Methods of Teaching

Closing (5 minutes)
Ask one Student Teacher to summarize today’s session. Ask three Student Teachers to 
identify the most important fact, procedure, or concept learnt today.
Week 7, session 1 homework
Each group should have a meeting before the next class to select a topic for their 
lesson and discussing getting the resources needed to teach the lesson.
Week 8: Lecture, demonstration, 
and discussion
Sub-topics
• Reasons to lecture
• Structure of a lecture
• Active lectures
• Structure of a demonstration
• Characteristics of good discussion
• Purposes of questions
• Questions in lectures, demonstrations, and discussions
• Wait time

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COURSE GUIDE: Methods of Teaching
55
UNIT 1
UNIT 4
UNIT 5
UNIT 3
UNIT 6
UNIT 2
UNIT 7
NOTE TO FACULTY: The purpose of this week’s sessions is to study characteristics of 
effective lectures, demonstrations, and discussions used in primary school classrooms 
and to give the class the opportunity to develop the lessons that they will teach next week. 
The preparation for next week’s lesson will involve both in-class work and homework. As 
the Instructor, you can decide where the work will be done or you might make that decision 
in conjunction with your class. Every time groups work on their lesson, they should com-
plete (and date) a copy of the ‘Teacher Observation Form’ to help their peers develop their 
teaching skills. They should submit these critiques along with the assessment checklists. 
Week 8, session 1 can be used to study the characteristics of effective lectures, demon-
strations, and discussions. This work can be done in the small groups assigned to each 
teaching strategy, but then pair the groups so that they can create a common list of 
characteristics of the effective teaching strategy. The paired groups can present their 
list of effective characteristics to the class and each group’s list can be compared with 
the lists constructed prior to formal study in session 1 of week 7. The homework 
assignment for session 1 is to read Handout 7 ‘Recitation and Discussion Require 
Different Questions’ and bring it to the next class. 
Week 8, session 2 is developed below. Handout 7 ‘Recitation and Discussion Require 
Different Questions’ provides the content for this session: the distinction between a 
lesson that is a recitation and a lesson that is a discussion. This distinction is important 
because recitations require lower-order thinking skills and discussions require high-
er-order thinking skills, and therefore, the two strategies produce different learning 
outcomes for children. In primary classrooms, recitations are more common than 
discussions. If a society wants its teachers to teach higher-order thinking skills, it is 
important for teachers to understand the difference between recitation and discussion 
and to know how to facilitate meaningful discussions in the classroom. Having identi-
fied characteristics of effective lectures, demonstrations, and discussions, the class will 
be ready to develop assessment checklists for their lessons in week 8, session 3.
Week 8, session 2 lesson