Provide "acknowledged body of knowledge" related to the concept. Emphasize the most significant aspects of the concept in an organized, organic manner. Present information sequentially so students see continuity. Draw attention to important, discrete details; don't swamp students with myriad facts.

Let's Talk About Time

Objective: 1) The student will be able to define 'on-task' and 'off-task' behaviors, give examples of each, and correctly classify given behaviors as such. 2) The student will be able to explain research findings related to on and off-task behaviors.

Activity: Let's Talk About It. Present students with information derived from educational research that shows the link between on-task behaviors and learning. Present the following questions, ask students to hypothesize the findings, and then share the actual results with the class. Let's Talk About Time - A Conversation Between a Student and an Educational Researcher. 1) Does the way time is spent in a classroom effect the amount of learning which I achieve? Yes. In a study of 87 classrooms in 1980, those classes which did not engage in as much teacher instructed activity, did not achieve as much. Not only does student on-task behavior help learning, but the amount of time in which students are actually engaged--busy with--the learning activity effects the amount of material learned. 2) If a student only talks with others off and on, does it really hurt? Yes. Frequent behaviors such as social interactions (talking to others) cut down on student achievement. 3) If the class is working in groups, can I talk to my friends? Yes and no. Group activities have learning goals. Talking with group members about the assigned activity is an on-task behavior. Your teacher designs the learning activity so that by following the directions you can better achieve the learning goal. Talking to others in your group about the learning task is usually an important part of the directions. However, if you talk to your friends about something unrelated to the learning task, you are displaying an off-task behavior and your overall learning suffers. This is because you are not spending the needed time on the learning task. 4) A boy in my class is always goofing off telling jokes and getting the class to laugh. Is he hurting my learning achievement? Yes. By disturbing the time which you have to work on a learning exercise, he is interrupting your learning time. 5) If we increase our math class time, will than mean that we will learn more math? Maybe. The amount of time you spend in a class is not necessarily going to effect your overall learning rate. Researchers talk about something called 'student-engaged time' and claim that it is more important than the total amount of time spent in a class. Student-engaged time is the amount of time in which a student actively participates in a learning experience. That is, the time spent in a class when a student is not working on a learning task doesn't effect overall learning. If the added class time is to effect overall learning, it must be spent actively working on math. Therefore, more math time spent on math will help, but more math time used to socialize won't. 6) What if I spend a lot of time in math working on math problems, but I get them all wrong? An educational researcher named Filby Fisher has introduced a new term, academic learning time, which takes accuracy into account. According to his research, learning occurs when a student spends time on learning exercises and does the work with a high level of success. This would seem to indicate that if you spent a lot of time doing problems to wrong way, and were never corrected, this added time wouldn't be helpful to your overall achievement. You would be well advised to check your work periodically to be sure that you're doing it right. From this discussion, generate several lists of behaviors, those which are generally on-task behaviors and those which are off-task behaviors can be different if called for by the teacher in a learning situation. Write the lists on large paper and post for further consideration.

Assessment: Quality of student lists and ability to remain on-task (!) for the activities.