Presentations, explanations, and lectures by teachers compromise a large portion of classroom time primarily because curricula in schools have been structured around bodies of information that students are expected to learn.
The instructional goals of the presentation model are mainly to help students acquire, assimilate, and retain information.
The general flow or syntax for a presentation lesson consists of four main phases: presenting objectives and establishing set, presenting an advance organizer, presenting the learning materials, and using processes to help extend and strengthen student thinking.
Successful presentations require a fairly tightly structured learning environment that allows a teacher to effectively present and explain new information and the students to hear and to acquire the new information.
Theoretical and Empirical Support
The presentation teaching model draws its rationale from three streams of contemporary thought: concepts about the way knowledge is structured, ideas about how to help students acquire meaningful verbal learning, and concepts from the cognitive sciences that help explain how information is acquired, processed, and retained.
Bodies of knowledge have logical structures from which key concepts and ideas are drawn for teacher's presentations.
Knowledge can be broken down into three main categories: declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge. Declarative knowledge is knowledge about something or knowledge that something is the case. Procedural knowledge is knowledge about how to do something. Conditional knowledge is knowing when to use particular declarative or procedural knowledge.
People take information and knowledge through their senses and transform it into short-term and long-term memory. Meaningful verbal learning occurs when teachers present major unifying ideas in ways that connect these ideas to student's prior knowledge.
The empirical support for the presentation model is well developed. Studies have shown the positive effects of using advance organizers, connecting new information to students' prior knowledge, and presenting the information with clarity, enthusiasm, economy, and power.
Planning and Conducting Presentation Lessons
The planning tasks for the presentation model include carefully selecting content, creating advance organizers, and matching both to students' prior knowledge.
Presenting information to students requires preparing students to learn from presentations as well as delivering learning materials.
Clarity of presentation depends on both the teacher's delivery and the teacher's general mastery of the subject matter being presented.
Advance organizers serve as intellectual scaffolding on which new knowledge is built.
Specific techniques used in presenting new material include explaining links, rule-example-rule, and verbal transitions.
Teachers can help students extend and strengthen their thinking about new materials through discussion, questioning and dialogue.
Managing the Learning Environment
In a presentation lesson, a teacher structures the learning environment fairly tightly and makes sure students are attending to the lesson.
Most important, presentation lessons require clear rules that govern student talk, procedures to ensure a brisk, smooth pace, and effective methods for dealing with student off-task behavior or misbehavior.
Assessment and Evaluation
Postinstructional tasks of the presentation model consist of finding ways to test for student knowledge acquisition. Because students will learn what is expected of them, it is important to test for major ideas. If testing is limited to the recall of specific ideas or information, that is what students will learn. If teachers require higher-level cognitive processing on their tests, students will also learn to do that.
