Lessons vs. Activities Chapter 12

Lessons and activities are both used to enhance students learning experiences.

“Teaching can take many forms: it can be highly teacher-directed; it can incorporate peers; and it can emphasize discovery. However, teaching means that the teacher does more than organize and provide activities or give directions, hoping that students learn something. If no teaching is necessary, you do not have a lesson. Instead, you have either an activity or a time-filler.” Planning Effective Instruction, p.110

Lessons Lessons are used to give students initial instruction with the objective of having students attain specific, measurable, short term objectives by the lesson’s end. Lessons can last minutes, hours or days. Lessons often include activities.

Lesson Example A teacher is teaching addition. The students have piles of blocks and puts two groups of blocks together in order to visualize the addition process. After a couple of days of instruction and practice the students are given a short quiz to assess their learning.

The math lesson contains all the elements of a lesson: it provides initial instruction, has a short term goal and can be assessed, but most importantly can be individualized. The teacher can group students together to work out math problems, he can assist those that need extra help, he can remove the blocks from groups that need a further challenge and he can prepare different worksheets for the various groups based on their abilities.

Activities Allow students to further process, practice, generalize knowledge and skills and gain additional experience. Can also be used to improve learner motivation.

Activity Example Students each paint and decorate a container into which a flower seed is planted. The students will water the soil and measure the plant’s growth. The growth will later be charted and placed inside a card entitled “This is how much my love for you grew” which will be given to a loved one as a present.

Although the students will have an end product from the completion of the activity it will not be assessed. In this instance the activity is being used to enhance learning. Students will learn to measure soil, water and the plant once it starts to grow. They will also learn to chart the plants growth. This activity will take place in conjunction with science lessons on plants and environment and a unit on measurement in math. This activity will help students to integrate knowledge from multiple subject areas into a single activity.

Why is it important to know the difference? It is not essential to know the difference completely, but as teachers we must understand that filling a lot of time with activities will not necessarily give students the tools required to learn the given topic fully. Being aware of the differences will help us to make good teaching decisions.

Lesson or Activity? Do I need to provide initial instruction? Is this an important basic skill? Can I write a specific, measurable, short- term objective for this topic? Will I need to spend time teaching (rather than only reviewing it or giving directions)? Will I want to evaluate whether each student can independently meet the objective following this lesson?

If you answer yes to all of the previous questions you are planning a lesson. ◦ Chapter 13 of Planning Effective Instruction ◦ Examples in Success for All Learners If you answer no to any of the previous questions you are planning an activity. ◦ Chapter 14 of Planning Effective Instruction ◦ Examples of writing an activity plan on pages

It is not important to realize whether you are instructing using a lesson or activity. The important part of teaching is ensuring that instruction is sufficient, that you are not filling your class with filler activities and that individualization is possible some of the time. Not everything that is taught needs to be assessed. An activity with long term benefits is just as important as a lesson with short term goals.

QUESTIONS?