students to place the contents of their card on the front board for whole-class review. Depending upon the teacher’s purpose, the selected cards may be used to review the previous lesson, clarify misconceptions, or frame the next lesson.
In addition to summarizing the lesson, the closure of a lesson is also the opportune time to connect prior learning with the present lesson and set the stage for upcoming events. This curricular connection establishes linkages and patterns for the students and allows for a seamless flow of thought. When students are able to connect prior to recent learning, everything is easier to remember.
Establishing an order of thought allows the students to see instruction as a related linear event where one concept builds upon another. As concepts are built upon each other, students can also begin to think laterally and draw upon related concepts to complete and enrich a thought. Students that are able to include thoughtful information that goes beyond a simple answer will also score higher on most scoring rubrics than those students who just answer the question.
Teachers help students to think with greater depth and breadth by providing them with the opportunity to network their understanding with tangential concepts. For example, advances in science and mathematics are often motivated or influenced by history, such as the 1957 launch of Sputnik that sparked a renewed national interest in the sciences. Students who do not see the connection between lessons view the instruction as a series of independent items that have to be learned separately. They appear as instructional islands that have no bridges connecting them. This leads to gaps in student understanding that may lead to the inability to make obvious connections and transfers at a later date.
Students who cannot establish links between concepts have a difficult time as they matriculate through the higher grades. It is very hard for them to compete against students who can connect to prior learning and extend their thinking. It is also frustrating for the teacher who assumes the prior knowledge is complete and easily accessed by the student. In this situation, the teacher has to fill in gaps in learning by over-explaining certain key curricular items.
There is a final item to remember when closing a lesson—make sure to indicate the direction in which the lesson is headed. Students often get so lost in their day-to-day existence that important items become blurred. It is important for teachers to place themselves in the students’ world and realize that most students often have five to seven other classes that are equally demanding, after-school responsibilities, and of course lunchtime and weekend thoughts and priorities. Lost students don’t know whether they are receiving instructions to build a boat, to learn a dance step, or to separate nouns from verbs. Continually placing the curriculum in context allows students to make better sense of the lesson and where it belongs cognitively. It is one more way of helping students organize and prioritize their thoughts.
Why is it important to have congruence between the curriculum, objectives, and summary?
The following is a list of resources that relate to the topic of pedagogy and instructional design.