Guided Instruction: How to Develop Confident and Successful Learners

by Douglas Fisher

You know that repeating the same words and the same instructions—or simply announcing the answers to questions—doesn't help students learn. How do you get past the predictable and really teach your kids how to learn? Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey say that helping students develop immediate and lifelong learning skills is best achieved through guided instruction, which they define as "saying or doing the just-right thing to get the learner to do cognitive work"—in other words, gradually and successfully transferring knowledge and the responsibility for learning to students through scaffolds for learning. In this helpful and informative book, they explain how guided instruction fits your classroom and works for your students. Their four-part system for implementation consists of these
* Questioning to check for understanding.

* Prompting to facilitate students' thinking processes and processing.

* Cueing to shift students' attention to focus on specific information, errors, or partial understandings.

* Explaining and modeling when students do not have sufficient knowledge to complete tasks on their own.
Each element is thoroughly explained and illustrated with numerous examples drawn from the authors' extensive experience in the classroom and their observations of hundreds of expert teachers, as well as a broad sampling of relevant research. Aimed at teachers at all grade levels, across the curriculum, Guided Instruction will help you provide timely and meaningful scaffolds that boost students to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment.

Genres: Education

139 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is an educator and Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College.

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Reviews

[Sarah Dutkiewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an online instructor coming from a technical realm and no formal education pedagogy background, I found this book easy to read and learn from. It was great to see what I could do as an instructor to help encourage my apprentices (learners) to engage the curriculum and concepts to the best of their availabilities. The science and tips and tricks in this book are invaluable for any instructor who is just starting out and looking how to work with their learners.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this! It explicitly talks about the art of teaching and goes into get detail the how and why behind Guided Instruction.

[Erik Orrantia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book goes over many practical strategies for guided instruction. I like that it doesn't dwell on semantics rather intention. A question, for example, might be intended as an assessment, prompt, or cue. I like also the final discussion on grouping strategies and the important fact that however students are grouped it ought to be intentional. inally, the major thesis of the book is that scaffolding can be done in myriad ways, but should be done always with the intention of gradually taking the assistance away such that the teacher's assistance in not a crutch but a temporary boost.