Lecture and worksheets

Hello everyone,

When I was a kid, I hated teachers who lectured. When I got to college, I endured lectures because many of the great scholars that I studied under were lousy teachers, but I was mature enough to endure their lectures, and educationally wise enough to figure out how I could learn from them. (Because I studied acting, I rarely had to endure lectures in my major subject, which was a comfort to me.)

I always preferred, then and now, discussion over lecture, and I think that I've spent a large part of my career trying to learn how to foster discussion and use it to teach my objectives.

When I was in elementary school, I loved worksheets. By middle school, I hated them, considering them beneath my dignity; in high school I considered them an insult to my intelligence.

I preferred the flexibility of my own blank piece of paper over a worksheet; I liked books more than single pieces of paper (which I always lost); I thought that coloring was for babies. (I did like the smell of fresh mimeograph, but that's another issue.)

It turns out that, this late in my teaching career, the State of California is officially speaking out against lecture and worksheets.

I think that, in your teaching, if you have any of the symptoms of too much lecturing, then you should look for ways to break it up into other activities. (These symptoms include dry throat, sore throat, headache, dazed students, misbehaving students, finding that you have to repeat yourself endless times, and the feeling of frustration that comes when you've told the students something and they haven't picked it up.) Consciously seek ways to avoid lecture.

I'm not saying that you should never lecture. It's useful in limited chunks (say 15 minutes); it can be used for a brief introduction to a subject; it can provide a brief overview. Occasionally, in limited ways, you just need to tell your students something.

Nor am I saying that lecture and direct instruction are the same thing. There are a multitude of ways to provide direct instruction without lecturing (including discussion, demonstration, and analysis).

Simply reading from a PowerPoint is a notch or two worse than merely lecturing (partly because it's often done in the dark where it's too easy to go to sleep); giving a PowerPoint presentation in which the displays provide enhancement of your direct instruction (with key words, pictures, video clips, animated charts, and/or music and sound effects) is better than mere lecturing, and may be acceptable to your students (I'm not saying it definitely will be; it may be).

By all means, if you are going to use PowerPoint, make a presentation that even the partially blind kid in the back of the room could see and enjoy. As a former blind kid in the back of the room, I must tell you that I personally hate PowerPoint and overhead projector displays unless they use very large fonts with high contrast.

I should also point out that templates are not the same as worksheets, but as students get older, I think it's better for them to make their own templates.

Here's a good point to consider: If, when you were in middle school, you would have been bored with your current presentation, then your current presentation is probably boring, which means that it likely has too much lecture and not enough discussion or interaction or interest built in. (If you were a very bright middle school student, then use your elementary or pre-school self as a checkpoint.) If you would have been bored, you should change your presentation.

Now, after suggesting that some teaching methods are boring, I must admit to being sometimes boring. Teaching is a constant cycle of teaching, then reviewing your practice, then adapting, then teaching again. You will be boring sometimes; sometimes you will lecture too much.

Just learn to recognize it and correct it when it happens. Begin by re-proportioning the amount of lecture that happens in your classroom, and cutting out, as much as possible, the too frequent use of worksheets.

Jeff Combe