I found it fascinating that of the 1000 hours that students may spend in school (that they are supposed to spend in school) they only spend about 333 hours in an academic learning environment. What happens if you are the only teacher in your elementary school classroom of maybe 20 students? How can you work to not have poor/time consuming transitions between activities? I’m imagining that you’re doing one activity that requires some set up and then another activity that may require you to hand out a lot of papers/explain directions. How can you work to make sure that you don’t lose a lot of time? Also, is it really that horrible to stray off topic with a ‘teachable moment?’ I mean, I know you can’t do this on a daily basis, but I have heard a lot of my teachers say something along the lines of, “This is off topic, but I believe that it’s something we should discuss…”
With behaviorism, learning must include an association between a stimulus and a response. Because of this, I believe that mastery learning would fall into the category of behaviorism because some of the traits of mastery learning include having students answer questions, practice knowledge (through homework), and demonstrate learning through assignments, tests, etc. Teachers need to provide students with feedback about their learning as a way to reinforce what the students are learning. We learned from the behaviorism chapter that reinforcement is a consequence of a behavior that increases the future of that behavior. Furthermore, teachers should create a summative assessment in which they can determine (and share with the student) what the student has learned thus far in the class. By having some sort of consequence (or response) at the end of a lesson plan, teachers can strengthen students’ knowledge and skills, while also monitoring their progress towards learning the lesson’s objectives.
Direct instruction is effective in the classroom through the teacher’s use of teacher control, structured lessons, practice, and feedback. Teachers review and check the previous day’s work and re-teach concepts/skills that they feel the students may need to be reviewed. Teachers teach students through controlled practice, in which teachers lead students through examples. Teachers must be observant to make sure that students aren’t learning the incorrect procedure or concept. Students then continue to learn through guided practice, in which they practice on their own while the teacher provides reinforcement and corrective feedback. The whole idea of teaching students through demonstrating a concept or skill falls in line with the concept of behaviorism. Teachers using the behaviorism approach use reinforcement and punishment to influence a future behavior. The idea of positive practice has students practice the appropriate behavior while the teacher provides reinforcement.
I'm not sure if I understood the question correctly, so I hope my answer is on the right track!
I think that having a classroom that's super tense and full of activities can actually be the opposite of beneficial sometimes! I understand what the textbook is saying about utilizing time, but I agree that going off topic is usually fine - as long as it's not happening all the time, of course. In fact, sometimes going off topic can gives students a nice short break from working so hard in class. As far as transitions go, some of course have to happen. I think that the book is just saying to try and find a way to do them as quickly as possible. In other words, plan ahead and try and figure out a strategy before you actually teach, so when the time comes to transition, you're not like "oh shoot ... okay, um, let's do this, but first I have to get this, and set up this....." etc.
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