Why Direct Instruction is Not Enough!

Direct Instruction is great for presenting basic information and skills. Yet after the student acquires this information, they must go on to more advanced learning. Indirect Instruction personalizes understanding through student-based learning. The student learns through problem solving and social interaction, they are active in their constructing of new knowledge. It is the teachers role to guide the student through discovery, experience and modeling. It was so nice to watch the video from LICM where the kids eyes just lit up as they discovered new things for themselves. You could actually see them processing it all by the looks on their faces! I know that when I was in school as a young kid, most of my classes were basically DI. It was that rare occasion that we did something different and were hands on in our learning that I came alive. I remember well how excited we would all become when the teacher would say"today we are going to do something special." It is so wonderful now that it is now the norm in schools to mix DI with Indirect Instruction and many different strategies of teaching.