Every now and then what we learned decades ago and think of as old becomes valuable again. The Time of COVID has made teaching to students at-home a schooling reality for many educators. Thrown into remote education by school closures this past March, most educators used emergency teaching practices. No one was prepared for daily synchronous teaching of all children. We learned a lot about the inequity and inequality of Internet access in many homes, web-based teaching and learning platforms, and the reality of screen time fatigue. On a very positive side, we relearned the importance of lesson design. Teaching remotely requires a more precise lesson plan and this reintroduced us to Madeline Hunter’s eight step lesson plan.
Madeline Hunter’s Instructional Theory into Practice gained national attention in the 1970s and 80s. She was named one of the 100 most influential women in education. Her work at UCLA focused on the importance of students “getting it right the first time”. Carefully planned, taught, modeled, checked and practiced learning better assures that children are successful in daily and unit lessons and do not require extensive reteaching. She emphasized that all reteaching requires unlearning what is wrong before learning what is right. Our reality is that reteaching is not always accomplished due to its significant time and effort requirement. The need to “move on” and “we will correct that later” can leave children with incorrect understanding and skills that clearly influences future learning. Especially with remote education.
Additionally, reteaching in remote education is just awkward. It means arranging screen time with or deliverable materials to a child, manipulating the steps of unlearning and reteaching on screen or via the continued exchange of materials, and assessing that correct learning has been achieved. This must be done while maintaining ongoing remote education with all children. Or, reteaching is assigned to an interventionist who remotely works with a child. Ugh!
It is better to “get it right the first time”. Hence, a return to the Hunter Lesson Design.
- Anticipatory Set
- Objective: Purpose
- Teaching: Input
- Teaching: Modeling
- Checking for Understanding
- Guided Practice
- Independent Practice
- Closure
The Lesson Design fits on-screen time very well. A remote lesson that mirrors an in-class lesson may last 50 to 60 minutes can be chunked into segments of screen time with the insertion of a brief “checking for understanding” at the end of a chunk.
Input and Modeling constitute a a chunk that can be recorded so that a child can view and hear “correctness” over and over again.
Checking for Understanding queries can be repeated at any time. Synchronous teaching and learning allows all children in the remote class to see and hear the queries. And, synchronous teaching allows a teacher to “call” on any and every child.
Remote Guided Practice may be its own chunk of screen time. Guided Practice requires “show me, explain to me, and do it again” time. This can be done with all children on screen or with an individual child on screen.
Independent Practice can be off screen. Children can work independently off screen or in small groups on screen. The teacher does not need to be on screen.
Closure brings the teacher back together with all children and is a reciprocal process. Children explain, show and demonstrate what they learned and how their learning connects back to the purpose and objectives of the lesson and how their learning builds an anticipation of future learning.
The Hunter template provides a remote teacher with a guide to ensure that a remote lesson is a complete lesson from start to finish. It is “chunkable” and does not require continuous on screen time for the teacher or children. Most importantly, the Hunter template points to the importance of “getting it right the first time.”