Chapter 11 page 242
PLANNING ENGAGING, WELL-ORGANIZED INSTRUCTIONThe fourth component of classroom management is planning well-organized, engaging instruction.
This component has two parts: Instruction must be both (1) engaging and (2) well-organized.
Planning Engaging Instruction
As we discussed in Chapter 10, one of the central goals of instruction is to promote student
engagement. Engaging instruction promotes good behavior as well as improved motivation. When
instruction is highly engaging, fewer behavioral issues arise because students will be actively focused on
the lesson (Savage & Savage, 2010; lliams, 2009; Weinstein, 2007). For example, students are more likely
to behave well if teachers hold interesting discussions with higher-order questions that make students think.
More challenging discussions tend to be more engaging (Chinn et al., 2000; Chinn, 2006), and greater
engagement tends to translate to less misbehavior. In contrast, students tend to be bored by discussions
centered on lower-level questions that can be easily answered by repeating words in the textbook. When
students are bored, they are more likely to misbehave. (This was the topic of the Reflection at the beginning
of the chapter.)
Planning engaging instruction involves using all the instructional techniques that increase
motivation and engagement that we discussed in Chapter 10. We will not discuss them further in this
chapter, but it is important to remember that techniques that promote motivation also tend to promote better
student behavior.
Developing Well-Organized Instruction
In addition to developing engaging instruction, teachers must also develop well-organized
instruction. Well-organized instruction ensures that all the activities run smoothly, with little or no wasted
time. Well-organized instruction also ensures that students have the skills needed to accomplish the tasks
efficiently. Students understand how the lesson is organized and what they are supposed to do. To create
well-organized instruction, teachers must carry out these five processes: (1) organize the instructional
activities and materials carefully before the lesson, (2) provide the students with any needed training to
make sure they know how to carry out the activities, (3) provide clear instructional signals during the
lesson, (4) monitor students’ behavior during the lesson, and (5) follow up appropriately on the lesson. By
implementing these five processes, teachers can ensure that their instruction runs smoothly.
To illustrate these five processes, we’ll consider a middle-school science teacher, Rachel, planning
a lesson in which students develop their own explanations of what happens to the human body during
exercise. In one key activity, students measure their heart rate and lung volume before and after different
kinds of exercise. Students use equipment including buckets of water to measure their lung volume.
Although the lesson is highly engaging, there will be many opportunities for misbehavior if the teacher does
not plan carefully. There is a danger that the buckets of water could be spilled. Students could end up
gabbing or even fighting with classmates as they wait to use equipment. Or students might simply get off
task because of the excitement of a fun activity. For this lesson to be successful, Rachel must carefully
execute each of the five processes listed in the previous paragraph.
Organizing activities and materials. When organizing activities and materials, teachers develop
a clear sequence of activities that minimizes wasted time, and they prepare materials so that students can
access them quickly and in an orderly fashion. Before class, Rachel gathers all the materials, making sure
that she has enough of everything for all five of her classes. Rachel decides how to lay out the equipment
and materials in the room in order to make it easy for students to get them. She decides to group students in
groups of four, and she checks to make sure that there are no groups that include students who cannot work
together. She also plans what to do in case of student absences. Rachel next decides that groups will spread
out to different parts of the room as they conduct their experiments. Because there is not enough equipment