Intro to Chapter 3: Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons

Each technique in this chapter is part of an "I/We/You" pattern: responsibility for knowing is gradually released from teacher to student.  E.g., the author demonstrates that the teacher shows how to add fractions ("I"), then does it again, asking students to answer questions along the way ("We"), then asks a student to do an example, with lots of help from the teacher ("We"), then asks students to do an example on their own ("You").  Finally, the teacher gives the students many more examples to do ("You", repeatedly).

The author says, "Students get very good at watching their teacher demonstrate mastery without ever learning to do it on their own."


My response:

Excellent stuff.  I see myself demonstrating how to do something in Excel or Dreamweaver, or in Python, without using this technique -- and the result is that students can't do it on their own once they have to do it for their lab/assignment...